Talent or training? Which is more important? How does hard work and practice interact with natural ability? Today at the House of Hacks, Harley talks about these issues.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Transcript
On a photography related video, Hanz left a comment "You can't learn talent... You can only learn methods, but it will never look the same."
Leave a comment below and we'll talk about it today at the House of Hacks.
Starting right now!
[Introduction]
Hi. Harley here.
Hanz brought up an interesting idea: what's the difference between people that have natural ability or talent and people who have an interest in something without the talent and need to work, learn and practice?
Here's my take on it.
Let's think about this as lines on a graph.
On the Y-axis, we have the outcome of the activity where lower is worse outcome and higher is better outcome.
On the X-axis, let's plot the amount of work somebody does to work, learn and practice the activity. The left side will represent less work. The right side will represent more work.
Now, let's put two lines on this graph.
One line represents the person that's talented and has natural ability.
And the other line represents the person that doesn't have the natural ability but does have an interest in the activity.
This is not a scientific graph. There's no data associated with it. It's for illustrative purposes only.
As we can see, for the same amount of work, the one with talent is going to outperform the one with talent.
However, if we look at this from the perspective of the other axis, we can see at some point, the person without talent that puts in more work can have a better outcome than the person with talent that doesn't put in as much work.
So what? What does this all mean?
I think this has to be answered by looking at your goals. What's the purpose of the outcome?
Is the result of your activity personal satisfaction?
Then the level of output is really only important based on what you want.
So whether you're talented or not is not really relevant. You're just doing for your own satisfaction.
Is your goal to sell a product or service?
Then the level of the output needs to be consistent with what the market demands.
And the good news is the market is really large with a lot of price points.
The odds of finding a customer needing something where you're at on the outcome side is actually pretty good.
Now the higher you are on the outcome side, the fewer people you're competing with and so the more you can charge.
This means hard work can move you up in the marketplace even without natural ability.
What do you think? I'd love to hear in the comments below.
And as I was looking at this topic, I ran across a couple videos that I thought you might find interesting. I'll leave a link to them down in the description.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks, Welcome! I'm glad you're here and would love to have you subscribe.
I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
Sometimes this manifests through making things with a mechanical or technical bent to them.
I hope to inspire, educate and encourage makers with this kind of creative bent to them.
Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography and other similar materials.
If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I'll see you again in the next video.
Thanks for joining me on this creative journey we're on.
The Maker Movement Manifesto is a book that Harley recently ran across that presents 9 points important to makers and the maker movement. In this episode of Maker Musings on the House of Hacks, Harley gives his first impressions of the last three points in the manifesto: Participate, Support, Change.
The Maker Movement Manifesto is a book that Harley recently ran across that presents 9 points important to makers and the maker movement. In this episode of Maker Musings on the House of Hacks, Harley gives his first impressions of the second three points in the manifesto: Learn, Tool up, Play.
The Maker Movement Manifesto is a book that Harley recently ran across that presents 9 points important to makers and the maker movement. In this episode of Maker Musings on the House of Hacks, Harley gives his first impressions of the first three points in the manifesto: Make, Share, Give.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks we're going to finish up the Maker Musings series for August with the first of three videos talking about the Maker Manifesto.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
Today I want to start a three part series on the Maker Manifesto. This is a book I recently came across by Mark Hatch. In full disclosure I haven't read the book. I've read a synopsis of the book and I've read a sample chapter of the book and it does sound kind of interesting. I have put it on my reading list to go ahead and read the whole thing. The sample chapter was pretty well written and had some interesting points to make. So I do want to read the book.
But I do want to go over the nine points that he's identified as the manifesto for makers. His perspective is from a makers space perspective. He's heavily influenced and involved in the maker space movement and this is the manifesto he's put together specifically for that environment.
I want to go through it. It had some interesting points. The next three days, there's nine points in total, for three days I want to go over three points each day and just kind of talk about them and give a first impression as I read it. He also had a synopsis for each word and I want to go over those just so you have a definition for what he's talking about and if it sounds interesting to you.
If you have any comments, any reactions to anything I say or anything he says, leave them in the comments below. I'd love to hear them and have a discussion about it.
