July 7, 2023 • 49 mins
Derek "2023" Young and Darren "2023" Moser are back as their spring calms down and a Makers Summer begins. Will we return monthly? Only time will tell.
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(00:03):
Welcome to the nerd Party. Welcometo the Maker's Method podcast here on the
Nerrik Party Network. I'm your host, Darren Moser aka Doctor sci Fi,
and I'm joined as always by DerekYoung of Vano Props. This month,
(00:24):
we wanted to talk about staying motivated, you know, like staying motivated to
continue your podcast that you haven't recordedsince January. We haven't recorded since January.
Yah, Yes, it's been abusy month. I think at this
stage we're going to try to shiftto maybe monthly episodes. But I'm I'm
(00:46):
still have things to say. Idon't feel our podcast is dead. It's
just gone into a slump. Butthere's always more to talk about in the
maker community, for sure, alwaysalways. And I think some of this
is kind of my fault. Itook on a rather large project recently that
swallowed up all of my time.So and then it rained every day you
(01:10):
wanted to paint, right, Itseemed to happen for like a month.
Yeah, in California that I shouldwhere it never rains. No, it's
been a very wet early year.Yeah, and just out of nowhere,
and well, I mean, Iguess I might as well just get right
(01:34):
to the point. In this episodeof the podcast, we will be talking
about staying motivated, which is challenging. It is very challenging and particularly challenging
when mother nature is working against you. But for most of us, this
is a very real problem that weall deal with, and we thought,
(01:57):
what better way to get back into the swing of things after not being
motivated to record new episodes of thepodcast than to talk about motivation, or
in our case, the lack thereof. It's very on brand for us well,
and I think there's also a bigcomponent of motivation when you're kind of
(02:19):
a part time maker, like thisisn't at least for me, this isn't
my full time job. This isfun on the side projects and life gets
busy sometimes and it's hard to Imean, I usually have a window between
eight pm and midnight, and Idon't necessarily work my best at that window,
but that's what I got. Somotivating in not your best headspace is
(02:45):
also challenging. Yeah, And youknow, to be honest, as someone
who is a full time maker,it's challenging to stay motivated. I mean,
we all experienced this in different waysthroughout our day to day life.
You know, there are times whenI can remember going into work back when
(03:05):
I used to work a regular corporatejob where I just didn't have the motivation
to do any of the work thatI needed to do that day. But
that doesn't change when you become yourown boss, right, If for anything,
it kind of gets a little bitworse because you don't have someone above
you telling you that you need toget it in gear and get back,
(03:30):
or you may not have a teamto spread the load. It's like,
I mean, what do they say, if you love what you do,
you won't work a day in yourlife. And it's like, but instead,
if you work for yourself, you'llwork every single day of your life,
you know, oh for sure?For sure? Yeah, the things
they don't tell you when you startyour own business, you'll spend about ten
(03:51):
percent of your time doing the thingthat you started doing the business for,
and the rest of it will becustomer service and accounting. Why why didn't
you give me a five star?And Etsy, what were you unsatisfied?
No? Just four stars of whatI give? Oh, okay, thank
you. That doesn't help as muchas you think, but yes, anyway,
(04:15):
Yeah, not to scratch on thatsort of spot. But yeah,
I mean, well, since we'rehere, I don't understand the I never
give five stars people. If that'syour thing, cool, whatever, But
just from from this side of thetable, I don't understand that at all.
I mean maybe as a buyer andnot as a seller. People don't
(04:38):
realize that Etsy, it's five isgood and everything below that is I had
an issue. It's not three isaverage and good and five that's outstanding.
You know, this isn't an endof the year exceed expectation balancing it.
You know, if if it cameand it was what you thought and it
was shipped well and packaged and undamnagand no issues, that's five or it
(05:02):
should be. Yeah, it's theTalladega Nights, Ricky Bobby. If you're
not first, you're last, mentalityright, And you know again, I've
had buyers who will give a fouror something like that, and I'll usually
reach out to them and kind ofhave a little speel of like, oh,
(05:25):
I'm sorry this didn't meet your expectations, or kind of frame it like
is there anything else that I coulddo? And most of the time they're
like, oh no, everything wasfine, And then I'll kind of do
a secondary message of like, oh, well, you know the way that
Etsy is balanced is five is youknow, is everything was fine if you
wouldn't mind adjusting that. And I'vehad people adjusted up because they just didn't
(05:48):
realize. I don't think I've gottenas it happened very often, but I
don't usually get any pushback if Iend up getting to that point where I
need to explain it, or sometimesI'll just do the first half where I'm
saying I'm kind of refocusing the questionof is there an issue, and when
they're like, oh, yeah,no, there's no issue. Oh yeah,
I can adjust that, you know, but it's all on a per
(06:10):
case by case basis. Really yeah. Yeah, so motivation, yes,
let's get back on. Yeah,it's even hard to stay motivated to talk
about this topic because it is sucha sore spot. It is for me,
particularly after a large project. Butit is extremely important to stay motivated
(06:41):
in your craft or in this case, in your hobby or you know,
however it is that you sort ofidentify within sort of being a maker.
But I was curious, like,is there something that you do or try
to do that is like the silverbullet bolt of lightning? Oh Man,
(07:08):
if I had found that, Iwould let you know. But I do
have. I'll say coping mechanisms.That's as good as I can get.
I mean, that works for me. I will take some coping mechanisms because
honestly, as someone who's been doingthis for a while, you're right,
there is no shortcut to the finishline of finding motivation. Again, yeah,
(07:30):
I mean. One thing that comesto mind is I often have to
push myself out of the mindset ofI need a big chunk of time to
get anything done. I need thewhole afternoon this Saturday, I need a
whole day off work or a wholevacation day, or I can't get anything
done when instead I try to livein the accomplishment of I got one thing
(07:59):
done tonight, Like, yeah,I had three hours that I could have
worked on something, but I wastired, or I maybe was unwinding with
a video game or a movie,which again are totally fine, like I'm
not on the clock. I canchoose to do that with my time.
But I also like yesterday, allI did was I had a bunch of
(08:22):
foam in different layers that I hadbought, and I made sure I unrolled
it and put it in the foamspot so that it could kind of flatten
itself out so the next time Ineed it, it'll be ready to go.
And I'm going to call that awin because it's progressed to that next
step that I need it when Iwant to start. Now, what I
(08:43):
wanted to accomplish that day was completelyclearing off my workbench and starting on a
new foot for K twoso, butI instead did like step one instead of
step one through ten. But soI guess that is what I'm saying is
accepting the motivation. If it's literallyjust moving that not goalposts, but moving
(09:09):
the ball one step, Yeah,that's still an accomplishment, it really is.
Yeah. I fall victim to thatsame kind of mindset where if it
feels like I can only do asmall percentage of the work, it's very
difficult to kind of muster up thatmomentum to do anything. And often what
(09:41):
I find kind of helps me isto do something unrelated but sort of adjacent
in a way. So like let'ssay I have something that I need to
paint, or a part that needsto get sanded, or you know,
something along those lines. There's alwayssomething that needs to be sanded. Yes,
(10:05):
what I may do is clean upan area of my workbench or something
around the shop that's just sort ofbeen like in the way, and by
doing that, I make the processof doing the other work a little less
painful. So like one of thebig ones for me. And it's like
(10:31):
my wife can tell when I'm kindof in that headspace if I'm working,
if i'm cutting anything on the laser, usually I'll have a lot of scrap
left over, and because of itssize, there's really no good way to
store it. It's like bigger thanyour average trash can. It's typically rectangular
(10:56):
and can be a little squirrely towork with, and so I end up
just kind of stacking it on thefloor. Yeah, I have a huge
broken downs, you know, andit kind of gets in the way of
everything. So what I'll do isI'll just go grab a trash bag and
(11:20):
I'll load all of that stuff inthere. And typically once I've done that,
I'll look to the trash bend andgo, Okay, well, clearly
this needs to be empty too,and then I will empty that And by
just removing those two things from mypath, it makes the actual task feel
(11:41):
a little less daunting because now I'mnot having to like step over something or
kick something out of the way,or you know, you're in the trash
can three times because it keeps fallingout because there's too much stuff in there
or whatever, Hey, who puta camera in my shop? You know
that happens. Well, you're removingthe friction of getting to actually doing what
(12:05):
you want to do, right sothat next time you have a moment to
sit down, it's not like,oh, but I still got to take
that trash out. Nope, that'sdone. I mean, as we all
talk about motivation, so much ofit is just headspace. It really is.
