Enablers

To use a crass Americanism for effect: enablers rock! Whilst this is very jarring to the average conservative Brit, we have a lot to learn from our US cousins. Luckily maker culture is breaking through old attitudes and we may see a new age of craftsmen and craftswomen.

• Positive attitude
  • You will be surprised what you can do if you put your mind to it. It is helpful If you are not afraid of failure and are willing to learn, experiment and practise.
• The right (good quality) tool for the job
  • “A bad craftsman always blames his tools”. I’ve heard this saying used to excuse the purchasing of cheap tools, however, I have a different take on it: “Buy cheap, buy twice”. Having the right tools for a job is a massive enabler. It lifts you from bodging and leaves only knowledge (see below) and skill (comes with practise) between you and a completed project.
• Design / planning
  • At school I hated the design part of CDT because I was rubbish at drawing and there was no undo button on a piece of A3. CAD systems were always really expensive and hard to lean so I tended to just skip any detailed design and blunder through. This often led to frustration because you inevitably run into problems. Sketchup really changed things; it was easy to learn, quick to use and produced results that were accurate, useful and looked realistic. The only trouble is that sometimes ‘building’ it in Sketchup makes actually building it seem like a lot of effort; after all, you’ve already solved a lot of the interesting problems.
• Nuts, bolts, components and materials on hand
  • A jar of random rusty screws doesn’t help productivity; it just leads to frustration. Instead, I’ve found that a set of compartment boxes filled with commonly required screws, bolts, nuts, washers, nails, etc allows you to just get on with the job.
• Youtube / helpful people on the Internet
  • This is where the knowledge starts. If you look in the right places, research properly and don’t take one person’s word for it, then the Internet allows you to get up to speed on pretty much any topic. Whilst becoming an expert will always take time and patience, the Internet at least removes a lot of the mystery and breaks down the barriers to learning.
• Referencing
  • This is mostly related to wood working and design. The principle is that you use one component to provide information about another - e.g. rather than try and measure the width of a beam accurately and then use a ruler to draw a line - why not just use the first piece as a guide? Need a double width - use two pieces. Not a very good explanation - will try again later.
• Pyramid principle / structured thinking
• Avoid addictions
  • I’m not talking about the usual suspects or middle-class addicitions (although these don’t help) - I’m talking about anything that results in disabling behaviour. There are lots of things in life that give you a ‘fix’. Whilst this isn’t a bad thing, if you are not careful you end up just going after the fix and losing sight of other things. Again, I’m not talking about serious issues like gambling addiction or obsessive compulsive cleaning - but it is worth occasionally checking yourself for possible addictions / meme infections that result in limiting attitudes.
• Switch Belbin Roles
  • Don’t get stuck in a rut being a ‘resource investigator’ occasionally you need to be a ‘completer / finisher’.
• GTD Principles
  • Get things out of your head and into a todo list system of some kind. Don’t get trapped spending all your time managing / making the system (I am guilty of this with todotxt. I now use Todoist and would recommend the premium version to give full mobile support.
• A-B testing / hypothesis testing / scientific method
  • If you want to fix something or make a decision between two similar things - don’t mess about it works.