Alright, let me tell you about this beast of an idea I had and how it actually went down. Felt simple enough at the start: find 20 really useful, down-to-earth examples folks are actually using online for… well, anything practical, and share that out of a thousand possibilities. Sounded solid.
Step one: Hit the web. Obvious places first, right? Scrolled through forums where people actually talk about fixing stuff, communities where they share real scripts or workflows. Opened about fifty tabs. My browser started groaning.
Started copying things over. A snippet for automating spreadsheet reports someone posted. A clever home automation hack from a DIY thread. A little bash script for tidying up downloads someone dropped in a comment. Pasted them into a doc. Boom, about thirty bits and pieces staring back at me. Thought, “This is gonna fill up fast!” Boy, was I wrong about that part.
Kept digging. Went deeper. Searched specific tags, specific “real world use case” phrases. Sorted by date, by popularity. Clicked link after link after link. Half were broken. Or required specific paid tools. Or were just… nonsense wrapped in jargon. Closed those tabs fast.
The Snag: Realized “useful” and “shared online” is like finding decent fruit at the end of the market day. You gotta poke through a lot of bruised stuff. Found tons of “Top 10 Amazing!” lists that were basically ads. Found forum threads devolving into arguments about the best framework instead of showing how to fix the leaky faucet, so to speak.
Pivoted. Decided “20 clear examples out of 1000 potential ideas” meant I needed volume first, then filtering. Stopped looking for “the perfect post” and started looking for any post with a clear “I used X to solve Y” structure. Just hoovered them up.
My doc looked chaotic:
- Someone jury-rigged their coffee pot with an old phone charger and IFTTT.
- A teacher posted exactly how they used a simple free tool to track student progress without fancy software.
- A gardener shared a Google Sheets template for planning veggie plots based on sun exposure.
- A guy automated checking if his favorite band tickets were on sale yet with Python and got ’em!
- Loads of tiny Excel/Sheets formulas folks actually used daily.
- Someone fixed a slow website image load issue with a one-line .htaccess tweak shared on Reddit.
Ended up with a doc overflowing with over 300 links, titles, and short descriptions. Felt a bit dizzy.
The Filter: Now came the hard part. Needed just 20. Sat down. Read each one again. Crossed out ones that:
- Required super niche skills or expensive gear.
- Felt too “theoretical” or unfinished.
- Were just links to full tutorials instead of the nugget itself.
- Had comments full of “Doesn’t work for me”.
Slowly, painfully, whittled it down. Chose examples that were truly “real world” – mundane problems solved simply. Stuff you could maybe tweak for your own needs. Felt like tossing gems sometimes, but 20 was the goal.
Putting it Together: Wrote up the list. For each of the final 20, wrote:
- The Problem it solved (simple, everyday stuff).
- The Solution used (the tool, script, hack).
- Why it was “best” (it was shared, worked reliably, and was practical).
Kept it rough. Used plain language, like the people who shared them did.
The Reality Check: The “1000” wasn’t me finding a thousand perfect examples. It was me wading through what felt like a thousand posts, snippets, and ideas to find those genuinely helpful, shared-by-actual-people, not-just-hype real uses. It was messy, frustrating, involved lots of closing tabs, and took way longer than I thought. But seeing those 20 clear, useful examples finally laid out? That felt like a proper win after all that digging. Just the meat, no fluff.