If it looks too rainy or hot, I’ll cancel a hike or run, so I’m obviously not super committed there. Problems with my 3D printer I’m more likely to try and troubleshoot rather than give up.
Even troubleshoot is too broad. It’s narrower: intersection of troubleshoot/workaround.
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What can *stop* you from the next step? I probably give up on some 3D printing problems (PETG might be too temperamental for me) but where it stops my next step on rover project I’ll either fix it or find a non-3D printing workaround.
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In some cases, the activity is the hobby for its own sake. In other cases, it’s a means to an end that’s the real hobby. My current tinkering is a mix of both. The 3D printing is mostly means to an end. The electronics dabbling is more of an end in itself.
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Hmm... something interesting about troubleshooting as the essence. When you’re going a new thing, the scope creep from that is unpredictable. It could remain sustainable at a couple of hours a week, or take over your life if you decide you’re not going to let setbacks stop you.
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Like take the rover I’m trying to build. For a more skilled maker, who has already done a lot of 3D printing, electronics, RPi coding etc, this is a well-defined, well-scoped, *contained* project. It can stay hobby grade. They’ll avoid most dumb bugs, troubleshoot things quickly.
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It can’t be life changing for them because it’s not a true growth experience.
For me otoh, new to all of it, it could easily consume my life because I am making way more dumb mistakes, taking far too long to troubleshoot trivial setbacks, etc. Open scope.
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Disruption means you’re leaning a new activity and allowing yourself to be transformed by it. The “fixing one bug creates two more” effect dominates. You have to let the scope creep proceed as much as it needs to. If you try to budget time/resources too much, it will fail.
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The real risk is, you’ll run out of growth headroom before you get anywhere sustainable. For every successful disruptor there are a hundred carcasses of overreach.
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Possibly the only thing you can do to derisk is ask if you can handle the transformation overall. Which means accurately understanding the strengths that allowed past transformations to succeed, not “peacetime” skills between self-disruptions.
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This is the what’s toughest in my current attempted self-disruption. For eg. writing is a “peacetime skill” for me that I find a way to use in every new adventure. But it’s not a relevant strength for self-disruption. I’m trying to remember what sustained my last big leap.
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Self-disruption is next door to play but IMO isn’t truly playful.
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Replying to @bobz44
I’m avoiding the word ‘play’ because it doesn’t quite feel like play. There is an irrepressible awareness of existential stakes in self-disruption that undermines the ludic immersion of play.
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In the short-term, early on, it’s like play, but beyond a point it gets too big and dangerous. Capped vs uncapped stakes. Safe fail vs unsafe bets.
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Replying to
And after 25 years of observation: the newish medium offers the best land and attracts the weirdest people, who are also the most likely to support your thing by temperament. Dating, blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Insta, Snapchat, now Twitter. Then exhausts, faster and faster now

