For the last 5 years I have been on a personal quest to find ways to be more efficient with my time, my money and my personal energy. This may be my version of a mid-life crisis. Hopefully, it’s not really a crisis as much as it is a reflection.
We waste too much of our lives doing things that are not productive or worse, just plain waste. In a few cases it gets real easy to just say no. But for most of our activities we just keep doing them the same way because that is how we have always done it. For me there is no better proof of this than my drill press example.
During my first 18 years of woodworking as a hobby my focus was on the creation. I love building. Honestly, the finishing I’d happily give away. To me it’s just not fun being that close to the finish line and yet so far away.
The worst part of woodworking (and a lathe only compounds this!) is the cleanup.
My traditional approach was to ignore this task until I was forced into dealing with it. Generally this meant when finishing! Maybe this is why I never liked finishing? It came with clean-up.
I didn’t mind walking on inches of sawdust and debris because, as I saw it, neglecting this chore meant I was able to spend time doing what I enjoyed.
Much too late, I have finally come to recognize that this lazy man approach has actually slowed me down and prevented me from having the opportunity to be as productive as possible. Losing bits and pieces in the piles of dust and debris, misplacing tools, searching for supplies; I’ve wasted weeks of my life due to disorganization and lack of cleanliness in the shop.
Things in my shop are still far from perfect, but it gets better every weekend.
One reason why things are so much better is because I’ve finally decided to outsource some of my work. Yes, I have “hired” a robot.
This robot was actually obtained with points I had on a credit card. As I saw it, it was worth the gamble of points. I wasn’t going to spend money on an unknown.
Now that I have used it for over a year, there is no doubt of its value. If my trusty DirtDog ever dies, a clone will be replacing him in short order.
Go ahead, give one a try!