The first three points are: Make, Share and Give.
Make says: Making is fundamental to what it means to be human. We must make, create and express ourselves to feel whole. There is something unique about making physical things. These things are like little pieces of us and seem to embody portions of our souls.
Now this is kind of interesting. I'm not quite sure what he means about that first sentence where he's talking about "making is fundamental to what it means to be human." I'm going to interpret that from my perspective. I talked about this a little bit last week where I talked about "why make" and how I believe that we're made in God's image and God is a creative God and He's put a portion of His creativity in each one of us. I would say that making doesn't make us human. It's not the act of making that makes us human. But rather it's the fact that we're human and we make. We make because we're human, not we make to make us human. If that makes sense. That's kind of a subtle distinction but one that I think is kind of important from my belief system because of how I believe that God did create us in His image.
The next word is Share and the definition he has for that is: Sharing what you have made and what you know about making with others is the method by which a maker's feeling of wholeness is achieved. You cannot make and not share.
Now this is kind of interesting because it's a large part of why I started House of Hacks. A lot of people have poured into my life in educating me and encouraging me and inspiring me and I want to do the same thing to inspire, educate and encourage others. So this channel is one of the ways I want to do that. I really agree with sharing is something that I think is important for us as makers to do.
Give: There are few things more selfless and satisfying than giving away something you have made. The act of making puts a small piece of you in the object. Giving that to someone else is like giving someone a small piece of yourself. Such things are often the most cherished items we possess.
Now this is interesting because give and share are closely related. He makes the statement that "the act of making puts a small piece of you in the object." To some degree I agree with this in that who we are as humans I think kind of is manifest or revealed by what we make.
Again going back to God and creation. We look around and see so much beauty and intricacy in creation, I think a lot of that is, or all of that, is because God is an intricate and creative God and His substance is manifest... It's not that the making is Him, but rather that because He is beautiful, because He is intricate, He therefore makes beautiful and intricate things.
I think the same thing holds true for us. If we look at art, I think part of our emotion, part of our soul, is revealed through what we make, whether it's art or other objects. A lot of it comes from design I think in the whole how we make things.
Those are the first three items in the Maker Manifesto: Make, Share and Give. I'd love to hear your comments down below if you have any reactions to what I've said or what he says, or if you've heard of this before, that'd be interesting. I just ran across this a few weeks ago.
So that's it for today. Until next time, go make something.
It's easy to look around and compare yourself to other people. It's particularly easy for people to make things to compare their ability, productivity and creativity to other people in their field of endeavor. In this episode of Makers Musing, Harley and Diane talk about this dangerous place that leads to unhappiness and dissatisfaction. And they give hints about how to only compare yourself to your past self to find happiness and success.
We are all ignorant of things. There are many things we don’t know. When working on a project, many times we need to overcome our ignorance to continue. In this episode of Makers Musings, Harley and Diane discuss some strategies to gain knowledge when we run up to its limits and overcome ignorance so we can continue to make forward progress on our projects.
“Good is the enemy of great.” vs “Good enough is good enough.” Two schools of thought about perfection, good enough and quality when making things. In today’s episode of Maker Musings at the House of Hacks, Harley is joined by his wife Diane as they talk about these two competing schools of thought. One school takes the perspective that we settle for good enough and fail to strive for perfect. The other takes the perspective that perfection is unattainable and so we should accept good enough. Both have their pros and cons and today’s discussion involves the dynamic tension between the two.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to talk about "perfection" vs "good enough."
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers.
I'm Harley, your host, and this is my lovely wife, Diane, she's joining me today for this episode of Makers Musings.
In the past several episodes I've been talking about the reasons for House of Hacks. I've talked about the name, why I chose "House of Hacks." I talked about some of the different reasons I'm doing House of Hacks: to inspire, to educate and to encourage makers. And I've talked about some of the other philosophies with House of Hacks.
Today I want to talk about the last closing statement where I say "Perfection's not required. Fun is!" And so I just want to talk about "perfection" vs "good enough" today.
So, basically there's two schools of thought. Either someone approaches the issue with the idea that "good is the enemy of perfection" or the flip side is "done is better than perfect."
