Have you ever taken a job you didn't feel you were qualified to take? How did that turn out? Join this channel to support Tested and get access to perks, like asking Adam questions during live streams: th-cam.com/channels/iDJtJKMICpb9B1qf7qjEOA.htmljoin
I did! I took a job as a chef and was horribly under qualified. The beginning was gruelling, but it solidified my work ethic, and became a part of who I am today.
Lost my job of 9 years, and it forced me to look for anything like it ASAP. No degree, no expertise, just years of warehouse work. The only callback I got was to be one of 3 people who work and run an entire shipping department! Took notes on everything, pasted notes to the computer, wrote notes to myself to re-write later, emailed myself 1-off errors I’d have to know how to deal with later… been here almost a year and it only *just* feels like I’m getting it. Made some expensive errors and fully expected to be on the chopping block… but I’ve made it. Making more money for the family than ever before, and looking at the possibility of a REAL vacation- not just a day off at home! Never had one of those, not even as a kid. Still alot to improve on, but I might just be able to do this.
Not a job so much but more a temporary position that was way above anything I had been prepared for. One day I was just a long service, pretty experienced retail guy and then a month later I’m a Defacto manager with a suit and responsible for the whole store. And my credentials? One month of training and a 30 minute knowledge quiz by the BM
Definitely a feeling I’m familiar with. Thank you for sharing that. Also, would love to hear more of how you ended up in R&D at the toy company…as someone who shares both a theater and maker (on a much more modest scale) background, I’ve often contemplated trying to find a role that involves creativity and engineering, but hard to see how to bridge the gap to there from where I am.
In college I fancied myself a decent conductor because I had led pit orchestras for several musicals. A friend convinced me to work with a ballet group on campus to put on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker with a live orchestra. I knew that I was underqualified, but I vastly underestimated just how underqualified I was. The whole thing ended up falling apart, and I wasted a lot of people's time and energy as a result. The whole experience was humiliating, but I did learn the practical lesson that "shoot for the moon" is only good advice when it won't negatively affect a lot of people if you miss.
"Because I was not management material, and I didn't want to be management. I wanted to put my hands back on a workbench." This resonates with me so much. I write software. I don't want to manage people, I don't want to manage products, I want to solve the technical problems, not the human ones. People ask me, "Well don't you want to progress in your career?". NO. I want to write software and solve technical problems.
I'm pretty good at remembering where I put things. Which is why it was so maddening to live with someone who loved nothing more than moving those things and promptly forgetting where
I'm really good at remembering where I put things and also really good at remembering where I see things have been put. Naturally, I've become the "finder" in the house when the kids can't find something.
The British comedian Jon Richardson has a good bit about this - there are "putters" and "leavers" in the world, as in "my keys are where I always put them" vs. "my keys are wherever I left them." You always end up having a putter and a leaver together - two putters will end up murdering each other, and two leavers will end up dying of dysentery.
My mom has stayed at my house for two nights as she had to work nearby and the last morning made her own breakfast as I had to leave early. It's sweet she washed up but I spent more time looking for the cheese slicer than if I'd done the dishes myself.
Oh boy, I call our house the department store because my partner will just spend a day cleaning up and that mostly consists of moving stuff around, so that pile of papers I have specifically put on the desk is now in one of three places and that's infuriating!
Not only forgetting where they moved it to, but also forgetting _that_ they moved it at all resulting in the limitlessly frustrating excuse of "I didn't touch it". Then when that excuse is blatantly disproven, you get "ok, well then don't leave your stuff everywhere", as you look around to see piles and piles of _their_ stuff everywhere.
Another one was in conversation; one fellow held their hand up in a fist and asked "What if my hand is always like this?". The other one answered, "A defect." The first opened their hand and said, "How about when it's like this?" - and the other one answered, "Also a defect."
The job I'm at now, and have been doing for 5 years, I was WAY under qualified for. I just happened to be the only person at the time. I hated the job, because I hated sucking at it. Glad I stuck it out because I'm good at it now, and make good money.
Yeah, this is what I tell people: It's your employer's job to decide whether you're qualified. It's your job to learn and get better (whether they keep you or fire you).
As a software engineer the idea that "in any project there will be a time when you aren't sure if it's gonna work" is something that I got comfortable with fairly early. However mistakes while I was learning were relatively harmless. These days mistakes aren't as harmless, but it's still a core thing I remind myself to avoid imposter syndrome
I am not a maker or builder. But I love watching these videos regardless, purely for the vibe that you put off, and your excitement and passion for what you do. Thanks Adam, I very much enjoy watching 🙏🏻
@tested As someone who struggle with "Impostor syndrome" constantly, and litterally on a daily basis, this was really "comforting" to watch! I'm not a "maker", but work in a completly diffeirent field, but as someone who is autodidact in his field, I always feel like I'm just in my position, because of luck, and I know many people, who are better skilled, and deserve my job more then I do. While I might have a worse case than Adam, It's still comforting to know, that even a succesful guy as him, also have similar struggles, as I do.
6:15 The concept of "This is what's happening" is also called Radical Acceptance. Being able to accept the situation as it is, and (instead of putting energy and thought into being upset about it), focusing on the best thing to do - is a good way to create more peace in your life.
My immediate knee jerk reaction is: management will always find a way to claim you're under qualified if it benefits them. My Director told me Supervisor that I "really know what's what and do great work". 2% raise incoming
That concept of "as long as I've prepared myself to feel that way" is a 100% legitimate teachable moment that translates well into all corners of life.
People always say "assume the worst and the outcome will never disappoint you", but that seems so de demotivating to me. "Prepare yourself to feel that way" is so much better! Using that one from now on 😁
It's something I resonate with a lot, and also one of the things that irritates me about a lot of situations. I work best when I know what I'm signing up for, whether it's 5 minutes of something easy or 8 hours of labour. But when I have to go somewhere not knowing how long it will be, or what I'll be doing there, I find that so demoralising. I never know if I'm just one small task away from finishing, or if I'll find out I have a full hour of work to do and still no guarantee that's the last of it.
