Inside the mind of a tinkerer
A more playful approach to work and productivity.
After lunch on a Sunday afternoon as a kid, I’d often hear my dad proclaim that he was going to ‘tinker’ in the shop. Despite the regularity of these Sunday tinkering ventures, I had no idea what he was it actually entailed. I was more focused on getting out of chores or yard work.
Now that I’m much old(er), I better understand what he meant by tinkering.
Tinkering is work, but it’s also not work.
It’s the kind of work that doesn’t require deep thinking or focus.
For me, it’s the stuff I can do slouched down on the couch with my laptop and The Office playing for the 348th time in the background.
For him, it was rearranging tools and cleaning up his workspace.
In many ways, it isn’t really work at all.
It’s neither hard nor laborious.
It’s both tedious and stimulating.
It’s unfocused and yet engaging.
It’s just…tinkering.
Tinkering—often mistaken for aimless activity—is a crucial foundation for creativity and innovation, providing the mental space necessary for ideas to gestate and evolve.
The act of tinkering is akin to wandering through a garden instead of marching down a path. It's not about deep focus or intentional outcomes. It's all tidying up vs. deep cleaning.
Tinkering is like a music playlist, blending work and life seamlessly. It's not always about striving for capital-P productivity but about activating new ideas through relaxed exploration. By giving ourselves the freedom to tinker, we create space for true creativity to flourish.
In exploring the essence of tinkering, I see found parallels in writing this piece. Like a tinkerer joyfully engages in tasks, such as rearranging pixels or sending emails, I've been tinkering with its ideas, words, and paragraphs, allowing my thoughts to evolve and take shape over time. Instead of leaving you with the final draft, I’ve opted to include them because, as any writer knows: showing always beats telling.
Though I’m sure it makes this article harder to read—maybe that’s the point. By engaging with the variations iterations of an idea and ignoring the modern tendency to only show our best work, we lose the opportunity to truly be creative. The process of experimentation, refinement, and playful productivity is what tinkering is all about.
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams
It’s a bit unhinged, but in a world where we’re always showing the Instagram version of ourselves, we need more space to let the bad ideas fly, show behind-the-scenes shots, and iterate. Good ideas come through iteration and self-exploration, not striving for perfection.
The funny thing is that a lot of our modern work culture is digital tinkering.
So what is tinkering?
Tinkering with ideas is a playful exploration or a taking of inventory. It's about noodling and letting bad ideas fly pass by so you can discover the good ones. This light, unfocused work prepares for deeper, more meaningful creative work. Letting 1,000 flowers bloom requires some weeds to take root, the key is not to pluck a flower-looking weed or weed-looking flower too early. Creativity requires time to grow and develop.
Tinker-Core: Balancing Shallow and Deep Work
In productivity and creativity, tinkering is the connective tissue between the realm of shallow work and the domain of deep work. Tasks like organizing emails or reading documents can be the first step towards deeper work, a warming of up the creative engines so to speak. By allowing ourselves to tinker with ideas and concepts on a surface level, we create a foundation for deeper exploration. Tinkering, with its playful and exploratory nature, acts as a precursor to the focused attention and immersion required for deep work, enabling us to transition from light experimentation to substantial creativity.
Tinkering takes various forms but has consistent characteristics:
Multi-taskable - the work can be done with sports or a podcast on in the background.
Highly-variable - the task might not be clear until you’re in it the journey is the destination.
Optional - the work isn't critical, but it's necessary for productivity.
Tinkering is the shallow work we do to keep the hedonic productivity wheel turning. We know we’re supposed to work, so we do. In modern, Americanized work cultures, work is the only true form of fulfillment, value, and meaning—happiness is exists only for the productive. If productivity is next to godliness, the lack of productivity is the deepest a form of depravity.
Done right, tinkering is productive and therapeutic. Done wrong, tinkering is it’s nothing more than feckless wandering.
Tinkering, like a gardener pruning with care, can cultivate creativity and productivity. Yet, aimless tinkering is akin to a lost sailor adrift at sea, lacking direction and purpose.