Yeah, I think these have been popularized by two people. I think Jim Collins in his book "Good to Great" is the one that kind of has reinvigorated the idea of "good is the enemy of great." It has a long history but I think he's kind of the one of the ones who's brought it to the fore in recent years.
And the other school of thought again has been around for quite a while but it's been recently re-popularized by Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook fame, where Facebook is constantly iterating on getting things done rather than focusing on being perfect.
I think there's these two things both have their pros and their cons.
The first school of thought is really trying to get away from the problem that comes up with complacency. Where you're stuck in a rut and you just aren't focusing on improving or getting better. The emphasis there is on perfection because being "good enough" isn't good enough in the long term. You can get stuck and not continue to grow and be overcome by your competitors in the business world, for example, where Jim Collins is applying the principles.
On the other hand, the problem with focusing on perfection is there's... you can never get finished. Right. Nothing is ever perfect and so if you strive for perfection you never finish anything because you can always see a way to improve.
And so that's where the second school of thought tries to kind of counter balance that and say "You know, you don't need to be perfect. You just need to get it done." And so they're trying to counter balance going too far the other direction with perfectionism.
I know a lot of people have struggled with being perfect and not wanting to release things if they're not perfect or not letting someone see something if they don't feel like it's done. So these two things are kind of in dynamic tension, I think. If you focus on one to the exclusion of the other you can really run into problems.
I can really see how having to be perfect is a massive detrimental wall, brick wall, to actually accomplishing things because there have been times in my life when I've been learning how to paint or learning how to play a musical instrument and I just couldn't get it right and have given up. One instance, I was painting a flower and I looked at the flower and even though the flower on the piece of paper was pretty, it was colorful, it had a lots of contrast in it, it wasn't even close to the real thing. I told myself I am never going to be able to paint anything that is that beautiful and I haven't painted anything since. The idea of having to be "perfect" can really, really cause people to never accomplish anything.
But on the flip side of that I've also experienced the idea that having to get something done just so that it is completely finished has been frustrating to me because, from my perspective, if I'm doing something, if I'm being creative for somebody else's benefit, I want my creativity to bless them. I want it to be good enough to bless them. That tension that I have between having to be perfect and having to be good enough to bless somebody, I find balance when I let go of having to be perfect and having to be done and just say "have I done my best?"
Yeah, I think it's important to realize that we're on a journey. And because we're on a journey, we're never going to be perfect because there's always something new to learn, to improve and to get better at. I think remembering things are always in process, both us and our abilities, is a way to realize that we never really can be perfect.
One thing that I heard somebody mention, I don't remember where it was, they mentioned to release something as an "alpha" product. So we kind of set an expectation that "hey, this isn't really finished yet, it's a work in progress." It was somebody talking about some music and music they were in the process of developing and they wanted their listeners to be able to hear it but they knew they weren't finished with it and it wasn't in it's final release. I really like that where you can let people see it, let people experience it, and yet set the expectation with them that "hey, it's not done yet."
I'm also reminded of Google. They're famous for releasing software in "beta" status. GMail was beta status for years before they did their first release. It's really kind of setting an expectation, both with yourself and with your users or your viewers, to realize that you know that it's not done and yet it's usable. It's something that can be appreciated and so forth.
Another issue that can kind of come up with thinking about perfection that I just ran into a video from Roberto Blake, and I'll leave a link down in the description, where he talks about in your strive for perfection you may miss the fact that there's different ways to measure perfection. You may be striving for perfection from one perspective and you may be putting off releasing something because it's not perfect and yet you're completely oblivious to the fact that there's other ways of measuring perfection and if you're looking at it from that perspective, either you're way beyond "perfect" or you're so far to go that you're never going to reach it, that the whole idea of perfection is kind of a nebulous concept that can really cause problems. And so I really like the idea of releasing something when it's done and defining done in a way that you can accomplish it and then realize that that's just a step in the process. You learn from that project so next time you do a similar project you can improve and get better at it.
