What are You Accidentally Creating?

The Gist: Everything we do or make creates an unintended by-product. These can be unique and valuable by themselves.

When I was in high school, I was really into wrestling. I loved everything about it. Well, all but one thing, really. I hated losing. Losing, was the biggest problem for me and, after a few years, I got pretty tired of it. So, one summer, I decided to change. I sat down and thought about all the matches I’d ever lost and why I’d lost them.

What I learned was that there were two places I was being beat over and over: conditioning and strength. My opponents were outlasting me and tossing me around like a rag doll.

So I made a plan. Knowing my genetics, I abandoned the idea of getting stronger (I’m the scrawny type), but I could better condition myself, and I could certainly become a better technician. So I developed a workout routine I could do by myself that improved my skills and put me in better shape—finding a wrestling partner can be difficult.

It worked. I ended up placing twice at my state tournament and even landed on a Division 1 team in college for a while.

A Sudden Realization

Along the way, people started to notice that I stopped sucking as much and even got kind of good. They wanted to know how I did it, so I showed them my routine. It worked for some of them, too.

Until I saw that my routine was helping others, I hadn’t even thought about the process that got me there. Selfish? Maybe. I’d created a valuable by-product without even realizing it. The goal—the real product—was to make myself a better wrestler, so that’s all I focused on. The by-product was the process, and that process had the potential to help others.

You do this, too. Probably ever single day, almost. You accidentally create really valuable things without realizing it. So why not harvest them and harness their power?

Creating by Accident

The things you accidentally create in your life can be incredibly valuable to other people. Whole business empires are built from them—solve your own problem and you’ve probably solved someone else’s, too. And by-products can create communities that could never have existed before.

My friend, Steve, runs a fun and interesting community of health buffs over at Nerd Fitness. The site is a product of careful and intentional planning, but the process that started it was an accidental creation; Steve just wanted to answer the question: “How can I get healthy, look good, and have fun with my life?”

His unique answer turned into a whole web community of people who enjoy working out and just happen to watch Star Wars and read J.R.R. Tolkien.

37 Signals is a minimalist software company that’s changing the way people in many industries are thinking about the way they work. And it was kind of by accident. When Jason Fried and co. started the company, they had to create a unique set of processes so they could run their business the way they wanted to.

As it turned out, these processes were pretty valuable to other business that also wanted to streamline the way they work. Once they realized this, they started writing books. The extra income is probably nice, but the real value is in helping a lot of people and cementing 37 Signals as a thought leader in business.

Sometimes the things that catapult success aren’t the things themselves, but the things created by the things.

Do you follow?

Harnessing Accidental Creations

The problem with harnessing your accidental creations is just that—they’re accidents. Most of the time you don’t even realize you’ve created them. So the problem isn’t necessarily that what you’ve made is messy or unweildy—usually quite the opposite—it’s that you don’t even see them. If it’s such an integral part of you and what you do, how do you recognize that you’ve even created it?

It’s a tricky problem, yes, but as long as you realize that you are in fact creating them, there are a few questions you can ask yourself that will help shine a light on these valuable accidents.

• What do you actually do? Forget about the job title you give yourself and ask what the real purpose is behind what you do. Why do you do these things?

• What does it take to do what you do? What are the actual tasks you do each day that help you carry out your goals? What are the physical things and  processes you’ve created to make what you do easier?

• How can you put these things into a package that other people understand? Your accidental creations make perfect sense to you—you created them afterall—but they’re probably clear as mud to everyone else. At least from the outside. How can you polish your accidental creation so that it’s easily digestible by the people who need it?

Your creations may start out as accidents—most of mine do—but there’s no rule that says they have to stay that way. In fact, they probably shouldn’t. If you start a deliberate practice of looking for the things you do without thinking about—if you analyze the things that help you create the things you create—you just might stumble upon something valuable

Actually, you probably will.

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Image by: Kenneth Tse