I feel that your experience means you set up your shots pretty well and I don't think you should spend more time on it. The enjoyment of your videos comes from me feeling like I am in the shop with you looking over your shoulder. That's never going to be the perfect angle but it feels so natural. Thank you for sharing your space with us Adam.
All projects and goals follow Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey: excitement, challenge, downfall, nadir, overcoming, victory. It’s a sine wave, though it may require many waves to get to shore. I finally recognized that the hard part would always come, but if I persisted, I would find success just over that last hill. It’s inevitable. It’s the oldest human wisdom, told exactly the same in disparate stories across disparate civilizations. It’s innate to us, instinctual, to push through, survive, and succeed. Keep going.
If my partner asks “Where are your keys?”…. I just don’t know and I’ll spend 10 mins looking for them. If she asks “Hey didn’t we have x, I think I last saw it when we moved house 6 years ago?” Oh, yeah it’s in the cupboard hidden by the sofa, it’s on the left in a green box about halfway back to the wall. I get what feeling Adam is describing.
I find this particlar question amusing because.... the hardest job for me is one I already know how to do. Boring is impossible, I need to be solving problems and learning. In fact, I can honestly say, I have never even applied for a job that I was fully qualified for, and I couldn't imagine why I would want to. Boredom is what I can't cope with, being in over my head? That is where I want to be.
Dude, I thought you couldn't feel more relatable to me yet here you are, talking about how just because you know something about yourself doesn't necessarily mean that you can change it, brilliant 😂
Generally, I'll pay a professional to do something properly any time I *really* care about the outcome being high quality. If I'm going to live with the thing for a long time, and use it a lot, I want the best I can afford, and that's when it's worth paying someone who does it all the time to make it for you. If I just need it once, or I don't made it being a bit rough around the edges, or I don't need it to be perfect, that's a great time to try making it myself.
That's oftentimes exactly the reason why I do stuff myself, I've found that nearly every tradesman cuts corners and leaves bad results at some places due to lazyness or cost cutting. Stuff like rounding screws so they're really hard to remove later, only doing the large obvious bits but skipping the harder corners, etc... Having that said... my decision process is mostly influenced by wether I like to do it. I'm not a fan of painting so I'll usually outsource that, I love doing electrical stuff so I'll do that, etc...
I always took jobs I was _technically_ underqualified to do. It always worked out, as I know I'd not hit my limit yet. Still pushin' those boundaries today, new stuff to learn every day.
Here was the lesson that gutted the "I remember exactly where I put that thing" idea as being worthwhile. Storage does not equal maintenance. I found the thing, but it had rotted from lack of attention. Even the best stored items can still suffer from insufficient attention. Wood needs to be oiled, rubber checked for dry rot, metal checked for rust, etc. and when I have too much I can't do that with any regularity
I know how he feels about the dive boots.....I know exactly where 95% of my stuff is in my garage but also experiencing the joy of finding something cool that I forgot I had
I work in many other shops and spaces other than my own. Watching people struggle with organization, DRIVES ME CRAZY! OMG! I'm like you. People will call me and need a something and I can, over the phone, navigate them through my space and have them placing hands on exactly what they are looking for.
Your Mindfullness (being aware in the moment). Radical acceptance (this is what it is). Has allowed you to become the talent and mensch you are today 💙
There is nothing that will send me careening toward the edge like going to the place where the thing lives, where the thing has ALWAYS lived, and it not being there. Going through the mental war of declaring there is absolutely no reason on God’s green earth why it should ever have been moved, and having zero memory of touching or even thinking about it for some time. A humbling lesson in the fallibility of my normally high-functioning memory circuits usually follows. On occasion it never surfaces and the mystery persists, but in those cases I usually had “help.”
I too have a mental map - and it drives me absolutely crazy when my wife messes with it - the number of times I have had to buy another thing to replace the thing that has gone missing only for that original thing to turn up 3 months later in some totally random place in my wife's hobby room is driving me crazy - the last time she initially blamed it on a contractor who was doing some work in the house - "they must have accidentally taken your drill thinking it was theirs" - so go buy another drill and 2 months later MY drill is uncovered under a box in HER room
Thought I’d send thanks for inspiring me to be a maker of sorts. I decided to try my hand at some steampunk creations and I made a sax player lamp and a baseball player charging station. They turned out great. These are the first things I made from scratch since maybe wood shop 40+ years ago. Making feels great. So thanks!
I don’t have to cope, cause they won’t hire me if they think I’m under qualified, even if I’m overqualified for the job. You don’t know how many marketing jobs I’ve applied to and haven’t gotten, despite them being jobs that I could do. Even with a letter of recommendation! I got a degree in film and a minor in digital media (with is pretty much everything else). I’m certified in both AVID media composer and the Adobe suite. I’ve been helping with online marketing, including graphic design, videography/photography, and video/photo editing since I was in 7th grade. And even with all that under my belt, I’m ALWAYS passed over for these positions (even at companies I’m already employed with).
Your "65/70%" comment is interesting and reminded me to the pep talk Neil Gaiman did for the 2007 NaNoWriMo speaking about how novels are written. Part of it was about when he reached three quarters of a novel, he always had a kind of crisis on how stupid or unoriginal all the plot sounds, while his agent tell him that he does that every time he reach that point (and all her other clients too). It can't be a coincidence to have a bump three quarters into something as different and it seems to be an universal law.
I remember somebody once saying that every piece of art has an ugly phase; they were talking about painting, but it applies to other kinds too. You start with a rough blocking out of the pose, then you sketch in some details, and then you paint the general colour regions, and it enters this awful uncanny valley... And then you start to paint on some more details and it suddenly looks great. Learning to accept the process and get past that phase, in any medium, is such a huge help
This lost thing question got me thinking. Perhaps it's an idea for a video? Not about this particular thing to be found necessarily, but generally about philosophy of searching a space like the cave.
LOVE the little random tosses like the U2 reference. Reminds me of a good friend whom I no longer hang with much do to #lifehappening. Your honestly and being yourself are appreciated.