Ryan Connelley has a... from Film Riot... ends his videos with something, a phrase "Write. Shoot. Edit. Repeat." And that's really emphasizing that you really do need to practice. Right. And we get better with practice. And so if we're looking to try to be perfect right now, that's minimizing the fact that we still have more practice to do.
So that's why I end with "Perfection's not required. Fun is!" Because we need to have fun in the learning, fun in the growing, fun in the developing and we don't need to necessarily be perfect.
I would like to say that the issue of something being done is done is better than it actually it being perfect, that's kind of like... that presents a problem with attitude because, yes, it's good to get something done because if something is done, you can move on to the next and keep developing. But there's the idea at the same time that, if done is done prematurely, then have we provided our best effort? And have we done our actual best if we're just trying to get something done and off our plate?
Within software, we have a concept of the definition of done. And so we set parameters as to what it means to be done. We know going in that this is what we need to accomplish for a particular project. And anything beyond that is beyond the scope of that particular project and so we don't necessarily need to do it. So we have a good way of measuring when we're done. So we're not releasing something that's unusable but at the same time we're not going overboard in terms of gold plating things.
In this episode of Makers Musings, Harley talks about why education is an important principle for House of Hacks. This is the second of three videos where he unpacks the second sentence in the standard closing that says "Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage makers in their creative endeavors."
This is the tenth episode of Vlog Every Day in August 2017 (aka #SSSVEDA2017).
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks, I want to talk about education.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
I'm going through the closing paragraph that I use in a lot of my videos where I talk about the "why" of the House of Hacks channel. I'm currently going through the sentence that says "Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage these types of makers." And yesterday I talked about "inspiration" and why I want to be an inspiration to people. Today I want to talk about "educate" and where that fits into this channel's "why."
When you create something, you're really being inspired by everything you know to put something together in a new, innovative way. But it's based on everything you know. So the more you know, the more you have resources to draw on in your creativity.
Yesterday I talked about being inspired by multiple things where we have a lot of different streams that come together to give us inspiration for creating something new. Well, in order to have those multiple areas, you need to be educated in those multiple areas. So the more things you know, the more opportunity you have to be... to have those things impact your inspiration in your creativity.
It's been said in software development that the best languages to learn are ones that force you to think differently. It really forces you to change your perspective in how you view things and when you have different perspectives you can look at problems differently and come up with different solutions from those different perspectives and it gives you a range of things to choose from. Sometimes by switching your perspectives you actually can synthesize different perspectives together to come up with something new.
I have a video that I talked about this a little bit that I'll leave a link to that I did a while ago where I talk about this as it relates to a design project that I was working on.
So the more that you know, the more different areas that you have, the more flexibility you have in your creativity and when you're making things.
So one of the things I want to do with this channel is provide education. I have a series that I call "Bits of Binary" where I teach about how to use the binary number system as one example. And I hope to have other types of series like that that are really didactic, very teaching oriented in terms of providing new information.
I also have a "tips and tricks" series that I do occasionally where I talk about one particular skill that's useful in making things. And when you have different skills in different areas, it's just like education and knowing different things, if you have different skills in different areas it allows you to be more flexible in your approach to solving problems.
The old saying "if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Well, the more tools you have in your tool bag to choose from when you're creating something the more flexibility you have in your creativity and what you're making.
So tomorrow I want to talk about the last word in that sentence: "encourage" and "encouragement" and why I think that's important for me in the material I present on this channel.
In this episode of Maker Musings, Harley talks about why inspiration is an important principle for House of Hacks. This is the first of three videos where he unpacks the second sentence in the standard closing that says "Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage makers in their creative endeavors."
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks, I want to talk about being an inspiration.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
I'm in the process of going through the closing paragraph that I use in a lot of my videos where I talk about the "why" of House of Hacks. Yesterday I referenced the, and talked about, the God-given creative spark that I believe each one of us has. Today I want to start talking about the next sentence that goes something along the lines of "Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage these types of makers."
Today I want to focus in on the word "inspire."
