The Power of the Inadequate

(Sunday Blooming Reading – May 11th)

We’ve all been trained to be appropriate.
To use the right tools, wear the right outfits, speak the right way, choose the right moment.
We even get awards for how adequate we are.

And that’s precisely why inadequacy is so powerful.

Because when you use the “wrong” thing for a job—when you operate outside the expected logic of use, category, setting—you enter different terrain.
And in different terrain, different things happen.

Try this:
Use a soup spoon to plant seeds.
Try making a pitch using a karaoke mic.
Bring a children’s toy into a corporate meeting.
Read a contract out loud with a Shakespearean accent.

You’ll feel it: the crackle of something shifting.
It’s the sound of your mind leaving the default setting.

Using an inadequate tool, being inappropriately dressed, saying something that doesn’t quite belong—these are tiny rebellions that nudge us away from habit and towards novelty.

And novelty is half of creativity.
(Yes, let’s say it again: creative = new + useful.)

Managing the inadequate doesn’t guarantee usefulness—but it invites newness.
And you can’t be creative if you’re only repeating the adequate.

Now, I’m not saying you should show up at your next job interview in a clown suit or write your client’s campaign brief in ancient Greek.
(Although… would love to see that.)

What I’m saying is:
Inadequacy is a lever.
It doesn’t solve the puzzle, but it changes its shape.
It doesn’t deliver the idea, but it opens a side door you didn’t know was there.

Every time you choose something misfit, you gain access to a slightly altered reality—
and reality, once altered, tends to stay that way.

So no, the inadequate doesn’t come with guarantees.
But it does come with possibility.
And that’s more than most “adequate” things offer.

Next time you're stuck, bored, blocked, or just treading the same old cognitive path—
reach for the wrong thing.
Speak in the wrong tone.
Bring in the piece that shouldn’t be there.

It won’t always work.
But when it does, it’ll work in ways the right tool never could.