Remembering where you put a specific thing and being able to find it within a minute on request is a really nice feeling. It's that short about "Dads when that random "just in case" piece of junk finally comes in handy" :D
Speaking of mold making AND having faith in the process, I once spent a year making a bronze sculpture that once it was finished, I had to look at and say yeah not only does this suck but the idea sucked from the beginning. I then had one shot to pivot it to a plan B which only worked because the Good Will near me happened to have enough old leather belts for me to use to hack up into another piece to go with the bronze extravaganza. Thus ended my senior art show, skin of the teeth style.
I have this with drawing and programming, 65 - 70% of the way in, you are in free fall and have to trust the process. Something that helps is awareness of that experience and taking a moment every time it happens to meditate on that feeling. So the next time it happens you recognize what it is, and don't fall into the trap again. This works for all emotions and thoughts or habits, if you grow your awareness, you can see when these things crop up and recognize "oh, it's that thought again" and somehow that allows us to separate ourselves enough to reduce our judgement of the thing.
7:06 - I super relate to your "high-functioning hoarder" vibe here... though I admit I'm currently not quite as high-functioning, for various reasons... but... yeah. this was super validating to hear you talk about, so thanks.
Remembering where your stuff is, is something I experience all the time it's just not me, it's my daughter. She doesn't live in our home anymore but her old room still has a lot of her stuff in it perfectly organized. I don't know how many times she has asked us to get something for her over the phone and she can tell us exactly where it is. example: desk, 2nd draw from top, back left hand corner, in red box. it's amazing.
I was the new guy so I wasn't assigned on a job of cutting jet tail cones. It was a pain in the ass job. It was being done at a loss to have contact with Boeing in the hope of getting a big contract. It was assigned to the most experienced machinists. They griped about it all the time. I told the shop manager to give me the job. I'd figure it out, and make it my favorite job, and he'd never hear a gripe from me. The other men said "Yea, give him the job". The manager said "You're on". I did the job for 3 months, and it was a pain in the ass before I figured it out. I invented a modification of the fixture, and improved productivity, lowered cost, and improved geometric accuracy. We kept putting in the lowest bid, and got skeptical of its quality, and sent an inspector to check it out. He was so impressed that we got a big contract. The fuselage turning fixture for the Boeing 777, and they requested I be assigned to the job. The 777 is the best selling jumbo jet in aviation history. With 2200 sold, and 1800 delivered in 30 years it has not had a single mass fatality accident to this day.
I find that the feeling of imposter syndrome, for me, comes down to people not being honest with others, and themselves, about how difficult and impossible something seemed or was.
Really good to hear right now. I started a new job last week. It’s what I’ve wanted to do since college, but the quantity is very overwhelming. Glad that even pros at Lucasfilm-somewhere I KNOW I’d never be creative enough to work-feel like that!
I’d love to see a behind the scenes type of video where we can see Adam setting up shots and moving around the shop building things. As a maker thinking about making videos someday, I would love to be a fly on the wall seeing the solo filming process
So where I work I honestly resonate with what he was saying about getting “the tap on the shoulder to leave” What I realized is even though I may not be as good/talented as all of my coworkers are I’m happy and positive and do my best to figure it out anyways. Turns out the owner loves that quality.
"feeling lost is part of the process". i had this revelation as well recently. I work in the engineering field without a degree, and I always feel like an imposter. a good engineer is an expert at learning new things. that is what I'm good at and I think that is where a lot of engineers fall short. if you don't feel out of your element you are not learning, which means you are not doing your job.
I'm going to keep this in mind because I keep not going after jobs that I would be on paper under qualified for but feel I would do well at, cuz even if I am qualified the anxiety will still be there
My brain seems to work similarly to Adam's with remembering where an object is several years later. I have had this work in my favour so many times in my life.
The troubles with the mold for the Blender is squaring up the 20$ bucks 850 mini pitcher over the old 800 1500w Blender socket. The Aerospace JB weld has 5 minutes setup, no mistakes buckaroo. And it is carbon fiber, you want that a nice thick bond all around, gotta get real messy.
I have a place for everything, but while using things I don't just put them back there, they will be in a temporary spot while I am still doing stuff - pick up, put down, search for, pick up again, put down again, search again, etc.
As someone with a collection in the 1000s, it is around that single digit thousands where you first start to get an odd "huh where is that" or "huh i didn't know i owned that." amazing how long it takes before you get there
An answer in this video struck me as odd. I belive you said something about a 'state of flow.' I've heard about people getting into the flow of things, but that way you referenced it made it sound like something much more specific. Were you talking about something specific or am I just hearing things?
I sometimes keep things because they're neat and I might have a use for them later. The most ridiculous case was a giant pink paperclip I found in the hall in middle school. I didn't actually use it for anything until I was 28 and needed it to hang up a stained glass bird just the way I wanted. I kept the paperclip all that time because it was big and pink and I'd never seen one like that before.
The topic of people complaining about the cost of an item/service comes up weekly on the RPF. I occasionally will build something for a commission and you almost always get "I could build it myself for that!" and I just say "Well you're welcome to do that, you're on the RPF after all." It seems like in the recent 5 years, unlike the last 24+ years on the RPF, that there are more people that join expecting things for free than most of the people in the past who came for info and to learn.
Got to start somewhere. Although I think the experience whether it be at College or in the field is most important. Also that piece of paper does mean something.
I find things that dissappear "fall" into storage. I would check everything in your storage container before you drive yourself crazy looking where it "should" be over and over
"this is what is happening " for me is "stating the obvious" which often gets me in trouble with those around me. or in rare cases find me a new friend , i want to collaborate with often both of us with out enough spoons.
It's funny and somewhat comforting that even total wizards like you suffers from imposter syndrome. I am 55, I have a lot of experience and I am working in my current job for quite some time and I know that I am probably pretty god at what I am doing or at least my colleagues and friends keep telling me. I never fucked up big time (not to say I never failed but well, not in a way that made me look completely incompetent) and still it is pretty hard for me to get rid of this feeling.
