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To 'use the unusable' means to actively use something that is broken, something that is not working at the exact moment you need it to be working. This isn't a thing that most people inherently look to do. It's way easier to work with things that are working, just like you are. Big-box tech stores have made entire industries out of people content to treat their computers like mysterious magic boxes, and more than one start-up has taken a similar stance towards wardrobes, food, and any other amenities in life. All that is well and fine for the day-to-day, but during work, learning to be flexible about what you have to work with can become a make or break quality.
As in so many things, it's worth looking at the life of Steve Jobs as an example. Back when he was alive, he created the iPhone. This did not go so great at first. A crucial New York Times Magazine piece from 2013 by Fred Vogelstein took a look at the iPhone's early days and how it was just terrible. The article takes the perspective of Andy Grignon, a senior engineer at Apple who was in charge of making the iPhone be a phone, period. "He had rarely seen Jobs make it all the way through his 90-minute show without a glitch" Vogelstein writes. "Jobs had been practicing for five days, yet even on the last day of rehearsals the iPhone was still randomly dropping calls, losing its Internet connection, freezing or simply shutting down."
"'At first it was just really cool to be at rehearsals at all — kind of like a cred badge,' Grignon says. Only a chosen few were allowed to attend. 'But it quickly got really uncomfortable. Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued — it happened, but mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, 'You are [expletive] up my company,' or, 'If we fail, it will be because of you.' He was just very intense. And you would always feel an inch tall.' Grignon, like everyone else at rehearsals, knew that if those glitches showed up during the real presentation, Jobs would not be blaming himself for the problems. 'It felt like we'd gone through the demo a hundred times, and each time something went wrong,' Grignon says. 'It wasn't a good feeling.'"
On the last day of rehearsals! This is not the invincible Apple that everyone knows now. This was not a good feeling for Jobs or Grignon; both were very worried about the launch! But neither one of them thought of delaying nor pushing the product, which was still secret, back to a later date. It had to be launched when it had to be launched, and it had to work even though it wasn't ready for prime time. The perception was most important, and even though the product was unusable for the populace as a whole (if you'll remember, early iPhone experiences were fraught with poor connections), for one day all it had to do was work once. And it did. Grignon got drunk.
Author
David Grossman is a writer for WeWork Magazine. He has been published in SPIN, Tablet, Vice and several other publications. He is based out of Brooklyn, New York