How to be a DIYer Without Time or Talent

How to be a DIYer Without Time or Talent

Gerri Detweiler is the host of Talk Credit Radio. She interviewed me about MAKE magazine and my book Made by Hand.<

Gerri: Tell me a little bit about what you learned from your DIY journey?

Mark: I think the most important thing I learned was that itโ€™s okay to make mistakes, and that you can learn a lot from mistakes. In fact, a lot of research has shown that people learn fast when they do make errors because it really sticks in your mind.

As Editor-in-Chief of Make Magazine which is a technological project magazine, I hung around a lot of people that I call โ€œalpha makers,โ€ people who are just committed to anything and they do a great job of it. I found that it isnโ€™t so much their skill level thatโ€™s important but the fact they have gotten over their fear of screwing up. And that is like the most important thing that I learned, otherwise youโ€™re going to be frozen with fear.

I make tons of mistakes all the time but I hopefully learn from them so that every new box guitar I build is a little bit better than the one before. Then you can raise the bar and challenge yourself to try something a little better. Itโ€™s a fun way of looking at the world.

How to Be a DIYer Without Time or Talent<

Mark Frauenfelder is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Make: magazine, and the founder of the popular Boing Boing blog.

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