I hear you... Been with my employer for 27yrs. Going to retire at 58, from a position I've held for the last 12yrs. For most of those 12 years I felt the same. Being a non-degreed "engineer", surrounded by degreed engineers, you can't escape feeling underqualified on at least a weekly, if not daily basis. The lab I work in does about 4 kinds of testing, I can create test plans, perform all the testing and analysis for all 4. No one else in the lab can do this, they specialize in only 1-2 of the four. I've learned and been able to adequately use several different types of analytical software, some that the degreed engineers struggled to learn. Even with all that, I still feel underqualified. For several reasons, I'm glad to be retiring in a month or so, but one of the biggest is the relief I'll feel at not feeling underqualified for the job. Looking forward to going out and getting a part time job, stocking shelves or driving a forklift in some retail place or whare house. Something I'll definitely feel more than qualified to do. Peace at last...
This has been difficult. I have worked 10 jobs over the past 2 years 5 sets of 1 part and full time job. The biggest issue for me is even being qualified isn't enough. They want COLLEGE qualification. There are jobs out there that will hire you but in this economy 2 jobs is where you'll need to be to afford school during your break from one job.
I have the same type of memory of where I've left things. I once needed a calculator for a college exam (couldn't use a cell phone, of course, but I think we all had flip phones then anyway) and didn't want to waste the money to buy one, so I went through my childhood room to get one. I went directly to the place where I kept my high school calculator, found it didn't work, then went to the place where my previous high school calculator was kept and it didn't work in some other essential way, retrieved my middle school calculator, and so on. Every single time I knew right where it would be, even if it was buried under something else! They were all not fully functioning in some key way, but I ended up using one of the ones with a few nonfunctioning keys and just hoped I could avoid those or come up with a creative way to do the math differently.
Setting up camera angles when one works alone is difficult... there's quite a few interesting things I couldn't show on my videos, just becuase I didn't notice I was moving off-screen with my work... but doing this with a camera person is adding costs/complications that distract elsewhere. I don't think there's ever gonig to be an "I did enough", for the plain fact that it's two jobs at the same time. And I much rather focus on what I want to show my audience and appreciate a slightly suboptimal angle from an enthusaiastic maker myself too.
I seriously don't wanna sound to grumpy or negative, but with the vast majority of jobs i had, i had actually the extremely clear opposite impression that the people around me were under qualified. 😂😅 Meaning i has quite the leverage on a daily basis. Which in some cases was beyond mind blowing.
ADAM!! YOU CREATED ZOOBZ?!?!? I got those at OMSI in Portland Oregon on field trips. Those were one of my favorite building toys I’d ever had, along with Bionicles
I've reached a point where none of my professional experience matters because all my creative ventures have fizzled out so far and the real jobs I can actually put on my resume wouldn't get me hired if my life depended on it so I'm kind of stuck in my current role.
“Mold making is a deeply rigorous and unforgiving process.” What a polite way of saying “Shits Fucked.” - signed, a person who has made a lot of molds.
Speaking of lost things. I have one of those giant channellocks you tell the story about and I couldn't find it one day when I wanted it. How do you lose something that big? Probably three years later, I needed to dig through a tool box and there they were at the very bottom. For some reason I remembered the handles as coated with red plastic, but they were actually blue, so when I lost them I was always looking for a hint of red peeking through the clutter, and there wasn't any :-).
I definitely have a mental image of where everything is in my shelving, down to the tiny part bags. It'd be a terrible prank for someone to rearrange my stuff while I was gone. I'd never find anything!
I really wish I had the ability to mentally map out where things are like that. My wife has it but not me so I constantly ask her when I can't find things and she will tell me where I put it.
I think qualification is abstract. a piece of paper from a school doesn't actually mean you are better suited for a job than someone who has ambition to learn and perfect a skill.
I think this “imposter syndrome” the burden on all engineers, artists and scientists since we are doing something that we’ve never done before and sometimes people have never done before. So a good honest person will self doubt and a good honest customer/employer will see progress and be like: “we are moving forward solving this problem”.
There's always this part of a project about 2-3 of the way through that feels the worst for me, I know it'll be fine but it still stops me in my tracks sometimes. It would help if the last 3rd didn't seem to take longer than the first two though, finishing sure is a bear.
😂 the ADHD experience: knowing EXACTLY where this one weird niche thing is that you've been hanging on to for years while simultaneously having NO IDEA where the things are that you ACTUALLY need.
Almost all companies in the past freely chose to train and educate their new employees to qualify them for their jobs without them falling into 100's of thousands of education debt before they started their careers.
Have you ever taken a job you didn't feel you were qualified to take? How did that turn out?
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I did! I took a job as a chef and was horribly under qualified. The beginning was gruelling, but it solidified my work ethic, and became a part of who I am today.
Lost my job of 9 years, and it forced me to look for anything like it ASAP. No degree, no expertise, just years of warehouse work.
The only callback I got was to be one of 3 people who work and run an entire shipping department! Took notes on everything, pasted notes to the computer, wrote notes to myself to re-write later, emailed myself 1-off errors I’d have to know how to deal with later… been here almost a year and it only *just* feels like I’m getting it. Made some expensive errors and fully expected to be on the chopping block… but I’ve made it. Making more money for the family than ever before, and looking at the possibility of a REAL vacation- not just a day off at home! Never had one of those, not even as a kid.
Still alot to improve on, but I might just be able to do this.
Not a job so much but more a temporary position that was way above anything I had been prepared for. One day I was just a long service, pretty experienced retail guy and then a month later I’m a Defacto manager with a suit and responsible for the whole store. And my credentials? One month of training and a 30 minute knowledge quiz by the BM
Definitely a feeling I’m familiar with. Thank you for sharing that.
Also, would love to hear more of how you ended up in R&D at the toy company…as someone who shares both a theater and maker (on a much more modest scale) background, I’ve often contemplated trying to find a role that involves creativity and engineering, but hard to see how to bridge the gap to there from where I am.