I think that there's really nothing new under the sun. When we have a new idea, when we come up with something that's new to us, I believe it's really a synthesis of everything that we know, everything we've seen and all of our life experience to that point where we've taken different things and put them together, perhaps in a new way, but it's still based on other things. Everything we do is really a result of those who have gone before us. We're standing on the shoulders of giants as it's been said. Where we take something that somebody else has done and we combine it with something else, some other experience that we have, and put it together in a new way but there's still elements of what's gone on before.
One of the Green brothers did a video recently kind of talking about this idea and I'll leave a link to it below in the description.
Another person that's talked about this idea is James Burke in his series "Connections." This is a video series that came out, I think, in the late seventies. He also wrote a book about it that kind of encapsulated all this same information from the series.
In that he took a modern invention and went back several centuries and showed how what went on before had different inflection points where it created created something new and that lead to a new development which in turn lead to a new development which in turn lead to what we have today. And I thought that was a really interesting way of looking at the history of technological development. While it was a great series, I really enjoyed it, I watched it several times, I actually have the book and have read it several times, I think one thing it tends to focus on is kind of a linear progression through the years and I think that's a little bit... I disagree with that. I think that at each inflection point there were many things that came together in the individual's mind or the group's mind that created that new thing. Where it was a lot of streams coming together to form a new river.
And so I want to be one of those tiny streams that provides a little bit of input into somebody's life that they can take and integrate with other things that they know and create something new. And that they can then share that with the world and with others.
So I try to publicize ideas I find interesting. And so when I present something that I know has been inspired by somebody else, I always try to make sure that I credit them, leave a link if appropriate and just let people know that there is source material beyond what I'm doing that did inspire me that they can go back to and perhaps be inspired by in maybe a different way based on their experiences.
So tomorrow I want to talk about the next word in that sentence: "educate."
Why do we make things? What is it that drives us to create things? In this episode of the House of Hacks, Harley explains why he believes everyone has a spark of creativity, regardless of the form that this creativity takes.
This is the eighth episode of Vlog Every Day in August 2017 (aka #SSSVEDA2017).
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks, I want to talk about why I believe everyone has a creative spark.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
This is the first in a series of videos where I decompose the closing paragraph that I use in quite a few of my videos.
That paragraph starts with "I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark."
Now, I believe in God. I believe in the Judaeo-Christian God and I believe that He created the heavens and the earth.
As such, if we look at creation from the sub-atomic particles to the vast expanses of space with galaxies strewn throughout I see incredible beauty and incredible creativity. There's things out there that we have no comprehension of that in His creativity He has created. And He has created because He is a creative and beautiful God, He has created beauty in nature and with incredible variety.
I believe He also has created man in His image. And there's many facets to what that means, but one facet is that I believe He has taken a portion of His creativity and put it in each one of us.
Now He is an infinite God and we are finite people. There's no way we can, any one of us could have all His creativity. But I believe that each one of us does have a sliver of His creativity that He has given to us.
Now for different people this manifests in different ways. Some people build families and we call those people parents. Some people build communities and we call them teachers or pastors or rabbis or priests. Some people build companies and we call them managers or CEOs, entrepreneurs. Some people like to make things out of physical objects and we call them craftsmen or sculptors. I have a whole list of them here on my shirt.
But regardless of your vocation or calling, I believe you have the opportunity to use your creative spark. No I don't have a creative spark in all these different areas. In fact I don't really have a creative spark in any of these particular areas. But where I do express my creativity is in making physical objects or coming up with solutions to problems that involve wood, metal, electronics, things of this nature.
And that's what I limit myself to on this particular channel. I don't try to go out and be all things to all people. I just try to explain things that I'm familiar with and the things that I enjoy working and hopefully other people can find enjoyment in those too where their interests overlap with mine.
So this channel is for people that have a range of interests but all kind of related to making things out of physical materials and making physical objects out of them. Occasionally I might get into software which kind of gets more into the virtual world or photography which can kind of bridge the gap between the virtual world in creating digital images and then the physical world in printing them out and enjoying them on the screen in physical manifestations.
So that's kind of why I'm interested in making things and I believe everybody really has a creative spark but I can't address everybody's creative spark so we're just addressing a very small subset of that here at House of Hacks.
So thanks for joining me on this creative journey of ours and until next time, go make something.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Why's this channel named "House of Hacks?" We'll find out today.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfters. Harley here.