I mean, it's all there.And I all often joke about you
(12:26):
know, future Darren and pass Darren, like that's future Darren's problem to figure
out it. Oh, thank you, past Darren. That was really smart
thinking. But honestly, I thinkthere's something to that of Sometimes I've found
it helps me to think of myfuture self as a co worker, like,
(12:46):
oh, what you know, ifI'm working on a team, which
I'm not, it's just me.So motivation is again very difficult sometimes when
it's just you. But if Ithink of my future self for tomorrow as
a co worker. Oh, likeyou said, like taking out the trash
or leaving a clean workspace or puttingthings away. Yeah, you're doing it
(13:07):
for yourself, but you're kind ofdoing it for your future self, and
you can and when you get tothat future self, you can look back
and be like, oh, youknow, thank you passing me for doing
that, because it did take awaythat friction or make it easier. And
I guess, you know, whateverit takes to kind of wrangle mental gymnastics
that in your mind, but ifit helps, it helps. Yeah.
(13:31):
Yeah, I kind of always lookat it as sort of tricking myself into
a kind of into positive thinking,right, Like nobody thinks positively all the
time. It's a muscle that youhave to train, And this for me
is like going to the gym forthat like motivation muscle, because now I've
(13:58):
clear out a problem to make spacefor doing the task at hand, and
I just have to like accept thefact that, well, you know,
I've gotten rid of the friction,so there's really no reason for me to
not do this work. I thinkanother you know, motivation. You know,
(14:24):
we've always talked about deadlines or somesort of anchor point in the future.
Often it'll be a convention, orit'll be you know, something else
that you want to do. Ihave a farther out anchor point that disappeared
this year. I was planning ongoing to Silicon in October up in the
Bay Area. Really enjoyed my timethere last year, and I was going
(14:48):
to bring K two. So I'mlike, okay, that's that's a long
enough time to do what I wantwith K two, like get all the
little things done. But unfortunately we'renot exactly hundred percent or why, but
it is not going to happen thisyear. They've canceled the convention, and
so you know, I was verysaddened by that, but I also had
to kind of, you know,rebalance that whole project in my mind because
(15:15):
I'm like, okay, well,what other deadline can I give myself around
that time of the year. Itmight be La Comic Con that's in early
December, or maybe fan X orsomething else. Not that it has to
be a convention, but something that'sunmovable where you're either going to hit it
or you're not. It can bea motivation because you know, I have
(15:39):
a right there on my home screen, I have a countdown that goes till
the next whatever, and it sayshow many days I have left, and
that you know, maybe it's punishment, maybe it's motivation, maybe it's both,
but it you know, that canhelp though having that deadline, maybe
you'll get into concrunch mode. Maybeyou won't, but it can help you
(16:02):
kind of feel like, Okay,I'm at the early stage, so I'm
at the figure out what's working,and then a little later it's like,
okay, I need to make sureeverything's ordered because shipping times start to become
an issue. And then get alittle closer and you're like, now I
have to make sure everything's painted bynow because I'm losing that paint window.
(16:23):
Like there's kind of those dominoes,those milestones you have to hit or it
gets really crunchy really fast. Yeah. Also, I love that you think
that con crunch is an option.I mean, we'll get there. It's
a natural part of the cycle atthe end of that window. But future
(16:45):
Darren's going to be very happy withall the progress I did before Cohn Crunch
if I can. Yeah. Yeah, deadlines are definitely a good motivator.
I know. The other thing thatI find is sometimes helpful. Not always,
but sometimes is to kind of getlost in some of the minutia of
(17:11):
the project. You know, it'skind of unrelated, and I'm going to
go on a little tangent, soeverybody buckle. And I really enjoy watching
movies like The Da Vinci Code orNational Treasure. I love the idea of
(17:34):
going on a treasure hunt of sorts. And when I'm working on a project,
as I've said many times before onthis podcast, one of my favorite
parts of it is digging into allof the ridiculously unimportant details of a project,
(17:56):
the stuff that will never be seenbut lives rent free in my head.
And so if I'm feeling like I'vekind of lost a little gas behind
a project, I'll take a littlebit of time and go on a treasure
hunt to try and learn something aboutthat project that I may not have known
(18:22):
before, or to maybe like diga little bit deeper about something that I
had found out that I thought wasinteresting really unimportant to the finished product.
But it is the type of thingthat just sort of like, like,
what's your appetite for wanting to knowmore about something and then being able to
(18:48):
take that information and kind of unleashit on the project, and so it's
sort of a it's like power upfor me to kind of look at it
as like, there's more fuel forthis project because I know something different about
it that I didn't know before.Yeah, I think for me, because
(19:12):
I definitely know I spend a disproportionateamount of time in that early R and
D phase. So I always havemy notebook, and you know, if
I if I feel like I can'treally make anything tonight or whatever, I'll
usually just pull that out and justkind of not doodle, but just kind
(19:34):
of think, like, oh,what's something I can think about and draw
a little sketch and turn it overin my mind and maybe come up with
a thought or a thing. AndI feel more productive because I feel like,
Okay, that was something that probablyneeded to be designed and needed to
be thought about, and now I'vespent that time and that time has been
recorded instead of like, yeah,maybe in the future if I hadn't done
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this, I wouldn't have needed tothink about it because it would have just
come together. But it's it's progress, it's hours logged, as it were.
And for the most part in myprojects, I'll yeah, I'll spend
probably at least a good sixty seventypercent of the beginning of a project window
just thinking and and then when Ido pull the trigger on like making the
(20:25):
things. It not that it alwaysworks, but I find that more often
than not, I've thought around alot of the issues I would have had
if I was just kind of tinkeringevery night or just seeing what six now
that doesn't. That method may notwork for everybody, but I found that
(20:45):
I love that R and D phase. I mean, we've talked about it
before, but just turning the problemover and around and thinking, yeah,
it's it's a that can help.Again, you feel motivated in the fact
that an hour spent in R andD is not an hour wasted. It's
definitely an hour invested in your project, for sure. I'llways talk about running
(21:12):
things in your head. You justdescribe how I spent the last week.
So I just got back from Ithought you on vacation for the last week,
I was that's the problem. Iwent to Paris with my wife,
and Paris is nine hours ahead ofLos Angeles, Okay, so we were
(21:38):
wide awake in the middle of thenight, and despite my best efforts to
try and get on that sleep scheduleand really never shifted work at it.
I found myself kind of just layingin bed, staring at the ceiling,
problem solving in my head for projectsthat I hadn't even started yet. I
(22:06):
feel like it was a good useof my time. Though it didn't require
paper, pencils, light, it'snothing. It was literally just me.
You went into your mind palace andbuilt a project. Yeah. And ironically,
after sort of waking up air quotesthe following morning, after spending I
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don't know, probably a solid fouror five hours thinking about this because I
couldn't fall asleep, and then Igot back to Los Angeles and started to
put together this thing that I hadmade up in my head, only to
realize that I had overcomplicated. You'relike, wait, step two is where
(22:57):
I would have been done, notforty five. Okay, Okay, yeah,
Yeah. Sometimes it's easier to builda platform than it is to build
an armature. Literally what it camedown to. I'm so to give a
bit more context to my insomnia planning. There's the Midsummer Scream, Horror and
(23:26):
Halloween Convention coming up in July,and I've been asked again to do workshop
classes there, and every year thatI do it, I like to try
and come up with something different becauseI've found overdoing it for six or seven
(23:47):
years, that a lot of thepeople who take the workshops are repeat students.
They made something the year before,They've taken the stuff they've learned and
gone home and made a bunch ofstuff, and now they want to learn
the next step and whatnot. Solong story short, I was trying to
(24:10):
come up with a really cost effectivewater proof or at least water resistant mechanism
to make moving prop for Halloween,and it just bounced it around in my
head for hours, thinking that Ineeded to make this armature kind of thing.
(24:38):
And then when I got back tomy shop this past week and started
to gather all of the miscellaneous partsfor the project, I realized that that
was like completely overengineered for no goodreason other than like, that's just where
my thoughts had taken me in themiddle of the night. The upside is
(25:03):
is that you know, I've realizedthis having stared at it for a couple
of days now, and then inthe end I think it will be easier.
