M aker JUNKYARD DOG: Molly, shown here, knows the importance of keeping amassed junk organized, especially when battling unfruitful failures.

Fail Early! Fail Often!

A mental toolkit to sharpen your skills. By Tom Jennings

NO ONE TALKS OF FAILURE AS ANYTHING but shameful; this is wrongheaded and foolish. Mistakes are synonymous with learning. Failing is unavoidable. Making is a process, not an end. It is true that deep experience helps avoid problems, but mainly it gives you mental tools with which to solve inevitable problems when they come up.

It all begins with a mental toolbox, filled with useful items you can’t buy, but can only obtain through the act of failing again and again. Here are mine.

TOOL: The Dorkifier

You may think that in order to look cool to your peers, you must never look foolish. Abandon this. Cool is precisely the opposite of pursuing a project that taxes your brain and body, and might not even

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work! Fear of looking like a dork (“You’re building a what?”) stops a lot of people. Give up any thought of looking good, and instead make good. CONCLUSION: Embrace dorkiness!

TOOL: The Troubleshooter

Since roadblocks and failures are a given, how to proceed? This is the key to all project making: troubleshooting, problem solving, debugging.

Don’t freak out. Become methodical, or contemplative, or go get a beer. You need your brain in its best working order.

Troubleshooting really means: what do I have to learn to resolve this problem? This is true if the problem is reviving a dead motor or using glow-in-the-dark paint; you read, Google, practice, experiment.

Bob Pease, god-king-emperor of analog electronics

Photography by Tom Jennings