Make Stuff

every. single. day.

There’s not enough time to learn everything you want to. It’s just impossible.

So go make stuff.

I know, it sounds like an insanely backwards idea. But it’s the best way to learn.

Case in point: Jennifer Dewalt. She decided she wanted to learn to code, and to do so decided to build 180 websites in 180 days, armed with nothing but Google. Her first sites were basic, but she worked up and each day improved her craft. She built everything from basic games to to-do list apps, using everything from CSS animation and Instagram APIs to Backbone and Node.js, all without taking a single coding class. Her school was trial and error, combined with Google, GitHub, and StackOverflow. Instead of regretting that she didn’t know how to code, she quite literally just did it and made real stuff along the way.

Now, her example isn’t enough to prove anything. There’s theories galore on how much you need to practice to master a craft, everything from Malcolm Gladwell’s theory in Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to perfect a skill to Josh Kaufman’s book that says the first 20 hours are the most important for learning anything. But both of those ideas include the same thing: practice. Practice makes perfect, says the old saw, and while it may not be true, you’re at the very least going to learn a lot more with practice than you will doing nothing.

It’s a lot easier to read yet another simple trick that’ll help you do what you want to do, but a lot less rewarding. So go make stuff instead. You’ll mess up, but that’s the point: you learn from the great old school of hard knocks. And hey, start small: you don’t want those knocks to be too hard. But there’s no better way to start running than to try to avoid falling down.

*****

We decry the notion that tablets are only for consumption, not creation, but then the most popular uses of phones, tablets, computers, and the very internet itself is for consumption. We watch viral videos, read rehashed news stories, upvote funny comments — we consume content. That’s what tech ends up really being about. The only guy spending time wisely on Reddit is the one doing an AMA to promote his work; for everyone else, it’s almost only passive consumption of brain junk food.

Fuss about Instagram filters all you want, but at least it’s got more people than ever trying to capture moments artistically — creating something of value, at the very least to their own selves. That’s not bad.

Blogging, they say, is a dying art. Don’t let it die. Go write something, however small. Share your photos. Strive to improve. Try to take a slightly better picture every day — don’t go buy a new camera or new apps, but use what you have and improve your skills a bit at a time, and publish your efforts. Don’t read a book on coding — go try to tweak the CSS of your blog’s theme. It’s the perfect test ground where nothing can really go wrong (and if you’re that worried, go make another blog just to break.). Change some numbers here, refresh, see what broke. Now fix it. If you can’t fix it, Google the problem, and then fix it. Now go break something else. Then write another blog post, but break out the thesaurus and use words you’ve never used before. Use different sentence structures. Break English, and fix it, too.

*****

If I ever have kids, I plan give the Lego company a ton of money — but I don’t plan to buy any of their branded kits. Instead, I’ll get a ton of the raw original Legos and a table of green sheet Lego board, and let my kids go to town. No, I’m not being a cheapskate. I just think the kits are as dumb as the next toy set, and the plain sets of raw Legos are one of the best ways ever to promote making stuff and learning by doing.

Putting a kit together by following the instructions is just like putting IKEA furniture together as an adult: you’ll feel like you’re accomplishing something, like you’re making something, when really you’re just doing some really active consumption. You don’t really have to think (that is, once you’ve figured out what the diagrams mean — that, admittedly, can sometimes be a true puzzle).

Making something new, though — that’s a whole different game. You stare at the little blocks, and imagine what they could be if you put them together just so. But there’s never enough of the right pieces, so you’ll have to improvise. And then, your perfect dinosaur’s head is far too heavy and falls over, and you’ll have to improvise again. Trial and error. Learning by doing.

Then you grow up, and by the time you’ve put your IKEA furniture together, you feel pretty good that it’s done, and sit down to consumer some more content. Why not make your own shelves from raw wood and screws instead? Yeah, don’t put your valuable stuff on them at first, until you’re sure they’re sturdy, but I bet you can do it. And if not — if you hit a snag after you started — you’ll be able to find the answers. Just don’t look for them beforehand.

There’s something to planning ahead, counting the cost, and thinking before doing. All very important. But that’s not something you need to think about when you’re trying to learn. You’re either busy being born or busy dying, as Steve Jobs liked to quote Bob Dylan. So keep being born, reinventing yourself, learning. It’s messy. Life’s messy. But you’ll sure learn from it.

So go make stuff. Over and Over. Every day. Keep making stuff, something small, every day. Oh the places you'll go, oh the things you'll learn. You’ll improve your skills, a tiny bit at a time, without even thinking about it. You’ll grow. You’ll become an expert, accidentally.

The next time you think “I wish I knew how to do that”, go do it. You’ll learn a lot trying. And you’ll make stuff.

Originally published on October 8th, 2013 in Techinch Magazine Issue 6

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