My son recently became interested in a book called Rube Goldberg, about a boy with the same name.

Everything he does in his typical school day routine, he does using a Rube Goldberg machine:

A sample Rube Goldberg machine, where an absurd process is used to complete a simple task.

The Rube Goldberg lens is a great way to look at life. Where are people piecing together an absurd process to complete a simple task?

An example from education:

I teach high school English. This requires reading and responding to many student essays. Lots of work. However, I realized early on I could do face-to-face conversations with students about their writing. These often help much more than the written comments.

The problem?

Classes are only 56 minutes long. I have 100+ students per year. And I can't have kids come in, sit down, and meet me with me one-to-one every day.

So, I asked: The speaking is the valuable part. How can I "scale" that outside of class?

Ultimately, the answer was in using tools to record my voice and share it with students. So I started using my iPhone to record voice memos. Then I'd email them to students. That had a lot of friction. Then, I started using an app called Kaizena. That let met leave voice comments right in the Google Doc. It's a great tool, but too many features for me.

Finally, I settled on using a site called Vocaroo. The website has a "record" button on it. I push the button and speak for a few minutes about an essay. Then I press "stop." The website creates a link to the audio recording. I press a button to copy the link. Then I paste that on the students' documents.

Even that is a little too Rube Goldberg-like for me. But it works.

The point of all this is to look for where people are trying to hack together their own solutions. This can be a way to figure out new products. You can also look at ways people are using your product in a Rube Goldberg way. Or they may use your product as part of a Rube Goldberg process. That could be an area for you to develop a new feature.

First, though, I would capture that awesome use case and share it with the rest of your users.

Where have you ever identified a Rube Goldberg process that needs to be simplified in your business or life?

PS - My email service provider now automatically creates a blog post out of each email I send. You can click "Post Comment" to add your thoughts (and to read past emails). I'll feature comments in upcoming emails. Go leave your comment : )