VOLUME: 10 SECTION: Maker WORD COUNT: 1400 PAGE COUNT: 3 FACT-CHECK NOTES: HED: Fail Early! Fail Often! DEK: A mental toolkit to sharpen your skills BYLINE: By Tom Jennings EMAIL CONTACT: tomj@wps.com PHONE: BIO: NOTES ON IMAGES: PHOTOGRAPH CREDIT: OTHER NOTES: BODY: No one talks of failure as anything but shameful; this is wrongheaded and foolish. Mistakes are synonymous with learning. Failing is unavoidable. Making is a process, not an end. It is true that deep experience helps avoid problems, but mainly it gives you mental tools with which to solve inevitable problems when they come up. It all begins with a mental tool box, filled with useful items you can't buy, but can only obtain through the act of failing again and again. Here are mine. TOOL: The Dorkifier You may think that in order to look cool to your peers, you must never look foolish. Abandon this. Cool is precisely the opposite of pursuing a project that taxes your brain and body, and might not even work! Fear of looking like a dork ("you're building a what?") stops a lot of people. Give up any thought of looking good, and instead make good. CONCLUSION: Embrace dorkiness! TOOL: The Troubleshooter Since roadblocks and failures are a given, how to proceed? This is the key to all project making: troubleshooting; problem solving; debugging. Don't freak out. Become methodical, or contemplative, or go get a beer. You need your brain in its best working order. Troubleshooting really means: what do I have to learn to resolve this problem? This is true if the problem is a dead motor or using glow-in-the-dark paint; you read, Google, practice, experiment. Bob Pease, god-king-emperor of analog electronics and author of TROUBLESHOOTING ANALOG CIRCUITS, asks: "Did it ever work right? What symptoms tell you it's not working right? When did it stop working, or start working badly? What other symptoms showed up just before, after, or during the failure?" CONCLUSION: Problem solving is the universal solvent. TOOL: The Perspective Rotator Sometimes "failures" are really success. Really. I use a very temperamental chemical process to make deep-etched metal panels. It's very flaky, and perfection is nearly impossible. But I soon realized that the flaws and corrosion had beauty in themselves; and actually improved some of my artwork: [photo or model3 or 31] CONCLUSION: Making is process; adapt! TOOL: The Opportunity Multiplier Sometimes failures really are simply failures. Do not give up, for there is always another project. Always! For every successful projects, there are ten ruined hulks to go in the junk box. CONCLUSION: There is an infinity of projects. TOOL: The Autopsy Kit You may battle some Device or Technique, swearing, sleepless, your spousal unit calling you to bed, you too bitter to do anything but stew in your juices after you realize that you cannot affix Part A to Part B until you have first affixed Part B to Part A... or more subtly, It Will Never Look Right. Despair, certainly, but do not Give Up. When you have cooled, do a Post Mortem. Imagine an autopsy on a TV cop show. A good post mortem is in asking the right questions: not so much "what's wrong with this thing?" as "Why can't I fix it?". Mistakes and failures don't make you a bad person. Resist the Western good/bad fail/succeed binary. Fear of failure can devolve into macho; one antidote is Dork. Last and not least, write down problems and failures! Bob Pease quotes Milligan's Law: "If you notice anything funny, record the amount of funny." You'll be amazed how useful this will be later. [photo of mobius radio] CONCLUSION: Do post mortems; take notes. TOOL: The Persistence Enhancer Once you start failing on a regular basis, you'll learn the value of persistence. If your project is a challenge, you will have problems. It's unreasonable to expect quick results, ever. If you have to stay up all night, so be it. It might take you a day, week month or year to gain the skill(s) to complete something. CONCLUSION: Persist! AVOIDING UNFRUITFUL FAILURES While failure isn't necessarily a bad thing, there's no reason to invite it into your life for There are two kinds of failures: meaningful ones that add more tools to your mental toolbox (see above), and irritating ones that threaten to damp your enthusiasm and interest. To prevent the later flavor of failure, here are a few things you can do: 1. Get out of a Rut Makers are generalists, with a broad range of skills. As a generalist you will find that your skills and brainpower in other areas improves when you learn a new skill. Doing one task for too long leads to mental fatigue: your brain digests experiences once you stop doing them. Those two facts