Casey Neistat has built an entire career by operating within creative boundaries. He uses basic gear for filmmaking, limiting editing time, or filming in less-than-ideal conditions. For his viral video Make It Count, Neistat used a small budget from Nike and spent it on a trip around the world… produced the entire video in just a few days. Watch this amazing talk by Casey Neistat Things I wish I had known when I was in High School. And even this Do what you can't.

Two of my other favourite examples are Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe and Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. Thing explainer is an illustrated non-fiction book where Randall explains some of the most complicated stuff using the most common 1000 english words. With Green eggs and ham, Dr. Suess wrote this best-seller using only 50 unique words.

In fact, these two books were my inspiration for creating a coffee-table, visual explainer book for Native M1/M2 RO water purifiers. I wanted everyone in the company to know how everything works in these water purifiers, from design to filtration to electronics to hardware engineering; without making it a 1000 pager word document and making it boring. More on that early next year! It's a weird project to pick-up. But I'm confident, it'll all be worth it.

This 30-days October blog series is another example. I didn't have to do it. These blogs that I have published since 1st October were just assorted notes. I love drawing & doodling but I knew I won't have time to doodle for #inktober2024. So, my spin was to convert this into a 30-days blogging series #blogtober2024. Weird? Yes. Useful? To me, yes!

Being weird doesn’t mean being random—it means finding a set of unique constraints that force you to see things differently. When we are seeking high-quality work, originality, these weird rules may just help you stand out!

Some more recommendations you might find useful:

• A technique for producing ideas

• Generating ideas as a manager

• Steal like an artist by Austin Kleon

• The paradox of choice by Barry Schwartz

• TEDx talk by Austin Kleon