But yeah, yeah, but sometimesI mean again, it's not time
(25:25):
wasted. It's you know, evenbecause even if you didn't use what you
had spent four hours thinking about,you were exercising that muscle for four hours.
And absolutely that totally is worth everyevery rep of the mind. Yeah.
Well, and it's not like Ihad a lot of other options of
(25:48):
things to do with my time either, true, very true. Yeah,
No, I've Yeah, my myshop is an absolute mess right now.
So I'm trying to mote myself that, you know, that early step of
cleaning and putting things away, andyou know, I feel like I have
the space. I just need toorganize it better. But I think I
(26:11):
figured, you know, this isa slight tangent, but you went on
one earlier, so I'm going togo on one now. But they're welcoming
here as far as they are.But I've always so I've been listening a
lot to Every Tools a Hammer,Adam Savage's book, and I have it
(26:34):
on audio book and it's he readsit and it's a really it's a really
great book. If you haven't readit or listened to it, I highly
recommend it. It's just good forgetting the juices going and kind of thinking
about stuff. And he's talking abouthis whole first order of retrieval system and
the evolution of the cave and allthis stuff, and I'm like, I
am nowhere near thinking that deep abouthow I have my space, But I've
(26:59):
been starting to think about it alittle bit of like like, I have
lots of pictures and art and postersup, but that's not space that could
be used for tools, you know. And you know, I have a
whole wall that looks like the DeathStar, which is awesome, but that's
not usable wall space. So I'vebeen trying to think about how do I
work and kind of realizing I'm spendingall this time thinking about what I could
(27:26):
do, when what I really shouldjust turn the question around and be like,
well what am I doing now andhow can I enhance that? And
I'm thinking, okay, Well,often I'm making things or I have multiple
projects going, and I'll have likeI have a big stack of twelve by
nineteen inch MDF that I'll often usein the laser and so I've been I
(27:48):
mean a huge stack because I'll geta whole four bite sheet and cut it
down into blanks, and so that'llbe my go to where I'll just grab
one and put things that have beenneed to be painted or need to be
you know, sanded. And eachone of those is kind of a kind
of like a little platter of likea piece of a project, you know,
(28:10):
kind of keeps it all contained.But the problem is then I run
out of flat workspace very quickly becauseI have all these little platters everywhere.
And so I finally figured out whatI need to get, and I don't
think it'll cost that much. I'mgonna get it used at a local bakery
supply store. But I am goingto get a sheet pan rack. So
(28:40):
this is a if you've never beenbaking. They're like eighteen inches by twenty
six inches and they just have likea standard sheet pan, and I think
they have up to I think it'slike fifteen ten to fifteen slots in this,
(29:00):
you know, it's on wheels.It's like an aluminum frame. So
I could get one of those usedfor like one hundred bucks or maybe less
seventy five hundred bucks. And Ifound a place with used sheet pans for
like three fifty a pop, whichis fairly cheap. So I'm just gonna
get one of those, and ifI ever need to get a second,
(29:22):
I could but start with one andjust get a whole stack of sheet pans.
And what's great again about it isif I have a project, because
that's how my mind works, It'sin these little kind of buckets, and
so it's like this is the paintingproject, and this is the circuit assembly
project. And so I think havingeach of those on one of these sheet
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pans, and if they're tall,you know, the materials are higher,
just don't put anything in the slotsabove it. Like, it's not like
everything has to be flat packed.It can. But so I really am
excited. I mean, I needto find a way to get to this
place that's only open between like nineand four on weekdays, which you know
(30:07):
is difficult. Yeah, but soit's not super pressing. I don't need
to do it like this weekend.But all that to say, I'm I
got really excited when I figured outthat obviously not designed for a maker space,
but could work well for me becauseI already think like that in my
(30:27):
space. It's just not very streamlinedbecause I run out of vertical surfaces to
put these project plates on. Yeah, so I'm excited for that. I
think that could could work really welland a normal sheet pan. Again,
it's like it's fairly large, soit could fit a lot of things on
it each one. So I promiseI'm not starting a bakery if you see
(30:52):
that in the back of my webcamnext time. So, got it.
Yeah. The idea of being ableto gather all of the necessary parts in
one place is always very helpful.And I've found over the years, particularly
(31:15):
when dealing with anything where there's alot of small parts, is that like
go to your local box store orwhatever, or send Uncle Jeff your money
and get it on Amazon. Butlike the little three millimeter zip top bags
(31:38):
to keep all of your small partstogether, and they make them, you
know, tons of different sizes.But I've always found that doing stuff like
that just a keeps them all together, so that in the event that you
end up getting distracted and move onto another project because you've lost motive on
(32:00):
your first project, that never happens, but if it does, it at
least keeps them all together and inone place, which forever has been a
huge problem for me because I'll justwork on something and then I'll set it
down because you know, squirrel,and then we'll forget where I've put it,
(32:22):
which often leads to me either likemaking another one, buying another whatever.
But yeah, then when you whenyou do find the motivation to go
back and work on that thing again, it's all just right there. And
it's it's very much the sort ofmethod that you've described of like being able
(32:43):
to see everything in one central locationfor one particular project. It's almost like
you should make like a little hangtag for the front of each shelf so
that you can say what it is. Yeah. I was actually just thinking
about that because the other benefit ofthe sheet pan is it has a lip,
(33:04):
so it's less likely that things aregoing to fall off. And I
just realize I could probably three Dprint a little placard that will clip onto
the edge of a and has alittle you know, and I could even
heck, I could laser cut likemillamine, whatever the material is, but
I could laser cut that into smallbits so that I could whiteboard marker whatever
(33:28):
that is from that side. Butyeah, it's I mean, you know,
it is like we often have somany irons in the fire, but
our irons aren't single pieces of metal. They're like twenty pieces of to be
painted plastic or to be sanded materialand so being able to consolidate that into
(33:49):
a single movable spot. So I'mlike I said, hopefully sometime this month,
I'll be able to acquire that,but I'm I'm excited to because I've
actually feel like that's going to helpjust with the clutter and a lot of
those things, and you know,worst case, because I was this was
(34:12):
kind of coming about. Was iwas at Ikeia with my daughter and we
were looking for things for decorating herroom, and I'm always looking at the
you know, those little boxes orlittle bins or little trays, and they're
fairly cheap at Ikea. So I'mlike, oh, I could get like
twenty of them, but again,I just always felt like these were too
small or where am I going toput them? You know, now I
have twenty bin or I have twentytrays, but I have I didn't solve
(34:37):
my surface problem, and so Iheld off, and like you were saying,
go to the box store, goto the container store, and I'm
always trying to think of that thing. But until thinking of the baking rack,
I didn't have that other piece ofthe puzzle, which is, well
where did these go? And it'sa standard size, you can get them
(34:59):
used. I mean, if they'rea little rusty, I don't care.
I'm not going to bake on them. That's not that's not the point.
So no, And the ability tojust pull them off the rack and set
them down on your workbench and seeall of the things right there in front
of you is brilliant. It's it'skind of like I feel like people who
are into puzzle making, are notpuzzle making a puzzle assembly have kind of
(35:22):
a similar idea where they like buildtheir puzzles on a tray or a piece
of cardboard or something something, yeah, so that they can like pick it
up and take it somewhere else forstorage while they're not working on it.
But the ability to just say,like, here is the platform that I
will be working on to a degree, and then when I'm done working on
(35:46):
it, it can go, youknow, into a shelf and hang out
with all of the other projects they'reyou know, wherever they are in their
their process. It's actually a reallygreat idea. And if you don't have
space, I mean, it's atall rack, it's like seventy inches tall.
