Building a table

I’ve been taking out some partitioned walls at home and this has left a stack of lovely timber. Rather than burn it I decided to recycle it by making an outside table from the wood.

After all how hard can it be to build one. Four legs, a frame and a top, right? Well, umm, no not that easy.

Well not having built one before it’s a little more challenging than you think.

That’s a great life lesson, other people have skills we don’t and that’s where their value is. Often we think that the work others do is easy and should be cheap. Oh it’s just a table, just a website, just a bit of accounting…

If other people’s work is good then you are paying for their experience so that we don’t have to waste the time doing all the trial and error work to get good.

For us we just need to find the thing we’re skilled at and then build the value by becoming really good at that thing.

I’m probably not going to pursue a career in furniture building but I’m happy I had a go and recycled the wood and after I’ve built the top we’ll have a good table. It just will have taken 5 times longer than a carpenter would have.

**** Update – the now finished table

The gun to the head

We all have this feeling that we do our best stuff under pressure with a gun to our head.

To some extent there is truth in this, we do need deadlines to keep us focused.

However, rushed work is never going to be our best work.

The best work takes time, patience and being able to spend time concentrated on that one piece of work and that one bit of work only. That means shutting ourselves off, preparing and being able to work deeply.

We can not work deeply with a gun to our head.