Make more cheap garbage

My project was just cancelled. Deprioritized. The stuff I’ve been excited about and working on, right into the trash. How would you feel about that?

Photo by Steve Johnson

My daughter was struggling with some homework last night. There was a concept that was brand new to her and she wasn’t getting it on the first pass. I wanted to show her she could easily write down a couple tests to check if her thinking was right or wrong.

I reached for her notebook. That was her science notebook.

Ok, math notebook then. That was waiting for a grade at school.

Scrap paper? Nothing.

When we finally found something I could use, I realized: The math isn’t what’s tripping her up.

I’d like to get a pair of boots this winter. I have some ginormous, waterproof monsters, but those are a bit awkward as everyday shoes. Yeah I’m comfy in a snow drift, but I’ve also had my car stuck in Forward with a boot wedged between the accelerator and the floor mat.

But do I even like everyday, casual boots? There’s no way I want to spend a bunch of money on this experiment.

I look at thursdayboots.com. Seems to be a very common gateway for first time boot buyers. Decent quality with boots still under $200. Barely. But still. Better than the $500 ones in my Facebook feed now.

And it got me looking at how Thursday even came about.

Just some dudes — Connor Wilson and Nolan Walsh — looking for slightly dressier boots that don’t break the bank. They wanted to know if they could make some themselves to match their stylistic wants. They gave it a shot. But not one shot. In two weeks on a road trip to Guatemala in college, they made 15 different pairs.

15 pairs of garbage. They just cranked out lots of ideas that ended up in the trash. Until they finally figured out some of the details that led them to thinking: we should start a company doing this for real. That was 11 years ago. Now you can’t watch a boot video without a mention of Thursday and the affordable boots they offer.

That’s what my daughter was missing.

She isn’t making enough cheap garbage on purpose.

The notebooks got so specialized. This one is for science. This one is for journaling. This one is for test prep. You can’t easily find the one that suits the purpose of the thing we’re in right now. There’s friction everywhere. No freedom to just scribble on whatever is nearby and get straight to the thing that matters, which is testing an idea and playing with a new concept.

She should have junk paper everywhere. If it’s a notebook, don’t bless it. Treat it as just a collection of random shit that will easily get thrown out or lost and no one cares. Pick up a new one and no tears will be shed, and you pick right back up jotting down random nonsense that might make sense only to you.

You should feel free to write a small handful of things on a sheet of paper and just chuck it. Do I write on both sides? Sometimes. But if I’ve used a pen to write on one side and it shows up a bit on the other, nah. Crumple, basketball toss and start a fresh sheet.

“But Nate, this sounds wasteful.”

Look, I’m sewing holes in my own mittens and re-waterproofing old jackets like the rest of us trying to save-the-planet. But when it comes to the value gained from fast, cheap, low-friction experiments, the balance should lean toward filling recycling bins with scribbled paper.

If this bothers you that much, put whiteboards up everywhere. We have those too. We also have a bunch of marker on the walls from accidents. I prefer the junk paper. Also I write on a lot of old newspaper.

When I was working my first jobs as a software engineer, I’d feel the sting of my projects ending up in the trash. This thing I’m working on is no longer a priority for this company.

But now that I’ve been doing this for a while I realize, if I want to be doing really cool shit, guess what? You need to be ready to make a lot of stuff, fast, and a lot of it is going to end up in the trash. No crying. No heartbreak. Just ship a lot of experiments as cheaply as possible. See if it has traction or move on.

The goal, like the Thursday founders figured out, is to keep learning by making things cheaply and quickly.

Even if it means it’s garbage.

Make more of it.