But they also sell half ones.But I'm gonna for I mean I
(36:09):
think it's like sixty five for ahalf one or one hundred for a full,
and I'm like, well, whynot just get the full? Like
I know, I'll use all ofthose slots for my projects. But if
you didn't have space, you couldget a half and then maybe build a
shelf or a table, a squaretable for the top of it if you
(36:30):
needed more surface space. So I'malways trying to balance, like, you
know, where do I keep mytools? You know, where do I
keep Like I don't have a myIt's funny as I evolved my making space,
I called the space stock in mygarage. Every once in a while,
(36:51):
when I've done kind of a majoroverhaul, I'll stand in the same
spot by the door and I'll doa panorama with my phone, and I
have like six or seven of themnow at this point that I could pull
up and look at and be like, oh, yeah, this is when
I had that over there, andthen oh yeah, this is when I
had that little extra table, andthen I took that away. And you
(37:12):
know, it's always evolving, Likeyou see those movies or videos where you
know they've gone into that custom garageand everything's all store, you know,
everything's all matching, and I'm like, that's the you know who. Nobody's
got time and money for that.You know, it's it's piecemeal at the
best. Yeah. Yeah, andyou know, kind of to loop back
(37:34):
to Adam Savage in the Cave,like he's been there for decades. Yeah,
and it's constantly in flux. He'salways figuring out, you know,
how he likes to work. Ohyeah, and that was the chapter that
really got me jibed as he wastalking about, you know, he had
(37:55):
this kind of bag, this medicinebag with all of his tools in it.
Eventually that failed because it didn't havehe had so much in it,
and he eventually finally realized that heneeded to He he didn't like drawers.
He wanted everything visible, and that'show he worked. And yeah, you
(38:15):
see any tested video in the Caveand it is like what did he call
it, like a visible cacophony ofjust stuff And some people can't work like
that. Everything's got to be youknow that they got to be Wasabi from
Big Hero six and everything is microlabeled in its slot. But obviously I
(38:37):
am fine having a bit of amess around it, doesn't you know,
I'm not having a panic attack inmy own workspace. I just need more
flat space to work on. Soby rack and stacking them, you know,
I think that will will help.And like you said, it's always
evolving, you know, until wemake it big and we can buy the
(38:58):
thirty five square foot whatever you know, which will still fill because it's just
a it's just going to happen toIt'll just have more tables full of stuff.
Yes, hands, it'll be fourby eight tables with butcher paper one
per project. Yeah. And speakingof which, I keep threatening myself to
(39:25):
to start a new project to builda butcher paper holder or like a dispenser,
like a role yeah, dispension,but like an under mount one for
the table that I film all myvideos on. So you just pull it
out, pull it over, pullit on, run a blade or something
(39:46):
through the end of it, andboom, boom boom. And I really
need to get on that thinking abouthaving all these four by eight tables,
and the minute you said it,I was like, and they'd have casters
and then well, yeah, you'veseen I'm sure you've seen those videos of
(40:06):
them, the four by eight andthere's like a lip on the wall and
you push it up against that andthen tip up it up into the wall
and then the legs fold flat.Now it looks cool. I would never
do that because I would never havea moment where I need to get rid
of a giant table like now.But granted I do have a couple of
(40:29):
four by eight like folding tables becausethere are times when I need a bigger
space, and so not having everythingbe permanent, even on casters, I
think is a good flexibility of thespace. Yeah, but I know what
you're saying, Yeah, four byeight and butcher paper. But again I
(40:50):
don't I know what you mean,but I think there's also a motivation component
in that as well, where it'seasy to go down that rabbit hole of
like, well, I can't reallystart this project because I haven't made the
Butcher paper dispenser for my four byeight sheet, and it feels like a
block And even though you don't needit to move forward, because your mind
(41:15):
has placed it in that order ofoperations ahead of your project, when you
could just roll it off and cutit right now. Yeah, like I've
done hundreds of hundreds of times.Yeah, yeah, it's you need a
one day build. You need tobe like I'm I'm gonna build it,
but it's only gonna I'm only gonnagive myself one day to do it,
(41:38):
so it's just done. Yeah,and maybe it's not raining that day,
or maybe it's on a raining daywhen you can't do anything else. It's
tough though, because I work outside, you know, So it's like I
don't really like to use power toolswhen it's raining. Well, yes,
(41:59):
that way, because I have likeextension chords running and not ideal, not
ideal, and more often than notthere's some painting element to the project that's
going to be inhibited by the weatherand whatever. But I digress. Yeah,
(42:22):
the thought of having one day buildwith perfect weather and and no blockers,
I will say this, it makesme appreciate when I see other people
able to just like knock out abuild in a day. That's true,
(42:43):
of course, the difference is andmore specifically, if we're talking about Adam
Savage, like he is inside ofa controlled environment where he's also had lots
of practice for sure, but likeyou know, he could show up at
six am, turn the lights on, get to work, and stay it
(43:04):
until midnight, right, and hislighting and sound and everything is exactly the
whole way through right for me,you know, I'm working outside, so
I'm like okay, And he'll bethe first to tell you when it's not
a one day build, he said. Many of his one day builds turned
into multi day builds. It's justkind of a term now, but yeah,
(43:25):
I only meant like, if it'sI think it's something you could accomplish
in a day to get it outof the way, so it's no longer
blocking motivation because it's just done.Yeah. I think there's there's quite a
few of those little projects that couldbe both the thing that prevents me from
(43:47):
doing the work and the thing thatmakes doing future work easier. Yep,
two subscribe being a maker in likeone sentence. Sure for sure. Well,
if you're in you know, I'mkind of curious if any of our
listeners, if we still have anyat this point since January. But if
(44:12):
you have any sort of motivation orthings that you do that make you feel
motivated or help you move through alack of motivation, you can definitely reach
us, you know, at theour contact form at the nerdparty dot com
or I think Twitter is also agreat way to connect with us, both
(44:34):
at doctors Hi Fi and vanas propsor Instagram, I know for both of
us, but I'd be curious ifyou reach out to us and let us
know how you go through motivation.Maybe it's listening to this podcast or other
maker podcasts and they could, youknow, just inspire the making making method.
(44:58):
But anything else you wanted to shareon on being on staying motivated,
Derek, I don't know. Imean, there's motivation, much like creativity,
kind of comes and goes, andI think if you wait it out
(45:19):
long enough, you will eventually findyourself feeling motivated again. I know for
me, when I really feel likeI've hit the wall on a project,
the only thing that's going to kindof shake everything up is for me to
just put it away. And that'sassuming that there's no deadline or any of
(45:43):
that nonsense. But sometimes just changingyour headspace doing something different kind of gives
you just that little bit of perspectiveto then step back into that project with
sort of renewed excitement for the workthat you're doing. And I think that's
(46:07):
completely acceptable. You know, likenobody says that as a maker you have
to like start a thing and workon it until it's done. You know,
like we create the rules for ourselves. Who works like that, start
and then finish until it is done. That's that's crazy talk. I mean,
(46:28):
I wish my brain worked sort oflinear like that. It really doesn't.
It's no, you know, allover the place. But I think
like if you can, if youcan train yourself to kind of find that
thing that distracts you long enough anddoesn't take away from like overall momentum,
(46:52):
there's nothing wrong with kind of usingthose things to cope with, you know,
the inevitable like burnout of a project. I think a lot of people
lose motivation on stuff because they getkind of burnt out about it, or
they they hit a roadblock something thatthey can't figure out, or you know,
whatever it may be. But it'slike totally cool to sort of take
(47:15):
step back, work on something else, go outside and go for a walk,
do something different, until you likehave that excitement for what you're working
on again. Because honestly, ifyou're not excited about it, like what's
the point. Like it's it's gotto nourish some part of your soul to
(47:42):
make any of it worthwhile. Well, And I mean I think you just
hit on it, like the excitementis that's a factor of motivation for sure.
I mean just like you could askyourself, well, why make a
instead of b you know, whymake things with the three D printer or
Star Wars or haunted mansion or whatever? You know. I mean, we
(48:06):
make that because we have the flexibilityin making pretty much what we want,
you know, for the most part. I mean obviously it's not all the
time. But yeah, I think, man, this is a good topic
because I mean, unpacking motivation.There's so many facets to it. There's
you know, the drive of theday. There's choosing what to make,
(48:28):
there's persevering, there's roadblocks, there'sbeing your own boss and self motivation.
And I think we've covered a lotof that tonight. It's an onion of
a topic, it is. It'smany layers of a three D print.
Painful dad joke. All right,Well, we thank you all for joining
(48:53):
us here on Maker's Method. Wedo promise to try to find that motivation
to come back with us monthly aswe talk just about making that what we're
working on. But I think it'seven more fun when we're able to kind
of unpack a cool topic like this, so we'll be back for sure in
(49:15):
June and again you can check usout on the nerd Party's website, which
is the nerdparty dot com. There'sa contact form there if you want to
reach out or, like we weresaying, on social media as well.
