We can give ourselves permission to make things without those things being perfect. And the fact is, once you get started, you don’t stop. The more you make things, the more you can make things and the more you want to make things.

We don’t need to define ourselves by the things we make, but we can still make them. This goes back to the idea of handiness, right? This isn’t a book about becoming an expert in any one thing. It’s about trying lots of things and becoming increasingly capable as a result. It’s about getting comfortable experimenting with something you’ve never don... See more

It’s true that a farm family of the 1930s had to depend on their material intelligence for survival, while today’s city dwellers and office workers can get away with ignoring their physical environment and making a fine living. Maybe this feels like a sort of progress. But basic necessity is only one side of our relationship to materials. There are... See more

the more we have the confidence and ability to make things from what we already have, the less we feed the capitalist system that doesn’t care about us or the people making our stuff or the planet that our rampant consumerism is actively making uninhabitable.

As we’ve shifted so entirely from a making economy to a buying economy, we’ve lost a lot of inherited skills that we might have learned from doing or from observing rather than from formal instruction.

We very often do not have the time to create what we need by ourselves. It’s reasonable to ask who on Earth is expected to return our emails or make our dinners while we wile away our time crafting. We’ve increased the distance between ourselves and the things we need or want—and also made for ourselves a steeper learning curve for meeting our own ... See more

“I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us unless it’s inside a frame.” - Abbas Kiarostami

Feedback is a gift

Honest, thoughtful feedback is a gift. While it's fun to think about how other people should change their approach, it's empowering to know that you have control as a feedback recipient. You're 50% of a one-on-one feedback conversation, so if the conversation isn't going the way you hoped, think about what you could do differentl... See more

You always hear people say, "Well, it's the market, it's the market." What the hell does that mean? I don't even know what that means as opposed to what did you do to ... I mean, the world's going to exist whether you like it or not. I always say I got to live in this world; I don't create it. The world's happening, what are you going to do about i... See more