This post will be a little different, but still really fun.

Often times while I am building things, I like to have fun with it. If you follow me on twitter you have probably seen a fair share of memes and other GIFs(with a J) used in fun ways.

Here are a few below:

On the surface, some of these things can be looked at as “screwing around” or “a waste of time”. This is, in fact, the opposite of how I feel about these explorations. I find that if I am having fun with the thing I am creating I will be more interested and determined to get it done. Along the way, I happen to learn a ton of new things. If you all remember, my journey through Dynamo and programming has been a long one with a lot of frustrations and twists and turns. 😊 The Revit Kid was nice enough to have me as a guest to discuss it, check it out here.

As I continue along this journey I am constantly reminded of Rule 17 of “Pixar’s 22 Rules for Great Storytelling”, “No work is ever wasted”.

While their specific rule is discussing something not working, I imagine that can include other explorations as well.

Most often when I build something that is for fun, I end up reusing the methods I learned along the way elsewhere. A great example is this one that came up here:

Within the clippy tool, I learned about non-modal Revit windows and a lot about converting an open source library for use in Revit add-in development.

To summarize, keep having fun everyone! You might just learn something new.

-John