But yeah, but Derek's been alot of fun chatting with this topic and
(49:35):
we want to remind you all tokeep making
Welcome to the nerd Party. Welcometo the Maker's Method podcast here on the
Nerrik Party Network. I'm your host, Darren Moser aka Doctor sci Fi,
and I'm joined as always by DerekYoung of Vano Props. This month,
(00:24):
we wanted to talk about staying motivated, you know, like staying motivated to
continue your podcast that you haven't recordedsince January. We haven't recorded since January.
Yah, Yes, it's been abusy month. I think at this
stage we're going to try to shiftto maybe monthly episodes. But I'm I'm
(00:46):
still have things to say. Idon't feel our podcast is dead. It's
just gone into a slump. Butthere's always more to talk about in the
maker community, for sure, alwaysalways. And I think some of this
is kind of my fault. Itook on a rather large project recently that
swallowed up all of my time.So and then it rained every day you
(01:10):
wanted to paint, right, Itseemed to happen for like a month.
Yeah, in California that I shouldwhere it never rains. No, it's
been a very wet early year.Yeah, and just out of nowhere,
and well, I mean, Iguess I might as well just get right
(01:34):
to the point. In this episodeof the podcast, we will be talking
about staying motivated, which is challenging. It is very challenging and particularly challenging
when mother nature is working against you. But for most of us, this
is a very real problem that weall deal with, and we thought,
(01:57):
what better way to get back into the swing of things after not being
motivated to record new episodes of thepodcast than to talk about motivation, or
in our case, the lack thereof. It's very on brand for us well,
and I think there's also a bigcomponent of motivation when you're kind of
(02:19):
a part time maker, like thisisn't at least for me, this isn't
my full time job. This isfun on the side projects and life gets
busy sometimes and it's hard to Imean, I usually have a window between
eight pm and midnight, and Idon't necessarily work my best at that window,
but that's what I got. Somotivating in not your best headspace is
(02:45):
also challenging. Yeah, And youknow, to be honest, as someone
who is a full time maker,it's challenging to stay motivated. I mean,
we all experienced this in different waysthroughout our day to day life.
You know, there are times whenI can remember going into work back when
(03:05):
I used to work a regular corporatejob where I just didn't have the motivation
to do any of the work thatI needed to do that day. But
that doesn't change when you become yourown boss, right, If for anything,
it kind of gets a little bitworse because you don't have someone above
you telling you that you need toget it in gear and get back,
(03:30):
or you may not have a teamto spread the load. It's like,
I mean, what do they say, if you love what you do,
you won't work a day in yourlife. And it's like, but instead,
if you work for yourself, you'llwork every single day of your life,
you know, oh for sure?For sure? Yeah, the things
they don't tell you when you startyour own business, you'll spend about ten
(03:51):
percent of your time doing the thingthat you started doing the business for,
and the rest of it will becustomer service and accounting. Why why didn't
you give me a five star?And Etsy, what were you unsatisfied?
No? Just four stars of whatI give? Oh, okay, thank
you. That doesn't help as muchas you think, but yes, anyway,
(04:15):
Yeah, not to scratch on thatsort of spot. But yeah,
I mean, well, since we'rehere, I don't understand the I never
give five stars people. If that'syour thing, cool, whatever, But
just from from this side of thetable, I don't understand that at all.
I mean maybe as a buyer andnot as a seller. People don't
(04:38):
realize that Etsy, it's five isgood and everything below that is I had
an issue. It's not three isaverage and good and five that's outstanding.
You know, this isn't an endof the year exceed expectation balancing it.
You know, if if it cameand it was what you thought and it
was shipped well and packaged and undamnagand no issues, that's five or it
(05:02):
should be. Yeah, it's theTalladega Nights, Ricky Bobby. If you're
not first, you're last, mentalityright, And you know again, I've
had buyers who will give a fouror something like that, and I'll usually
reach out to them and kind ofhave a little speel of like, oh,
(05:25):
I'm sorry this didn't meet your expectations, or kind of frame it like
is there anything else that I coulddo? And most of the time they're
like, oh no, everything wasfine, And then I'll kind of do
a secondary message of like, oh, well, you know the way that
Etsy is balanced is five is youknow, is everything was fine if you
wouldn't mind adjusting that. And I'vehad people adjusted up because they just didn't
(05:48):
realize. I don't think I've gottenas it happened very often, but I
don't usually get any pushback if Iend up getting to that point where I
need to explain it, or sometimesI'll just do the first half where I'm
saying I'm kind of refocusing the questionof is there an issue, and when
they're like, oh, yeah,no, there's no issue. Oh yeah,
I can adjust that, you know, but it's all on a per
(06:10):
case by case basis. Really yeah. Yeah, so motivation, yes,
let's get back on. Yeah,it's even hard to stay motivated to talk
about this topic because it is sucha sore spot. It is for me,
particularly after a large project. Butit is extremely important to stay motivated
(06:41):
in your craft or in this case, in your hobby or you know,
however it is that you sort ofidentify within sort of being a maker.
But I was curious, like,is there something that you do or try
to do that is like the silverbullet bolt of lightning? Oh Man,
(07:08):
if I had found that, Iwould let you know. But I do
have. I'll say coping mechanisms.That's as good as I can get.
I mean, that works for me. I will take some coping mechanisms because
honestly, as someone who's been doingthis for a while, you're right,
there is no shortcut to the finishline of finding motivation. Again, yeah,
(07:30):
I mean. One thing that comesto mind is I often have to
push myself out of the mindset ofI need a big chunk of time to
get anything done. I need thewhole afternoon this Saturday, I need a
whole day off work or a wholevacation day, or I can't get anything
done when instead I try to livein the accomplishment of I got one thing
(07:59):
done tonight, Like, yeah,I had three hours that I could have
worked on something, but I wastired, or I maybe was unwinding with
a video game or a movie,which again are totally fine, like I'm
not on the clock. I canchoose to do that with my time.
But I also like yesterday, allI did was I had a bunch of
(08:22):
foam in different layers that I hadbought, and I made sure I unrolled
it and put it in the foamspot so that it could kind of flatten
itself out so the next time Ineed it, it'll be ready to go.
And I'm going to call that awin because it's progressed to that next
step that I need it when Iwant to start. Now, what I
(08:43):
wanted to accomplish that day was completelyclearing off my workbench and starting on a
new foot for K twoso, butI instead did like step one instead of
step one through ten. But soI guess that is what I'm saying is
accepting the motivation. If it's literallyjust moving that not goalposts, but moving
(09:09):
the ball one step, Yeah,that's still an accomplishment, it really is.
Yeah. I fall victim to thatsame kind of mindset where if it
feels like I can only do asmall percentage of the work, it's very
difficult to kind of muster up thatmomentum to do anything. And often what
(09:41):
I find kind of helps me isto do something unrelated but sort of adjacent
in a way. So like let'ssay I have something that I need to
paint, or a part that needsto get sanded, or you know,
something along those lines. There's alwayssomething that needs to be sanded. Yes,
(10:05):
what I may do is clean upan area of my workbench or something
around the shop that's just sort ofbeen like in the way, and by
doing that, I make the processof doing the other work a little less
painful. So like one of thebig ones for me. And it's like
(10:31):
my wife can tell when I'm kindof in that headspace if I'm working,
if i'm cutting anything on the laser, usually I'll have a lot of scrap
left over, and because of itssize, there's really no good way to
store it. It's like bigger thanyour average trash can. It's typically rectangular
(10:56):
and can be a little squirrely towork with, and so I end up
just kind of stacking it on thefloor. Yeah, I have a huge
broken downs, you know, andit kind of gets in the way of
everything. So what I'll do isI'll just go grab a trash bag and
(11:20):
I'll load all of that stuff inthere. And typically once I've done that,
I'll look to the trash bend andgo, Okay, well, clearly
this needs to be empty too,and then I will empty that And by
just removing those two things from mypath, it makes the actual task feel
(11:41):
a little less daunting because now I'mnot having to like step over something or
kick something out of the way,or you know, you're in the trash
can three times because it keeps fallingout because there's too much stuff in there
or whatever, Hey, who puta camera in my shop? You know
that happens. Well, you're removingthe friction of getting to actually doing what
(12:05):
you want to do, right sothat next time you have a moment to
sit down, it's not like,oh, but I still got to take
that trash out. Nope, that'sdone. I mean, as we all
talk about motivation, so much ofit is just headspace. It really is.