In college I fancied myself a decent conductor because I had led pit orchestras for several musicals. A friend convinced me to work with a ballet group on campus to put on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker with a live orchestra. I knew that I was underqualified, but I vastly underestimated just how underqualified I was. The whole thing ended up falling apart, and I wasted a lot of people's time and energy as a result. The whole experience was humiliating, but I did learn the practical lesson that "shoot for the moon" is only good advice when it won't negatively affect a lot of people if you miss.
"Because I was not management material, and I didn't want to be management. I wanted to put my hands back on a workbench." This resonates with me so much. I write software. I don't want to manage people, I don't want to manage products, I want to solve the technical problems, not the human ones. People ask me, "Well don't you want to progress in your career?". NO. I want to write software and solve technical problems.
I'm pretty good at remembering where I put things. Which is why it was so maddening to live with someone who loved nothing more than moving those things and promptly forgetting where
I'm really good at remembering where I put things and also really good at remembering where I see things have been put. Naturally, I've become the "finder" in the house when the kids can't find something.
The British comedian Jon Richardson has a good bit about this - there are "putters" and "leavers" in the world, as in "my keys are where I always put them" vs. "my keys are wherever I left them." You always end up having a putter and a leaver together - two putters will end up murdering each other, and two leavers will end up dying of dysentery.
My mom has stayed at my house for two nights as she had to work nearby and the last morning made her own breakfast as I had to leave early. It's sweet she washed up but I spent more time looking for the cheese slicer than if I'd done the dishes myself.
Oh boy, I call our house the department store because my partner will just spend a day cleaning up and that mostly consists of moving stuff around, so that pile of papers I have specifically put on the desk is now in one of three places and that's infuriating!
Not only forgetting where they moved it to, but also forgetting _that_ they moved it at all resulting in the limitlessly frustrating excuse of "I didn't touch it".
Then when that excuse is blatantly disproven, you get "ok, well then don't leave your stuff everywhere", as you look around to see piles and piles of _their_ stuff everywhere.
Along with "This is whats happening," I find great comfort in "This too shall pass."
There's comfort in knowing nothing is forever
Another one was in conversation; one fellow held their hand up in a fist and asked "What if my hand is always like this?". The other one answered, "A defect." The first opened their hand and said, "How about when it's like this?" - and the other one answered, "Also a defect."
The third of this series is "That passed."
The job I'm at now, and have been doing for 5 years, I was WAY under qualified for. I just happened to be the only person at the time. I hated the job, because I hated sucking at it. Glad I stuck it out because I'm good at it now, and make good money.
Yeah, this is what I tell people: It's your employer's job to decide whether you're qualified. It's your job to learn and get better (whether they keep you or fire you).
As a software engineer the idea that "in any project there will be a time when you aren't sure if it's gonna work" is something that I got comfortable with fairly early. However mistakes while I was learning were relatively harmless. These days mistakes aren't as harmless, but it's still a core thing I remind myself to avoid imposter syndrome
I am not a maker or builder. But I love watching these videos regardless, purely for the vibe that you put off, and your excitement and passion for what you do.
Thanks Adam, I very much enjoy watching 🙏🏻
“Someone should write a song about that” 😂😂 I love your candid, often humorous answers as you reflect on your work and personal experiences.
You do realize this is already a very famous song, yes?
@@mymanmiles393 Yes, it was made by the group called "U2". lol!
You too?
@tested As someone who struggle with "Impostor syndrome" constantly, and litterally on a daily basis, this was really "comforting" to watch!
I'm not a "maker", but work in a completly diffeirent field, but as someone who is autodidact in his field, I always feel like I'm just in my position, because of luck, and I know many people, who are better skilled, and deserve my job more then I do.
While I might have a worse case than Adam, It's still comforting to know, that even a succesful guy as him, also have similar struggles, as I do.
6:15 The concept of "This is what's happening" is also called Radical Acceptance. Being able to accept the situation as it is, and (instead of putting energy and thought into being upset about it), focusing on the best thing to do - is a good way to create more peace in your life.
My immediate knee jerk reaction is: management will always find a way to claim you're under qualified if it benefits them. My Director told me Supervisor that I "really know what's what and do great work".
2% raise incoming
That concept of "as long as I've prepared myself to feel that way" is a 100% legitimate teachable moment that translates well into all corners of life.
People always say "assume the worst and the outcome will never disappoint you", but that seems so de demotivating to me.
"Prepare yourself to feel that way" is so much better!
Using that one from now on 😁
It's something I resonate with a lot, and also one of the things that irritates me about a lot of situations. I work best when I know what I'm signing up for, whether it's 5 minutes of something easy or 8 hours of labour. But when I have to go somewhere not knowing how long it will be, or what I'll be doing there, I find that so demoralising. I never know if I'm just one small task away from finishing, or if I'll find out I have a full hour of work to do and still no guarantee that's the last of it.
I feel that your experience means you set up your shots pretty well and I don't think you should spend more time on it. The enjoyment of your videos comes from me feeling like I am in the shop with you looking over your shoulder. That's never going to be the perfect angle but it feels so natural. Thank you for sharing your space with us Adam.
All projects and goals follow Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey: excitement, challenge, downfall, nadir, overcoming, victory. It’s a sine wave, though it may require many waves to get to shore.
I finally recognized that the hard part would always come, but if I persisted, I would find success just over that last hill. It’s inevitable. It’s the oldest human wisdom, told exactly the same in disparate stories across disparate civilizations. It’s innate to us, instinctual, to push through, survive, and succeed. Keep going.
everything fits into a fascist’s oversimplified worldview if you squint hard enough
disregarding everything that doesn’t fit also helps 😂
If my partner asks “Where are your keys?”…. I just don’t know and I’ll spend 10 mins looking for them.
If she asks “Hey didn’t we have x, I think I last saw it when we moved house 6 years ago?” Oh, yeah it’s in the cupboard hidden by the sofa, it’s on the left in a green box about halfway back to the wall.
I get what feeling Adam is describing.
