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Well yeah, how else do you learn skills? You’re not gonna be good at something if you don’t push your boundaries.
Also, most things anyone can do somewhat decent. Skills just make you be better at it (and the other way around like you pointed out).
I get that, I think the aim of the meme is more like, “I’ve never done any woodworking before, I’m gonna start by design and build a super intricate entertainment system designed for heavy load with multiple interlocking pieces”
You gotta push yourself to learn but there’s definitely starter projects and non-starter projects
So it’s funny that you bring that up, because I spent my shower trying to figure out what I can do with the good condition studs leftover from de-finishing my basement. Ideas ranged from “a table should be simple enough” to “I can empty the garage and turn one wall into a workbench with integrated shelving.”
I have a reciprocating saw, a miter saw, a drill, and zero experience. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Do you already have some sort of large work surface to mount your miter saw on? If you’re not overly concerned with appearance, a workbench is a pretty approachable project. Unless you’ve got something really fancy in mind
Nope. The two times I used it, I just set it in the driveway and worked on the ground. Hence the need for a workbench lol. Push comes to shove I can clamp it to a plastic folding table.
I think a workbench (maybe minus the shelving) is a better first project idea than a table anyway, since it’s a work surface you expect to get beat up and so it doesn’t need to be fine furniture craftsmanship.
It does need to be flat and sturdy, though, so have fun planing all those studs so that you can laminate them without gaps and such.
Also, good luck going down the rabbit hole of workbench design and never actually building the thing because you’re overwhelmed with choice.
I’m somewhere between right now, doing a personal project that takes skills I learned in uni but haven’t used in years and it’s a much larger scale than I probably intended. I’m letting myself be ok with going slow and making mistakes, bigger issue for me is going to be letting things be good enough and stop screwing with them.
Diving in over my head is normal for my ADHD, don’t doubt it’s that way for others as well. I definitely tend to overdo things
This is just “learn by doing” 🤷
Works for me all the time. That’s how I learned parametric/generative 3D design, circuit board design, and embedded rust programming simultaneously. Ended up making this:
https://youtu.be/iv6Rh8UNWlI?si=0Qv9AU8Hxbu_6Red
…but it’s just the latest in a long line of “ambitious projects that you currently don’t have the skills to complete.” Some worked out, some didn’t. I learned a shitton every time though (which is good because I’m a terrible traditional student 😁)
I read paramedic and was worried
Your adhd allows a “learn by doing” mode?
Mine blocks me by starting & outlining the ‘ambitious project’ just for the very outlining process to birth a myriad of non-projects to kinda “learn by doing” small aspects of the main project bcs the main (first of it’s kind for me) protect cannot possible be imperfect … ofc whilst knowing perfectly how shitty it will inevitably be and that that is fine since the goal is to have it working & inevitably learn from it.
So I just learn without ever starting the actual project.
You can pretend much more easily that your project “isn’t unfinished”* if it has the status of “not yet stated” … Its not technically true, just easier to pretend.
And a project never started can live in and continuously clog your mind for even longer than a an already started one that at least somewhat satisfied your curiosity.
One of the things that I went over with my therapist is getting out of analysis paralysis. Sometimes, just picking something from the high-level outline and going for it will help.
I guess it depends on you. I’m not sure if it’s ADHD thing or not, but I just love researching random things (and forget them next day) and I guess that’s what makes me decent also at what I do for living.
Someone asks a weird question in our friends WhatsApp group, and I end up investigating it for 2 hours and spamming the chat with everything I find - often annoying the people in that very chat =D
And that transfers well into starting a project I have initially no fucking clue about
Yeah, lol, thats me too, also helps me at work (well, not help “me” per se, but the quality of my work is much better).
I love having approximate knowledge of many things.
Its about the best thing the modern information age has to offer to a pleb like me. A few hundred years ago if I wanted to research a random topic I would have had to be very lucky, prob royalty.
yooo I also made my own keyboard, tho I used ergogen and ZMK so it’s not nearly as ambitious as your project
As a Software Engineer it’s how I learned pretty much everything related to my profession.
as someone who for the longest time sat on my ass thinking to myself “no i can’t do this yet i’m not good enough at the thing” FUCK that attitude so hard, i’ve achieved nothing because i never get “good enough”, i could always get better and so, in my own perspective, i was never “enough”
fuck it and go do the thing without adequate skills, you’ll learn on the way and even if you fail you’ll have gotten something out of it
Hard agree!
but please consider not doing safety and security related stuff without properly researching first and probably should not deal with such things if you are uncertain and can’t find anyone with expertise to help you out. Anything from blowing up shit in your own backyard to creating an online application that deals with user data
Edit: not saying don’t ever do those things, everyone has the right to learn things, but so many fingers have been lost and so much personal data has been leaked due to not stopping for a moment to think in the heat of passion and excitement (or frustration).
a very important disclaimer! i was mostly thinking about art and stuff lmao
But the pen is mightier than the sword!
Yeah maybe the disclaimer is a bit unnecessary here, just wanted to add to your comment just incase someone has been dying to make their own homemade fireworks
If you do it enough times and fail enough times, you eventually gain enough skill that it starts to actually work.
Don’t forget investing a couple hundred dollars and losing interest by the time your new junk arrives.
Yuuuup. I received half a class in the thing that I decided would make or break my thesis project.
Got analysis paralysis the whole time I was researching how to do it, and ended up doing it in about a week in a half, in which I slept for about 8h total. Was congratulated on it by the board, but I’ll never in my life work in that sort of thing again if I can help it.
These comments make me feel valid af
IT IS.
Why spent time learning when I can deep dive into a project and spent three times as long working on it bcz I have to learn how to do things first?
This community gets so close to my real life choices I got to look out my windows lol.