So why did I name this channel "House of Hacks?"
Well, before I got into video, I had three written blogs. One was a software blog, one was a photography blog and one was kind of a catch-all, more philosophy, religion, that kind of thing.
And I found as I was writing those blogs that every once in a while I'd have a topic that didn't fit neatly into any one of those categories and I still wanted to talk about it. So I didn't really have a place to put it.
So, as I was thinking about video, I wanted to take this lesson into consideration. And, so I wanted something that was a little bit more broad based, something where more than one thing could fit into that topic if I wanted to make it fit that way.
So a house is a single building but it has different rooms for different purposes. So this kind of fit in with the broad collection of things that I wanted to have to designate what this channel was about.
So why "hacks?"
Well I consider myself a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. So that kind of fits in with the "hack" mentality where you kind of work away on something until you get it and you may not necessarily do it the most efficient way, the most elegant way, but eventually you get the job done in a way that's acceptable.
This fits into the old term, the old definition for "hack" where... one of the classic definitions is "modify or change something in an extraordinary way" or "a clever solution to a tricky problem." And that's kind of the sense of the word "hack" that I'm working with here.
Not the new sense of the word where it's kind of become "people that break into computers." That's not what I'm talking about. That's more, I prefer the word "cracker" or "crack" for that type of activity where you're cracking into computers and breaking through security. That's not what we're talking about.
I'm talking about putting things together, maybe not necessarily things that were meant to go together but putting them together to come up with a solution to a problem.
And "Hacks" alliterates nicely with "House." So that was a bonus.
So that's really why I came up the channel name. "House" meaning a collection of things and "Hacks" meaning putting something together until you make it work. And that's really how I kind of approach most of my creative projects. I'll have an idea and I'll go in and just working away on it until I have a solution that works for me and for my purposes.
For the rest of this week, I want to talk about the paragraph I use frequently when I'm closing my videos. That paragraph goes something along the lines of:
I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
Sometimes this manifests through making things with a technical or mechanical bent to them.
Through this channel I hope to inspired, educate and encourage these types of makers in their creative endeavors.
Usually this involves physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography, or other similar types of things.
If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.
Thanks for joining me on our creative journey.
Now go make something.
Perfection's not required. Fun is!
And that's how I finish quiet a few of my videos.
For the rest of this week, I want to go through that kind of line by line, phrase by phrase and talk about why I chose those phrases for that closing to describe the whole purpose of House of Hacks. It's really kind of do a deep dive into the "why" of House of Hacks. Why I'm doing this channel.
I hope that sounds interesting to you; that's going to be the rest of this week.
It is so easy to get so close to a problem you can’t see a solution. In fact, this is probably how we live much of our lives. We’re inside a frame of reference and can’t see the picture we’re a part of. In this episode of the House of Hacks, Harley and Diane chat about ways to break out of the frame and think outside the box. Mostly this is about shifting our perspective. It can be hard to do but there are some things we can do to make it easier.
This is the second of a new video content type called Maker Musings. These will be occasional episodes where we go meta, get philosophical and talk about the process of creating projects and making things rather than the actual doing.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Imagine what it'd be like if you could always be thinking outside the box. Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to talk about how you can do this.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers.
I'm Harley, your host for Maker Musings. This is the second episode on this series. And again I'm joined by my lovely wife Diane and we're going to be talking today about thinking outside the box.
Thinking outside the box means approaching problems in new and innovative ways. Conceptualizing problems differently and understanding your position in relation to a particular situation in a way you never thought of before.
So what you're saying is, it's sort of ironic in that it's a cliched way of to think of cliched situations in ways that aren't cliched.
Yes, that's it.
So what are some ways to start thinking outside the box?
So, one way is to educate yourself in areas that are outside your area of expertise. The idea is to get more information from different perspectives.
A couple ways of doing this would be like to go learn a religion that's not your own. That doesn't mean necessarily that you have to believe it, but just learn about it so you can kind of get other people's perspectives on how they approach the same problem but may approach it differently.