I find this particlar question amusing because.... the hardest job for me is one I already know how to do. Boring is impossible, I need to be solving problems and learning. In fact, I can honestly say, I have never even applied for a job that I was fully qualified for, and I couldn't imagine why I would want to. Boredom is what I can't cope with, being in over my head? That is where I want to be.
Man I totally agree with that. I hate being bored.
Life must be hell for you.
@@Hexon66
Why? You like being bored?
I find that some things cant be taught without actually doing it. One just has to learn & adapt as they go to eventually become really good at it.
Dude, I thought you couldn't feel more relatable to me yet here you are, talking about how just because you know something about yourself doesn't necessarily mean that you can change it, brilliant 😂
Thank you for letting me partake in your insights.
Generally, I'll pay a professional to do something properly any time I *really* care about the outcome being high quality. If I'm going to live with the thing for a long time, and use it a lot, I want the best I can afford, and that's when it's worth paying someone who does it all the time to make it for you.
If I just need it once, or I don't made it being a bit rough around the edges, or I don't need it to be perfect, that's a great time to try making it myself.
That's oftentimes exactly the reason why I do stuff myself, I've found that nearly every tradesman cuts corners and leaves bad results at some places due to lazyness or cost cutting. Stuff like rounding screws so they're really hard to remove later, only doing the large obvious bits but skipping the harder corners, etc...
Having that said... my decision process is mostly influenced by wether I like to do it. I'm not a fan of painting so I'll usually outsource that, I love doing electrical stuff so I'll do that, etc...
I always took jobs I was _technically_ underqualified to do.
It always worked out, as I know I'd not hit my limit yet.
Still pushin' those boundaries today, new stuff to learn every day.
Here was the lesson that gutted the "I remember exactly where I put that thing" idea as being worthwhile. Storage does not equal maintenance. I found the thing, but it had rotted from lack of attention. Even the best stored items can still suffer from insufficient attention. Wood needs to be oiled, rubber checked for dry rot, metal checked for rust, etc. and when I have too much I can't do that with any regularity
I know how he feels about the dive boots.....I know exactly where 95% of my stuff is in my garage but also experiencing the joy of finding something cool that I forgot I had
I work in many other shops and spaces other than my own. Watching people struggle with organization, DRIVES ME CRAZY! OMG! I'm like you. People will call me and need a something and I can, over the phone, navigate them through my space and have them placing hands on exactly what they are looking for.
Your Mindfullness (being aware in the moment). Radical acceptance (this is what it is). Has allowed you to become the talent and mensch you are today 💙
There is nothing that will send me careening toward the edge like going to the place where the thing lives, where the thing has ALWAYS lived, and it not being there. Going through the mental war of declaring there is absolutely no reason on God’s green earth why it should ever have been moved, and having zero memory of touching or even thinking about it for some time. A humbling lesson in the fallibility of my normally high-functioning memory circuits usually follows. On occasion it never surfaces and the mystery persists, but in those cases I usually had “help.”
the worst by far is finding it later and suddenly remembering that you put it there on purpose
I too have a mental map - and it drives me absolutely crazy when my wife messes with it - the number of times I have had to buy another thing to replace the thing that has gone missing only for that original thing to turn up 3 months later in some totally random place in my wife's hobby room is driving me crazy - the last time she initially blamed it on a contractor who was doing some work in the house - "they must have accidentally taken your drill thinking it was theirs" - so go buy another drill and 2 months later MY drill is uncovered under a box in HER room
Thought I’d send thanks for inspiring me to be a maker of sorts. I decided to try my hand at some steampunk creations and I made a sax player lamp and a baseball player charging station. They turned out great. These are the first things I made from scratch since maybe wood shop 40+ years ago. Making feels great. So thanks!
As someone who just started a brand new job that’s really important to me, I really appreciate your perspective on the feeling of being unqualified
I don’t have to cope, cause they won’t hire me if they think I’m under qualified, even if I’m overqualified for the job. You don’t know how many marketing jobs I’ve applied to and haven’t gotten, despite them being jobs that I could do. Even with a letter of recommendation! I got a degree in film and a minor in digital media (with is pretty much everything else). I’m certified in both AVID media composer and the Adobe suite. I’ve been helping with online marketing, including graphic design, videography/photography, and video/photo editing since I was in 7th grade. And even with all that under my belt, I’m ALWAYS passed over for these positions (even at companies I’m already employed with).
Your "65/70%" comment is interesting and reminded me to the pep talk Neil Gaiman did for the 2007 NaNoWriMo speaking about how novels are written. Part of it was about when he reached three quarters of a novel, he always had a kind of crisis on how stupid or unoriginal all the plot sounds, while his agent tell him that he does that every time he reach that point (and all her other clients too). It can't be a coincidence to have a bump three quarters into something as different and it seems to be an universal law.
I'm currently about that far through a project and feeling the samw thing lol, I think it's fairly universal
I remember somebody once saying that every piece of art has an ugly phase; they were talking about painting, but it applies to other kinds too. You start with a rough blocking out of the pose, then you sketch in some details, and then you paint the general colour regions, and it enters this awful uncanny valley... And then you start to paint on some more details and it suddenly looks great. Learning to accept the process and get past that phase, in any medium, is such a huge help
This lost thing question got me thinking. Perhaps it's an idea for a video? Not about this particular thing to be found necessarily, but generally about philosophy of searching a space like the cave.
LOVE the little random tosses like the U2 reference. Reminds me of a good friend whom I no longer hang with much do to #lifehappening. Your honestly and being yourself are appreciated.
Remembering where you put a specific thing and being able to find it within a minute on request is a really nice feeling. It's that short about "Dads when that random "just in case" piece of junk finally comes in handy" :D
Speaking of mold making AND having faith in the process, I once spent a year making a bronze sculpture that once it was finished, I had to look at and say yeah not only does this suck but the idea sucked from the beginning. I then had one shot to pivot it to a plan B which only worked because the Good Will near me happened to have enough old leather belts for me to use to hack up into another piece to go with the bronze extravaganza. Thus ended my senior art show, skin of the teeth style.