I mean, it's all there.And I all often joke about you
(12:26):
know, future Darren and pass Darren, like that's future Darren's problem to figure
out it. Oh, thank you, past Darren. That was really smart
thinking. But honestly, I thinkthere's something to that of Sometimes I've found
it helps me to think of myfuture self as a co worker, like,
(12:46):
oh, what you know, ifI'm working on a team, which
I'm not, it's just me.So motivation is again very difficult sometimes when
it's just you. But if Ithink of my future self for tomorrow as
a co worker. Oh, likeyou said, like taking out the trash
or leaving a clean workspace or puttingthings away. Yeah, you're doing it
(13:07):
for yourself, but you're kind ofdoing it for your future self, and
you can and when you get tothat future self, you can look back
and be like, oh, youknow, thank you passing me for doing
that, because it did take awaythat friction or make it easier. And
I guess, you know, whateverit takes to kind of wrangle mental gymnastics
that in your mind, but ifit helps, it helps. Yeah.
(13:31):
Yeah, I kind of always lookat it as sort of tricking myself into
a kind of into positive thinking,right, Like nobody thinks positively all the
time. It's a muscle that youhave to train, And this for me
is like going to the gym forthat like motivation muscle, because now I've
(13:58):
clear out a problem to make spacefor doing the task at hand, and
I just have to like accept thefact that, well, you know,
I've gotten rid of the friction,so there's really no reason for me to
not do this work. I thinkanother you know, motivation. You know,
(14:24):
we've always talked about deadlines or somesort of anchor point in the future.
Often it'll be a convention, orit'll be you know, something else
that you want to do. Ihave a farther out anchor point that disappeared
this year. I was planning ongoing to Silicon in October up in the
Bay Area. Really enjoyed my timethere last year, and I was going
(14:48):
to bring K two. So I'mlike, okay, that's that's a long
enough time to do what I wantwith K two, like get all the
little things done. But unfortunately we'renot exactly hundred percent or why, but
it is not going to happen thisyear. They've canceled the convention, and
so you know, I was verysaddened by that, but I also had
to kind of, you know,rebalance that whole project in my mind because
(15:15):
I'm like, okay, well,what other deadline can I give myself around
that time of the year. Itmight be La Comic Con that's in early
December, or maybe fan X orsomething else. Not that it has to
be a convention, but something that'sunmovable where you're either going to hit it
or you're not. It can bea motivation because you know, I have
(15:39):
a right there on my home screen, I have a countdown that goes till
the next whatever, and it sayshow many days I have left, and
that you know, maybe it's punishment, maybe it's motivation, maybe it's both,
but it you know, that canhelp though having that deadline, maybe
you'll get into concrunch mode. Maybeyou won't, but it can help you
(16:02):
kind of feel like, Okay,I'm at the early stage, so I'm
at the figure out what's working,and then a little later it's like,
okay, I need to make sureeverything's ordered because shipping times start to become
an issue. And then get alittle closer and you're like, now I
have to make sure everything's painted bynow because I'm losing that paint window.
(16:23):
Like there's kind of those dominoes,those milestones you have to hit or it
gets really crunchy really fast. Yeah. Also, I love that you think
that con crunch is an option.I mean, we'll get there. It's
a natural part of the cycle atthe end of that window. But future
(16:45):
Darren's going to be very happy withall the progress I did before Cohn Crunch
if I can. Yeah. Yeah, deadlines are definitely a good motivator.
I know. The other thing thatI find is sometimes helpful. Not always,
but sometimes is to kind of getlost in some of the minutia of
(17:11):
the project. You know, it'skind of unrelated, and I'm going to
go on a little tangent, soeverybody buckle. And I really enjoy watching
movies like The Da Vinci Code orNational Treasure. I love the idea of
(17:34):
going on a treasure hunt of sorts. And when I'm working on a project,
as I've said many times before onthis podcast, one of my favorite
parts of it is digging into allof the ridiculously unimportant details of a project,
(17:56):
the stuff that will never be seenbut lives rent free in my head.
And so if I'm feeling like I'vekind of lost a little gas behind
a project, I'll take a littlebit of time and go on a treasure
hunt to try and learn something aboutthat project that I may not have known
(18:22):
before, or to maybe like diga little bit deeper about something that I
had found out that I thought wasinteresting really unimportant to the finished product.
But it is the type of thingthat just sort of like, like,
what's your appetite for wanting to knowmore about something and then being able to
(18:48):
take that information and kind of unleashit on the project, and so it's
sort of a it's like power upfor me to kind of look at it
as like, there's more fuel forthis project because I know something different about
it that I didn't know before.Yeah, I think for me, because
(19:12):
I definitely know I spend a disproportionateamount of time in that early R and
D phase. So I always havemy notebook, and you know, if
I if I feel like I can'treally make anything tonight or whatever, I'll
usually just pull that out and justkind of not doodle, but just kind
(19:34):
of think, like, oh,what's something I can think about and draw
a little sketch and turn it overin my mind and maybe come up with
a thought or a thing. AndI feel more productive because I feel like,
Okay, that was something that probablyneeded to be designed and needed to
be thought about, and now I'vespent that time and that time has been
recorded instead of like, yeah,maybe in the future if I hadn't done
(19:59):
this, I wouldn't have needed tothink about it because it would have just
come together. But it's it's progress, it's hours logged, as it were.
And for the most part in myprojects, I'll yeah, I'll spend
probably at least a good sixty seventypercent of the beginning of a project window
just thinking and and then when Ido pull the trigger on like making the
(20:25):
things. It not that it alwaysworks, but I find that more often
than not, I've thought around alot of the issues I would have had
if I was just kind of tinkeringevery night or just seeing what six now
that doesn't. That method may notwork for everybody, but I found that
(20:45):
I love that R and D phase. I mean, we've talked about it
before, but just turning the problemover and around and thinking, yeah,
it's it's a that can help.Again, you feel motivated in the fact
that an hour spent in R andD is not an hour wasted. It's
definitely an hour invested in your project, for sure. I'llways talk about running
(21:12):
things in your head. You justdescribe how I spent the last week.
So I just got back from Ithought you on vacation for the last week,
I was that's the problem. Iwent to Paris with my wife,
and Paris is nine hours ahead ofLos Angeles, Okay, so we were
(21:38):
wide awake in the middle of thenight, and despite my best efforts to
try and get on that sleep scheduleand really never shifted work at it.
I found myself kind of just layingin bed, staring at the ceiling,
problem solving in my head for projectsthat I hadn't even started yet. I
(22:06):
feel like it was a good useof my time. Though it didn't require
paper, pencils, light, it'snothing. It was literally just me.
You went into your mind palace andbuilt a project. Yeah. And ironically,
after sort of waking up air quotesthe following morning, after spending I
(22:34):
don't know, probably a solid fouror five hours thinking about this because I
couldn't fall asleep, and then Igot back to Los Angeles and started to
put together this thing that I hadmade up in my head, only to
realize that I had overcomplicated. You'relike, wait, step two is where
(22:57):
I would have been done, notforty five. Okay, Okay, yeah,
Yeah. Sometimes it's easier to builda platform than it is to build
an armature. Literally what it camedown to. I'm so to give a
bit more context to my insomnia planning. There's the Midsummer Scream, Horror and
(23:26):
Halloween Convention coming up in July,and I've been asked again to do workshop
classes there, and every year thatI do it, I like to try
and come up with something different becauseI've found overdoing it for six or seven
(23:47):
years, that a lot of thepeople who take the workshops are repeat students.
They made something the year before,They've taken the stuff they've learned and
gone home and made a bunch ofstuff, and now they want to learn
the next step and whatnot. Solong story short, I was trying to
(24:10):
come up with a really cost effectivewater proof or at least water resistant mechanism
to make moving prop for Halloween,and it just bounced it around in my
head for hours, thinking that Ineeded to make this armature kind of thing.
(24:38):
And then when I got back tomy shop this past week and started
to gather all of the miscellaneous partsfor the project, I realized that that
was like completely overengineered for no goodreason other than like, that's just where
my thoughts had taken me in themiddle of the night. The upside is
(25:03):
is that you know, I've realizedthis having stared at it for a couple
of days now, and then inthe end I think it will be easier.