Another way would be to read a genre of fiction that you don't normally read. If you normally read romances, go read a western. If you normally read westerns, go read some sci-fi. You know. Something like that.
Again, a lot of times, they all have kind of the same story lines in terms of heros and having problems that they're trying to solve and growth of the hero but they're going to approach the situations differently and from a different perspective. So it's just kind of a different way of getting a new way of thinking about the same type of problem.
So, that's one way, what's another that you could use to kind of kick-start yourself to thinking outside the box?
Well, one way is if you're like me and you normally write you notes out, instead of writing them out, just sketch or doodle them.
Another way would be to... well, I like to draw and I've gone through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and they had a wonderful suggestion in that book that actually tells you to turn your subject matter that you're drawing upside down. And what happens is your brain no longer interprets the subject but rather see... your eyes start seeing the shapes and so your brain is working a little bit differently from either... from the right side of the brain rather than the left side of the brain.
Another way to do that would be to work backwards. For example, when I was learning how to play the piano, I would always start from the beginning of a piece and I would always really learn the beginning of the piece and get so frustrated because I could never get to the end of the piece because I was making so many mistakes in the middle of the piece and having to start over and going back to the beginning. Well, my instructor told me to actually start at the very back, or the last measure of the piece and just add one measure at a time and then you get to the point where you can add four measures at a time and work backwards. You know. A phrase at a time until you get back to the beginning and by the time you learn the beginning you know the whole piece.
So that would be a way of getting a different perspective on the problem and forcing your brain to think differently.
Another way of kind of doing that same kind of think is to just talk about it. And I think there's two ways you can talk about it.
You can either talk about it with another person who's an expert in the field. While you're both experts in the same field, there's going to be areas where they have experience that you don't and areas where you have experience that they don't. So in talking about it they can bring just kind of a different perspective but still with an understanding of the domain.
Another way you can talk about it is with somebody who has no clue about the situation. A complete neophyte. Again, because you're trying to formulate and think about the problem in a way that you can explain it to somebody that doesn't understand the situation, doesn't understand the domain, sometimes that allows you to break out of fixed ways of thinking it and switch to new ways that allow you to see the problem differently. It's kind of interesting, this is so common in programming that there's actually a term called "rubber ducking" and the idea is... the idea comes from someone who had a rubber duck, you know, that you have, play with in the bath tub. He had on sitting on top of his monitor and whenever he got stuck on a problem, he'd just start explaining the problem to the rubber duck. And a lot of times he'd have a breakthrough in understanding the problem.
So do you have another way of kind of thinking outside the box?
Right. I've gone through a bunch of books on how to write songs and one of the examples that the author talked about was actually setting limits on yourself. So for like music, try to write a song using only three notes. Or try to write a song using only one chord. Just set limits that are... they're not so restrictive that they condemn you if you don't make them or if you break out of the limits but what happens when you actually set the limits is you're forced to actually think about ways to do things differently in music, or any other topic, that you would not have thought of had you not had the limit on yourself.
So another way of applying that would be like if you're into photography, limiting yourself to a single lens. Just take one prime lens out with you on a photowalk. Or also another way would be if you're doing nighttime photography, do nighttime photography for one photo shoot without any light. So you're forced to use the existing light. Or conversely, take a flash with you and you have to use the flash during daylight hours. That'd be another way of kind of thinking about the problem differently.
This is something setting up creative boundaries and TED-Ed actually has a good video on this on their channel. I'll leave a link to it down in the description.
Harley, can you think of any other ways to inspire creativity?
Yeah, the last thing I think that we'll cover today is going out and doing something physical. Just take a break from the problem. Go out take a walk. Go for a run. Go work out at the gym. Something like that. Just to let your subconscious mind be able to work on it without your conscious mind being involved in it. So you're thinking about something else, doing something physical, getting the blood flowing to just kind of break out and be able to approach the problem from a different perspective.
But don't forget to take your journal or your cell phone so that you can make notes while you're out doing something physical.
Absolutely. We talked about that in the last episode, where have a way to write down your ideas when they do come. That's a great point. Great point.
So that's it for this episode of Maker Musings.
I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any ideas for future topics of Maker Musings, leave them down below in the comments below.