synergize. Wrote code for two days straight? Do some gardening! A long day of woodcarving? Do some writing! Achieve balance by practicing extremes. (My most common pairing is software and electronics vs. automobiles and gardening.) Hanging out with animals is an excellent grounding experience. CONCLUSION: ... Specialization is for insects. (to paraphrase Robert Heinlein) 2. Collect a Critical Mass of Junk The truly wise have deep and rich junk boxes; a fistful of choice tidbits in a shoebox under your bed or an airplane hanger with kilotons on ceiling-high racks. [photo of Sellam's junk] There is a cultural element to junk collecting. Some relish a yard full of old car parts (that's me). At the university where I work we had a field trip to a local industrial surplus store [Apex] and one young student from a non-Euro culture was visibly disturbed to see professor, staff and students gleefully climbing on filthy, wobbly piles of junk (treasure). [photo of radio] Junk-collecting is, to me, a discipline; it requires physical and mental effort. Will this (random) thing help me in my project, or am I mesmerized by this Shiny Bauble's Beauty? Does it fit? Can it be made to fit? Can I adjust my project/path/goal to accommodate it? Does it suit my aesthetics? My politics? Can I afford it? Can I afford to pass it up? I work best when my junk is distilled to exquisite perfection. I have more space than many people, but hardly infinite; when I bring something home, something else must go. I have been doing this for over 20 years. The result is that nearly none of my junk is, well, junk, at least not to me. Remember what I said about being a dork? CONCLUSION: Good junk is good. 3: Seek out the old school engineers Never ask engineers how to build things, unless they are old people. Today's engineers sit in cubicles and type on keyboards. Old People actually built things, like designed an amplifier, chose the parts, made the cabinet, wired it, and then sat back and listened to it. Today, young engineers will snicker at your hare-brained projects. But engineers are not stupid; it's just that engineering is not craft. Fordism removed skilled craft from capitalist projects a century ago. Engineers are taught to engineer, not to build. When you design a circuit for your project, you will likely make one, or a few, of them. Commercial products produced in the millions are engineered for lowest possible cost, and fewest returns to stores by customers. Ten more cents worth of copper matters when you make 50,000,000 iPods. Ten feet of extra copper wire matters not at all when you are making a Tesla Coil to ruin your neighbor's TV reception. The craft of electronics requires a different set of techniques than engineering does. Clearly the underlying physics of electronics is the same. The same is true in all skill areas. CONCLUSION: Craft is not engineering. 4. One Step At A Time You should challenge one or two skill areas in a project. If you know how to do electronics and PIC programming, say, then go make that mechanical robot arm. But if you've never done electronics or programming before that might be a foolish project; build a simple electronics kit first. Remember, making is a process! When (not "if") you are a neophyte in some skill it's hard to know how to begin. I have decades of experience in electronics, software and metal working, but no idea how to use plaster and model railroad materials. But my experience in other areas gave me confidence to ask stupid questions at the model store, buy stuff to experiment with, etc. Now I have the leftovers on the shelf for future projects, and the beginnings of a new skill! CONCLUSION: Be reasonable! 5. Plan Ahead I'm shocked when I see people start projects without the slightest bit of written/drawn visualization. Art-trained people are better at this, keeping notebooks filled with scribbles, notes, and drawings. These are critical thinking tools. They are also communication tools; others cannot read your mind; if you cannot document your ideas no one will understand you. And chances are, a few years from now neither will you. Computers are often very poor tools for this; you were warned. CONCLUSION: Write! Draw! Document! 6. Find Inspiration in Everything You Do Sometimes the urge to do something hits me, and must be satisfied, and no current project is convenient. The solution? Putter! Organize your car parts. Unshelf/reshelf all the paper tape gear. Peruse obsolete catalogs. Put another coat of shellac on that radio. All of these things are inspiring and worthwhile. You might even rediscover some forgotten artifact and embark on a new project! CONCLUSION: Puttering is good.