Maybe We Don't Need to Turn Everything Into Something

Sometimes I think we’ve become too obsessed with making everything useful.

Every hobby needs to become a side income.

Every skill needs to become a career advantage.

Every photo needs to be posted.

Every idea needs to become a project.

Every project needs users.

Every free hour needs to be productive.

And somehow, even resting needs to be justified as:

“I’m resting so I can be more productive tomorrow.”

That sounds exhausting when you actually think about it.

Maybe some things are allowed to exist without becoming anything bigger.

You can build a small app because it sounds fun.

You can learn a programming language you’ll probably never use professionally.

You can drive somewhere without turning it into content.

You can read something without taking notes.

You can create something nobody will ever see.

You can spend three hours fixing something that could have been solved in ten minutes simply because you wanted to understand how it works.

There doesn’t always have to be an ROI.

I think developers are particularly bad at this.

You start with:

I want to build a small thing.

Then your brain immediately goes:

Can I monetize it?

Should I make it SaaS?

Does it need authentication?

Maybe a mobile app too?

Should I open source it?

Can I put it in my portfolio?

What if I add AI?

Brother.

You were trying to make a button five minutes ago.

Sometimes a weekend project can just be a weekend project.

It can be badly engineered.

It can have three users.

It can have zero users.

It can run only on your laptop.

It can solve a problem that exists exclusively because you created the problem yourself.

And it can still be worth building.

Because not everything we create needs to become a product.

Sometimes the value is simply:

I had an idea.

I built it.

It worked.

That was fun.

Maybe that’s enough.