I have this with drawing and programming, 65 - 70% of the way in, you are in free fall and have to trust the process. Something that helps is awareness of that experience and taking a moment every time it happens to meditate on that feeling. So the next time it happens you recognize what it is, and don't fall into the trap again. This works for all emotions and thoughts or habits, if you grow your awareness, you can see when these things crop up and recognize "oh, it's that thought again" and somehow that allows us to separate ourselves enough to reduce our judgement of the thing.
7:06 - I super relate to your "high-functioning hoarder" vibe here... though I admit I'm currently not quite as high-functioning, for various reasons... but... yeah. this was super validating to hear you talk about, so thanks.
Remembering where your stuff is, is something I experience all the time it's just not me, it's my daughter. She doesn't live in our home anymore but her old room still has a lot of her stuff in it perfectly organized. I don't know how many times she has asked us to get something for her over the phone and she can tell us exactly where it is. example: desk, 2nd draw from top, back left hand corner, in red box. it's amazing.
Your attitude has Always been inspiring.
"Your desk with multiple monitors"
He was definitely thinking of Grant there
When I’m looking for something that I haven’t seen in years, maybe decades, when I get close, I can feel it.
I was the new guy so I wasn't assigned on a job of cutting jet tail cones. It was a pain in the ass job. It was being done at a loss to have contact with Boeing in the hope of getting a big contract. It was assigned to the most experienced machinists. They griped about it all the time. I told the shop manager to give me the job. I'd figure it out, and make it my favorite job, and he'd never hear a gripe from me. The other men said "Yea, give him the job". The manager said "You're on". I did the job for 3 months, and it was a pain in the ass before I figured it out. I invented a modification of the fixture, and improved productivity, lowered cost, and improved geometric accuracy. We kept putting in the lowest bid, and got skeptical of its quality, and sent an inspector to check it out. He was so impressed that we got a big contract. The fuselage turning fixture for the Boeing 777, and they requested I be assigned to the job.
The 777 is the best selling jumbo jet in aviation history. With 2200 sold, and 1800 delivered in 30 years it has not had a single mass fatality accident to this day.
I find that the feeling of imposter syndrome, for me, comes down to people not being honest with others, and themselves, about how difficult and impossible something seemed or was.
Really good to hear right now. I started a new job last week. It’s what I’ve wanted to do since college, but the quantity is very overwhelming. Glad that even pros at Lucasfilm-somewhere I KNOW I’d never be creative enough to work-feel like that!
I’d love to see a behind the scenes type of video where we can see Adam setting up shots and moving around the shop building things. As a maker thinking about making videos someday, I would love to be a fly on the wall seeing the solo filming process
So where I work I honestly resonate with what he was saying about getting “the tap on the shoulder to leave” What I realized is even though I may not be as good/talented as all of my coworkers are I’m happy and positive and do my best to figure it out anyways. Turns out the owner loves that quality.
"feeling lost is part of the process". i had this revelation as well recently. I work in the engineering field without a degree, and I always feel like an imposter. a good engineer is an expert at learning new things. that is what I'm good at and I think that is where a lot of engineers fall short. if you don't feel out of your element you are not learning, which means you are not doing your job.
I'm going to keep this in mind because I keep not going after jobs that I would be on paper under qualified for but feel I would do well at, cuz even if I am qualified the anxiety will still be there
My brain seems to work similarly to Adam's with remembering where an object is several years later. I have had this work in my favour so many times in my life.
Being underqualified never stopped some of my ex-bosses!
ain't that the truth!
great job with merch design
they caught my eye instantly
actually made me click the link and buy !! goo job
The troubles with the mold for the Blender is squaring up the 20$ bucks 850 mini pitcher over the old 800 1500w Blender socket. The Aerospace JB weld has 5 minutes setup, no mistakes buckaroo. And it is carbon fiber, you want that a nice thick bond all around, gotta get real messy.
I have a place for everything, but while using things I don't just put them back there, they will be in a temporary spot while I am still doing stuff - pick up, put down, search for, pick up again, put down again, search again, etc.
As someone with a collection in the 1000s, it is around that single digit thousands where you first start to get an odd "huh where is that" or "huh i didn't know i owned that." amazing how long it takes before you get there
An answer in this video struck me as odd. I belive you said something about a 'state of flow.' I've heard about people getting into the flow of things, but that way you referenced it made it sound like something much more specific. Were you talking about something specific or am I just hearing things?
I sometimes keep things because they're neat and I might have a use for them later. The most ridiculous case was a giant pink paperclip I found in the hall in middle school. I didn't actually use it for anything until I was 28 and needed it to hang up a stained glass bird just the way I wanted. I kept the paperclip all that time because it was big and pink and I'd never seen one like that before.
The topic of people complaining about the cost of an item/service comes up weekly on the RPF. I occasionally will build something for a commission and you almost always get "I could build it myself for that!" and I just say "Well you're welcome to do that, you're on the RPF after all." It seems like in the recent 5 years, unlike the last 24+ years on the RPF, that there are more people that join expecting things for free than most of the people in the past who came for info and to learn.
Got to start somewhere. Although I think the experience whether it be at College or in the field is most important. Also that piece of paper does mean something.
I find things that dissappear "fall" into storage. I would check everything in your storage container before you drive yourself crazy looking where it "should" be over and over
"this is what is happening " for me is "stating the obvious" which often gets me in trouble with those around me. or in rare cases find me a new friend , i want to collaborate with often both of us with out enough spoons.
Going about cataloguing Adam's stuff would amount to a full-time job in and of itself.
It's funny and somewhat comforting that even total wizards like you suffers from imposter syndrome.
I am 55, I have a lot of experience and I am working in my current job for quite some time and I know that I am probably pretty god at what I am doing or at least my colleagues and friends keep telling me. I never fucked up big time (not to say I never failed but well, not in a way that made me look completely incompetent) and still it is pretty hard for me to get rid of this feeling.
