Made by Hand – My Notes on Craft & Movements
Geoff turned me on to this remarkable series called “Made by Hand”, a Brooklyn-based film series covering the stories behind handmade objects and the people behind them.
The second short film in the series, follows knifemaker Joel Bukiewicz through his personal journey of becoming a craftsman. Like Geoff, I identified strongly with Joel’s story and took notes on a few themes that stood out to me.
“It doesn’t cost much to start – just time”
I’m a devout bootstrapper, for a lot of reasons including of my relationship with money. It’s not that I don’t have big ideas – believe me, I do – but I know that most of the time I can start with very, very little investment of cash and just a smart investment of my time.
“Cut yourself, burn yourself, fuck stuff up, you never make that mistake again”
While I’ve only bled once or twice for my work, I’ve felt the pain of a mistake. Mistakes are part of the learning process, so long as you’re learning from them and seeing the opportunity on the other side of the mistake.
“Once you become competent, maybe you have it in you to become an artist. Maybe you don’t. Mastery is the 10,000 hours it takes to get to day one. “
I’m still working on my 10,000 hours.
“…studios full of people just…doing shit that they loved to do. I didn’t realize that I could have a community – [...] it was like somebody turned the lights on.”
If it takes 10,000+ hours, why would you choose to do it alone once you knew there was an alternative?
The importance of a catalyst (Photographer for Edible Brooklyn)
Joel mentions the editor of Edible Brooklyn being the human catalyst for introducing him to the world outside his own door. Every success story contains this chapter. Every. Single. One. Who’s your catalyst? Who could you be a catalyst for?
“The currency is really rich in community [...] in friendships, doing what you want, quality of life.”
“Independence” isn’t much worth the effort if you’re doing it by yourself. Success doesn’t start – or stop – with wealth.
Being rich alone is still being alone.
“More than a community – a movement.”
It’s interesting to hear Joel describe a movement as another layer above “community”. It’s something I’ve said before but have always struggled to describe or qualify.
In Joel’s description, a “movement” describes larger changes that result in the converging of consumer & producer ecosystems. The textbooks define a “movement” as a coordinated group action towards a cause, but I don’t know if it’s always that deliberate.
“If there’s a movement, it’s in the future.”
This sentence was extremely resonant for me. In it’s essence, the idea that we’re not able to see these convergences around us as they’re happening…but we can see that they’re likely to happen.
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CTFD and JFDI
It seems that my JFDI tattoo has been getting around lately. It’s certainly become an emblem for some, and a battle cry for others. I really love this complimentary acronym: CTFD.
Calm the fuck down. Just fucking do it.
I’ve never considered myself a “risk taker”. I don’t like risks. I don’t like feeling out of control.
I do like making things up as I go. I do like looking for patterns, for possibilities. Given a choice between two things, my favorite option is almost always going to be “hidden option c”.
While CTFD and JFDI don’t just apply to big decisions, this post is a great reminder that being in control of how we react to risks is one of the most important skills we can hone.
These 4 tips are extremely useful for even the smallest decisions, but only become more important as the size of your decisions and risks increases:
1. Don’t just focus on the downside; understand the opportunity.
In almost all cases, there’s only a finite number of bad things that can happen actually happen. It’s your job to consider that finite number of bad things and mitigate them. Not stop them, but make a concerted effort to keep them from happening. In the end, you can’t always stop something from happening…but being so focused on stopping something bad from happening might be keeping something of relative greater good from happening.
So you need to consider the infinite number of good things that can happen.
Again, so many great things are stopped from happening in the first place because someone is concerned about a bad thing that hasn’t even happened yet.
2. Understand that you will shape the outcome.
Many times, people avoid risk taking because they feel like the outcome is out of their hands. That’s usually because the outcome they’ve envisioned is too big, too distant, and too many steps away.
Very few outcomes happen “in a flash”. They’re a build. They’re a series of decisions. Usually a series of very small, incremental decisions.
If you stay aware of the long term desired outcome, but only focus on the next step and the decision in front of you, you’ve got a better chance of shaping the outcome of the small decision – the small risk.
There’s also almost always more than one path to your long term goal. Just because you don’t like the risk of one step doesn’t mean you’ll never reach the finish line. Look for other options. Think of it like trying to find the door that leads to the next hallway with the most doors instead of just trying to find the first door that opens.
Sometimes, the path of least resistance is a dead end. That doesn’t mean the path of second least resistance is.
3. Know who you can rely on.
It’s trite to say “your team matters”, but it really does. Find allies. Find teammates. But also find mentors.
You’re likely to find a lot of people who will be interested in working with you – but not all of them will be good collaborators.
True collaborators are like partners. They give of themselves to the goal because they share the same goal. Even when your opinions differ, your egos matter less than the outcome of the goal.
Don’t be afraid to remove someone from your team roster if you aren’t confident that you can count on them.
4. Stick with it.
Quit being an action junkie. JFDI isn’t “Just Fucking Do Everything” or “Just Fucking Do Anything”. Be thoughtful about how your time is spent because you’re in this for the long haul.
The first 3 months of JFDI feel different from the first 2 years of JFDI which feel different from the first 4 years of JFDI.
JFDI isn’t a singular action. It’s a different way of considering what’s in front of you.
Be patient. Stay humble. Play the long game.
p.s. Sorry about all the swearing, mom.
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5 Lessons Companies can Learn from Coworking
I got to meet and hang out with part of the team behind Parisian Mutinerie, the “Brothers van den Broek” – Eric, William, and Antoine – at the Coworking Europe Conference a couple of weeks back.
Eric’s presentation during day one of the event was one of my personal favorites, and I love that he’s turned it into a motion graphics video to share. Enjoy.
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Coworking & Citizenship
From a new piece in Flying Kite today:
Indyhall has also provided Hillman with a fresh sense of belonging in his longtime home. “There is no identity within citizenship for me,” he explains. “The old way was to pick up trash, vote, pay your taxes. I think there’s a level of involvement that people crave, that’s why things like Indyhall work.”
Those efforts radiate out into the larger community. “[Members] want to be good citizens of Indyhall,” says Hillman. “The sneak attack is that Indyhall is a good citizen of Philadelphia because we’re helping bring people together, helping new businesses form and helping produce things. By being a good citizen of Indyhall they’re being a good citizen of Philadelphia.”
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The Starfish vs. The Long Tail
Sometimes I feel like Seth Godin is peeking over my shoulder or into my brain when he writes posts like this one.
The starfish reference is different from the one we talk about in coworking, but it’s no less relevant. For those unfamiliar with “the long tail” theory, check this out.
The key point of the essay should sound familiar, though:
If you’re a starfish, then, don’t sign up with the long tail guys. Build your own universe, your own permission asset. Find a tribe, lead it, connect with it, become the short head, the one and only, the one that we’d miss if you were gone.
The long tail is for organizations that own warehouses.
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