Tinkering is the gentle stream that guides creativity toward its destination, channeling ideas into productive waters. But without a map or compass, tinkering may become a wandering cloud, drifting aimlessly in the sky.
In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, 'Not all who wander are lost.' Just as wandering holds purpose, so does tinkering. Embracing a playful approach to productivity can lead to creative breakthroughs. Let's label our tinkering correctly and explore the value it brings to our work and lives.
Our work shapes how we think about it; it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We often categorize tasks as 'work,' attaching a sense of importance or obligation to them. But what if we reframe these activities as tinkering as a way to decrease friction and find ways to reconnect with a more playful form of work? Emailing, reading documents, or sending Slack messages may not require deep thinking or effort, but labeling them as 'work' can make us feel productive. Are we becoming modern-day pencil pushers, engaging in activities that may not involve intense labor but still provide a sense of productivity?
The Value of Tinkering Across Contexts
For me and my dad, tinkering was a mix of playful productivity and therapy. It was a way to feel productive without the stress of actual work (aka the big, haunting tasks you’re avoiding). Tinkering offers a stress-free way to feel accomplished, and potentially enjoy yourself. And for people like me who struggle with perfectionism, anxiety, and intense ambition, finding ways to enjoy work while also feeling a sense of accomplishment is critical. When we push too hard, we end up going backward. It’s like having a fixed gear bike; you can pedal hard, but it’s better to go at the bike's pace, lest the chain comes off.
In the realm of everyday creativity tinkering lies a path to flourishing, as illuminated by a study titled "Everyday Creative Activity as a Path to Flourishing" by Tamlin S. Conner, Colin G. DeYoung, and Paul J. Silvia in The Journal of Positive Psychology. Their insightful research explored the daily lives of 658 young adults, revealing a fascinating cycle: engaging in creative endeavors led to elevated positive emotions and a heightened sense of flourishing the following day. This suggests that nurturing our creativity not only enhances our well-being but also fuels a continuous cycle of creative inspiration and fulfillment.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a corporate employee, modern work requires balance, but it can be hard to find. As I’ve written before, there are many ways of working. I'm most fulfilled when I alternate between work and life, combining elements like a guitarist or bassist.
While this approach works for me, others find it jarring or impractical. But it works for me because I spend time tinkering, sitting, thinking, keeping my mind and hands busy, not always worrying about a strong drive for capital P productivity, but activating nascent thoughts and ideas by taking my mind off them.
Organizing my to-do list is never my top priority. Just like organizing and labeling the tools in the shop were not my father’s priority. But this is the preparation for creative thinking and working—the clearing of mental clutter and RAM for productivity’s sake. Completing it in the quiet periods allows you to capitalize on your full creative potential when the opportunity arises.
If my work is a mess and I try to sit down to write, I feel the pull of the unmanaged work, nagging me to attend to it. But when I tinker unproductively, I create more space to think and create, even if not immediately. Gustave Flaubert reminds us that we should,
"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
Reframing helps me avoid deciding when to work and reduces the anxiety of doing the work, allowing me to put real effort toward it when the time comes.
Maybe this won’t work for you, but it’s been helpful for me.
In a world where productivity is often measured by output and efficiency, the concept of jobs for individuals who simply enjoy tinkering 24/7 seems refreshing, albeit somewhat unrealistic in the near future. Imagine a workforce where individuals are encouraged to explore and experiment without the pressure of traditional work demands. Allowing time for more people to tinker could not only lead to innovative products and ideas, but also foster a unique sense of fulfillment for more of our workforce.
As I think about the impact what the future looks like for tinkerers like me, I imagine AI and Universal Basic Income will play an important role. But that’s an idea for another day, and another time.
Embracing our inner tinkerer allows us to revisit the joy found in unrestricted exploration, blending work and life into a harmonious rhythm that nurtures rather than drains. In this space, we don’t just work—we play, explore, and ultimately, flourish.