But yeah, yeah, but sometimesI mean again, it's not time
(25:25):
wasted. It's you know, evenbecause even if you didn't use what you
had spent four hours thinking about,you were exercising that muscle for four hours.
And absolutely that totally is worth everyevery rep of the mind. Yeah.
Well, and it's not like Ihad a lot of other options of
(25:48):
things to do with my time either, true, very true. Yeah,
No, I've Yeah, my myshop is an absolute mess right now.
So I'm trying to mote myself that, you know, that early step of
cleaning and putting things away, andyou know, I feel like I have
the space. I just need toorganize it better. But I think I
(26:11):
figured, you know, this isa slight tangent, but you went on
one earlier, so I'm going togo on one now. But they're welcoming
here as far as they are.But I've always so I've been listening a
lot to Every Tools a Hammer,Adam Savage's book, and I have it
(26:34):
on audio book and it's he readsit and it's a really it's a really
great book. If you haven't readit or listened to it, I highly
recommend it. It's just good forgetting the juices going and kind of thinking
about stuff. And he's talking abouthis whole first order of retrieval system and
the evolution of the cave and allthis stuff, and I'm like, I
am nowhere near thinking that deep abouthow I have my space, But I've
(26:59):
been starting to think about it alittle bit of like like, I have
lots of pictures and art and postersup, but that's not space that could
be used for tools, you know. And you know, I have a
whole wall that looks like the DeathStar, which is awesome, but that's
not usable wall space. So I'vebeen trying to think about how do I
work and kind of realizing I'm spendingall this time thinking about what I could
(27:26):
do, when what I really shouldjust turn the question around and be like,
well what am I doing now andhow can I enhance that? And
I'm thinking, okay, Well,often I'm making things or I have multiple
projects going, and I'll have likeI have a big stack of twelve by
nineteen inch MDF that I'll often usein the laser and so I've been I
(27:48):
mean a huge stack because I'll geta whole four bite sheet and cut it
down into blanks, and so that'llbe my go to where I'll just grab
one and put things that have beenneed to be painted or need to be
you know, sanded. And eachone of those is kind of a kind
of like a little platter of likea piece of a project, you know,
(28:10):
kind of keeps it all contained.But the problem is then I run
out of flat workspace very quickly becauseI have all these little platters everywhere.
And so I finally figured out whatI need to get, and I don't
think it'll cost that much. I'mgonna get it used at a local bakery
supply store. But I am goingto get a sheet pan rack. So
(28:40):
this is a if you've never beenbaking. They're like eighteen inches by twenty
six inches and they just have likea standard sheet pan, and I think
they have up to I think it'slike fifteen ten to fifteen slots in this,
(29:00):
you know, it's on wheels.It's like an aluminum frame. So
I could get one of those usedfor like one hundred bucks or maybe less
seventy five hundred bucks. And Ifound a place with used sheet pans for
like three fifty a pop, whichis fairly cheap. So I'm just gonna
get one of those, and ifI ever need to get a second,
(29:22):
I could but start with one andjust get a whole stack of sheet pans.
And what's great again about it isif I have a project, because
that's how my mind works, It'sin these little kind of buckets, and
so it's like this is the paintingproject, and this is the circuit assembly
project. And so I think havingeach of those on one of these sheet
(29:45):
pans, and if they're tall,you know, the materials are higher,
just don't put anything in the slotsabove it. Like, it's not like
everything has to be flat packed.It can. But so I really am
excited. I mean, I needto find a way to get to this
place that's only open between like nineand four on weekdays, which you know
(30:07):
is difficult. Yeah, but soit's not super pressing. I don't need
to do it like this weekend.But all that to say, I'm I
got really excited when I figured outthat obviously not designed for a maker space,
but could work well for me becauseI already think like that in my
(30:27):
space. It's just not very streamlinedbecause I run out of vertical surfaces to
put these project plates on. Yeah, so I'm excited for that. I
think that could could work really welland a normal sheet pan. Again,
it's like it's fairly large, soit could fit a lot of things on
it each one. So I promiseI'm not starting a bakery if you see
(30:52):
that in the back of my webcamnext time. So, got it.
Yeah. The idea of being ableto gather all of the necessary parts in
one place is always very helpful.And I've found over the years, particularly
(31:15):
when dealing with anything where there's alot of small parts, is that like
go to your local box store orwhatever, or send Uncle Jeff your money
and get it on Amazon. Butlike the little three millimeter zip top bags
(31:38):
to keep all of your small partstogether, and they make them, you
know, tons of different sizes.But I've always found that doing stuff like
that just a keeps them all together, so that in the event that you
end up getting distracted and move onto another project because you've lost motive on
(32:00):
your first project, that never happens, but if it does, it at
least keeps them all together and inone place, which forever has been a
huge problem for me because I'll justwork on something and then I'll set it
down because you know, squirrel,and then we'll forget where I've put it,
(32:22):
which often leads to me either likemaking another one, buying another whatever.
But yeah, then when you whenyou do find the motivation to go
back and work on that thing again, it's all just right there. And
it's it's very much the sort ofmethod that you've described of like being able
(32:43):
to see everything in one central locationfor one particular project. It's almost like
you should make like a little hangtag for the front of each shelf so
that you can say what it is. Yeah. I was actually just thinking
about that because the other benefit ofthe sheet pan is it has a lip,
(33:04):
so it's less likely that things aregoing to fall off. And I
just realize I could probably three Dprint a little placard that will clip onto
the edge of a and has alittle you know, and I could even
heck, I could laser cut likemillamine, whatever the material is, but
I could laser cut that into smallbits so that I could whiteboard marker whatever
(33:28):
that is from that side. Butyeah, it's I mean, you know,
it is like we often have somany irons in the fire, but
our irons aren't single pieces of metal. They're like twenty pieces of to be
painted plastic or to be sanded materialand so being able to consolidate that into
(33:49):
a single movable spot. So I'mlike I said, hopefully sometime this month,
I'll be able to acquire that,but I'm I'm excited to because I've
actually feel like that's going to helpjust with the clutter and a lot of
those things, and you know,worst case, because I was this was
(34:12):
kind of coming about. Was iwas at Ikeia with my daughter and we
were looking for things for decorating herroom, and I'm always looking at the
you know, those little boxes orlittle bins or little trays, and they're
fairly cheap at Ikea. So I'mlike, oh, I could get like
twenty of them, but again,I just always felt like these were too
small or where am I going toput them? You know, now I
have twenty bin or I have twentytrays, but I have I didn't solve
(34:37):
my surface problem, and so Iheld off, and like you were saying,
go to the box store, goto the container store, and I'm
always trying to think of that thing. But until thinking of the baking rack,
I didn't have that other piece ofthe puzzle, which is, well
where did these go? And it'sa standard size, you can get them
(34:59):
used. I mean, if they'rea little rusty, I don't care.
I'm not going to bake on them. That's not that's not the point.
So no, And the ability tojust pull them off the rack and set
them down on your workbench and seeall of the things right there in front
of you is brilliant. It's it'skind of like I feel like people who
are into puzzle making, are notpuzzle making a puzzle assembly have kind of
(35:22):
a similar idea where they like buildtheir puzzles on a tray or a piece
of cardboard or something something, yeah, so that they can like pick it
up and take it somewhere else forstorage while they're not working on it.
But the ability to just say,like, here is the platform that I
will be working on to a degree, and then when I'm done working on
(35:46):
it, it can go, youknow, into a shelf and hang out
with all of the other projects they'reyou know, wherever they are in their
their process. It's actually a reallygreat idea. And if you don't have
space, I mean, it's atall rack, it's like seventy inches tall.
But they also sell half ones.But I'm gonna for I mean I
(36:09):
think it's like sixty five for ahalf one or one hundred for a full,
and I'm like, well, whynot just get the full? Like
I know, I'll use all ofthose slots for my projects. But if
you didn't have space, you couldget a half and then maybe build a
shelf or a table, a squaretable for the top of it if you
(36:30):
needed more surface space. So I'malways trying to balance, like, you
know, where do I keep mytools? You know, where do I
keep Like I don't have a myIt's funny as I evolved my making space,
I called the space stock in mygarage. Every once in a while,
(36:51):
when I've done kind of a majoroverhaul, I'll stand in the same
spot by the door and I'll doa panorama with my phone, and I
have like six or seven of themnow at this point that I could pull
up and look at and be like, oh, yeah, this is when
I had that over there, andthen oh yeah, this is when I
had that little extra table, andthen I took that away. And you
(37:12):
know, it's always evolving, Likeyou see those movies or videos where you
know they've gone into that custom garageand everything's all store, you know,
everything's all matching, and I'm like, that's the you know who. Nobody's
got time and money for that.You know, it's it's piecemeal at the
best. Yeah. Yeah, andyou know, kind of to loop back
(37:34):
to Adam Savage in the Cave,like he's been there for decades. Yeah,
and it's constantly in flux. He'salways figuring out, you know,
how he likes to work. Ohyeah, and that was the chapter that
really got me jibed as he wastalking about, you know, he had
(37:55):
this kind of bag, this medicinebag with all of his tools in it.