I hear you... Been with my employer for 27yrs. Going to retire at 58, from a position I've held for the last 12yrs. For most of those 12 years I felt the same. Being a non-degreed "engineer", surrounded by degreed engineers, you can't escape feeling underqualified on at least a weekly, if not daily basis. The lab I work in does about 4 kinds of testing, I can create test plans, perform all the testing and analysis for all 4. No one else in the lab can do this, they specialize in only 1-2 of the four. I've learned and been able to adequately use several different types of analytical software, some that the degreed engineers struggled to learn. Even with all that, I still feel underqualified.
For several reasons, I'm glad to be retiring in a month or so, but one of the biggest is the relief I'll feel at not feeling underqualified for the job. Looking forward to going out and getting a part time job, stocking shelves or driving a forklift in some retail place or whare house. Something I'll definitely feel more than qualified to do. Peace at last...
This has been difficult. I have worked 10 jobs over the past 2 years 5 sets of 1 part and full time job. The biggest issue for me is even being qualified isn't enough. They want COLLEGE qualification.
There are jobs out there that will hire you but in this economy 2 jobs is where you'll need to be to afford school during your break from one job.
love those videos
I have the same type of memory of where I've left things. I once needed a calculator for a college exam (couldn't use a cell phone, of course, but I think we all had flip phones then anyway) and didn't want to waste the money to buy one, so I went through my childhood room to get one. I went directly to the place where I kept my high school calculator, found it didn't work, then went to the place where my previous high school calculator was kept and it didn't work in some other essential way, retrieved my middle school calculator, and so on. Every single time I knew right where it would be, even if it was buried under something else! They were all not fully functioning in some key way, but I ended up using one of the ones with a few nonfunctioning keys and just hoped I could avoid those or come up with a creative way to do the math differently.
Setting up camera angles when one works alone is difficult... there's quite a few interesting things I couldn't show on my videos, just becuase I didn't notice I was moving off-screen with my work... but doing this with a camera person is adding costs/complications that distract elsewhere. I don't think there's ever gonig to be an "I did enough", for the plain fact that it's two jobs at the same time. And I much rather focus on what I want to show my audience and appreciate a slightly suboptimal angle from an enthusaiastic maker myself too.
I seriously don't wanna sound to grumpy or negative, but with the vast majority of jobs i had, i had actually the extremely clear opposite impression that the people around me were under qualified. 😂😅
Meaning i has quite the leverage on a daily basis.
Which in some cases was beyond mind blowing.
ADAM!! YOU CREATED ZOOBZ?!?!? I got those at OMSI in Portland Oregon on field trips. Those were one of my favorite building toys I’d ever had, along with Bionicles
I've reached a point where none of my professional experience matters because all my creative ventures have fizzled out so far and the real jobs I can actually put on my resume wouldn't get me hired if my life depended on it so I'm kind of stuck in my current role.
point of view , for any videographer or photographer if they are artistic not business minded is vul·ner·a·bil·i·ty of self
That hoarder mentality... to everyone else, you have a messy desk but to you, you know where everything is and in its place.
8:32 Except that item you keep buying more of because you couldn't find it. And now they're all together.
“Mold making is a deeply rigorous and unforgiving process.” What a polite way of saying “Shits Fucked.” - signed, a person who has made a lot of molds.
Adam needs to create “Ming's Floating Servant:” to handle Camera work on Solo days in the Cave!!
Great video sir
Mold making is so easy! Just leave some kraft Mac n cheese in the sink for 3 days.
Speaking of lost things. I have one of those giant channellocks you tell the story about and I couldn't find it one day when I wanted it. How do you lose something that big? Probably three years later, I needed to dig through a tool box and there they were at the very bottom. For some reason I remembered the handles as coated with red plastic, but they were actually blue, so when I lost them I was always looking for a hint of red peeking through the clutter, and there wasn't any :-).
2:42 it’s official we need a camera that just tracks adam during his build lol
7:15 U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For lol
I definitely have a mental image of where everything is in my shelving, down to the tiny part bags. It'd be a terrible prank for someone to rearrange my stuff while I was gone. I'd never find anything!
"I still haven't found the thing that I'm looking for. Someone should write a song about that."
I assume fully aware of the U2 song
I really wish I had the ability to mentally map out where things are like that. My wife has it but not me so I constantly ask her when I can't find things and she will tell me where I put it.
This video made me realize I need an R2D2 in my attic...
If qualifications were required for holding a job management would be jobless.
This 100%
I think qualification is abstract. a piece of paper from a school doesn't actually mean you are better suited for a job than someone who has ambition to learn and perfect a skill.
For many things such a medicine the papers indicate that one is qualified. You can't learn medicine on the job.
"The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster."
I've been over qualified for a job a couple couple of times.
I think this “imposter syndrome” the burden on all engineers, artists and scientists since we are doing something that we’ve never done before and sometimes people have never done before. So a good honest person will self doubt and a good honest customer/employer will see progress and be like: “we are moving forward solving this problem”.
If that Ghostbusters project happens to be a pack mold, I can only wish you the best of luck.
There's always this part of a project about 2-3 of the way through that feels the worst for me, I know it'll be fine but it still stops me in my tracks sometimes.
It would help if the last 3rd didn't seem to take longer than the first two though, finishing sure is a bear.
Dig the shop apron
I would rather see you having the organic fun of the build that to have a better close-up
If you spend too much time on the camera, you loose out on the fun and energy the projects needs
Adam thought a member of the 501st was going to come up to him and say "I'm sorry Sir, it's time for you to leave."
I wish I had that problem I keep getting rejected for being overqualified.
😂 the ADHD experience: knowing EXACTLY where this one weird niche thing is that you've been hanging on to for years while simultaneously having NO IDEA where the things are that you ACTUALLY need.
Almost all companies in the past freely chose to train and educate their new employees to qualify them for their jobs without them falling into 100's of thousands of education debt before they started their careers.
I remember app of the day with Will Smith and Norm Chan.
Did you ever upset a big company by proving they were lying to everyone for years claiming their products did something that they didn't actually do ?
I quit my 6 figure job and "I am at my parents' house and they are driving me nuts"