Eventually that failed because it didn't havehe had so much in it,
and he eventually finally realized that heneeded to He he didn't like drawers.
He wanted everything visible, and that'show he worked. And yeah, you
(38:15):
see any tested video in the Caveand it is like what did he call
it, like a visible cacophony ofjust stuff And some people can't work like
that. Everything's got to be youknow that they got to be Wasabi from
Big Hero six and everything is microlabeled in its slot. But obviously I
(38:37):
am fine having a bit of amess around it, doesn't you know,
I'm not having a panic attack inmy own workspace. I just need more
flat space to work on. Soby rack and stacking them, you know,
I think that will will help.And like you said, it's always
evolving, you know, until wemake it big and we can buy the
(38:58):
thirty five square foot whatever you know, which will still fill because it's just
a it's just going to happen toIt'll just have more tables full of stuff.
Yes, hands, it'll be fourby eight tables with butcher paper one
per project. Yeah. And speakingof which, I keep threatening myself to
(39:25):
to start a new project to builda butcher paper holder or like a dispenser,
like a role yeah, dispension,but like an under mount one for
the table that I film all myvideos on. So you just pull it
out, pull it over, pullit on, run a blade or something
(39:46):
through the end of it, andboom, boom boom. And I really
need to get on that thinking abouthaving all these four by eight tables,
and the minute you said it,I was like, and they'd have casters
and then well, yeah, you'veseen I'm sure you've seen those videos of
(40:06):
them, the four by eight andthere's like a lip on the wall and
you push it up against that andthen tip up it up into the wall
and then the legs fold flat.Now it looks cool. I would never
do that because I would never havea moment where I need to get rid
of a giant table like now.But granted I do have a couple of
(40:29):
four by eight like folding tables becausethere are times when I need a bigger
space, and so not having everythingbe permanent, even on casters, I
think is a good flexibility of thespace. Yeah, but I know what
you're saying, Yeah, four byeight and butcher paper. But again I
(40:50):
don't I know what you mean,but I think there's also a motivation component
in that as well, where it'seasy to go down that rabbit hole of
like, well, I can't reallystart this project because I haven't made the
Butcher paper dispenser for my four byeight sheet, and it feels like a
block And even though you don't needit to move forward, because your mind
(41:15):
has placed it in that order ofoperations ahead of your project, when you
could just roll it off and cutit right now. Yeah, like I've
done hundreds of hundreds of times.Yeah, yeah, it's you need a
one day build. You need tobe like I'm I'm gonna build it,
but it's only gonna I'm only gonnagive myself one day to do it,
(41:38):
so it's just done. Yeah,and maybe it's not raining that day,
or maybe it's on a raining daywhen you can't do anything else. It's
tough though, because I work outside, you know, So it's like I
don't really like to use power toolswhen it's raining. Well, yes,
(41:59):
that way, because I have likeextension chords running and not ideal, not
ideal, and more often than notthere's some painting element to the project that's
going to be inhibited by the weatherand whatever. But I digress. Yeah,
(42:22):
the thought of having one day buildwith perfect weather and and no blockers,
I will say this, it makesme appreciate when I see other people
able to just like knock out abuild in a day. That's true,
(42:43):
of course, the difference is andmore specifically, if we're talking about Adam
Savage, like he is inside ofa controlled environment where he's also had lots
of practice for sure, but likeyou know, he could show up at
six am, turn the lights on, get to work, and stay it
(43:04):
until midnight, right, and hislighting and sound and everything is exactly the
whole way through right for me,you know, I'm working outside, so
I'm like okay, And he'll bethe first to tell you when it's not
a one day build, he said. Many of his one day builds turned
into multi day builds. It's justkind of a term now, but yeah,
(43:25):
I only meant like, if it'sI think it's something you could accomplish
in a day to get it outof the way, so it's no longer
blocking motivation because it's just done.Yeah. I think there's there's quite a
few of those little projects that couldbe both the thing that prevents me from
(43:47):
doing the work and the thing thatmakes doing future work easier. Yep,
two subscribe being a maker in likeone sentence. Sure for sure. Well,
if you're in you know, I'mkind of curious if any of our
listeners, if we still have anyat this point since January. But if
(44:12):
you have any sort of motivation orthings that you do that make you feel
motivated or help you move through alack of motivation, you can definitely reach
us, you know, at theour contact form at the nerdparty dot com
or I think Twitter is also agreat way to connect with us, both
(44:34):
at doctors Hi Fi and vanas propsor Instagram, I know for both of
us, but I'd be curious ifyou reach out to us and let us
know how you go through motivation.Maybe it's listening to this podcast or other
maker podcasts and they could, youknow, just inspire the making making method.
(44:58):
But anything else you wanted to shareon on being on staying motivated,
Derek, I don't know. Imean, there's motivation, much like creativity,
kind of comes and goes, andI think if you wait it out
(45:19):
long enough, you will eventually findyourself feeling motivated again. I know for
me, when I really feel likeI've hit the wall on a project,
the only thing that's going to kindof shake everything up is for me to
just put it away. And that'sassuming that there's no deadline or any of
(45:43):
that nonsense. But sometimes just changingyour headspace doing something different kind of gives
you just that little bit of perspectiveto then step back into that project with
sort of renewed excitement for the workthat you're doing. And I think that's
(46:07):
completely acceptable. You know, likenobody says that as a maker you have
to like start a thing and workon it until it's done. You know,
like we create the rules for ourselves. Who works like that, start
and then finish until it is done. That's that's crazy talk. I mean,
(46:28):
I wish my brain worked sort oflinear like that. It really doesn't.
It's no, you know, allover the place. But I think
like if you can, if youcan train yourself to kind of find that
thing that distracts you long enough anddoesn't take away from like overall momentum,
(46:52):
there's nothing wrong with kind of usingthose things to cope with, you know,
the inevitable like burnout of a project. I think a lot of people
lose motivation on stuff because they getkind of burnt out about it, or
they they hit a roadblock something thatthey can't figure out, or you know,
whatever it may be. But it'slike totally cool to sort of take
(47:15):
step back, work on something else, go outside and go for a walk,
do something different, until you likehave that excitement for what you're working
on again. Because honestly, ifyou're not excited about it, like what's
the point. Like it's it's gotto nourish some part of your soul to
(47:42):
make any of it worthwhile. Well, And I mean I think you just
hit on it, like the excitementis that's a factor of motivation for sure.
I mean just like you could askyourself, well, why make a
instead of b you know, whymake things with the three D printer or
Star Wars or haunted mansion or whatever? You know. I mean, we
(48:06):
make that because we have the flexibilityin making pretty much what we want,
you know, for the most part. I mean obviously it's not all the
time. But yeah, I think, man, this is a good topic
because I mean, unpacking motivation.There's so many facets to it. There's
you know, the drive of theday. There's choosing what to make,
(48:28):
there's persevering, there's roadblocks, there'sbeing your own boss and self motivation.
And I think we've covered a lotof that tonight. It's an onion of
a topic, it is. It'smany layers of a three D print.
Painful dad joke. All right,Well, we thank you all for joining
(48:53):
us here on Maker's Method. Wedo promise to try to find that motivation
to come back with us monthly aswe talk just about making that what we're
working on. But I think it'seven more fun when we're able to kind
of unpack a cool topic like this, so we'll be back for sure in
(49:15):
June and again you can check usout on the nerd Party's website, which
is the nerdparty dot com. There'sa contact form there if you want to
reach out or, like we weresaying, on social media as well.
But yeah, but Derek's been alot of fun chatting with this topic and
(49:35):
we want to remind you all tokeep making
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