The case for working with your hands

[NewSimon]

I've been reading Matthew Crawford's book - Shop Class as Soul Craft and wanted to recommend it here for any one having problems finding their passionate career who like working with their hands. It's great and often amusing read. This is worth watching too:
FORA.tv - Shop Class as Soulcraft: Matthew B. Crawford

He talks about the tendancy over years to push anyone who seems bright into college and then into a white-collar 'knowledge' type job at a desk with it's often absurd and meaningless output. I've been considering moving towards a more manual hands-on career. I get more pleasure making, fixing and restoring things than through my 12 years of being a software developer.

[Mynder]

When you work your day job, is your heart in it?

When you craft something with your hands, is your heart in it?

[NewSimon]

My day job when I had one (I'm not working currently) felt like being trapped and stuck at a desk with no reason to move from it. Writing software can be highly creative and intellectually stimulating. It can also be dead boring and involve working on things that have little interest or often - value.

When I look at my life and what excites me, I find that building, fixing and restoring things move me. If something's broken, the first thing I think is - what is wrong and can I fix it. I'm writing this on a PC that I put together myself. A piece of wood in the kitchen in my rented house, fell off yesterday - it's now held in place while the glue sets.

The thing about the book that I enjoyed is that blue collar work shouldn't be looked down upon or under-estimated. It's like the industrialisation of the past - turning skilled manual jobs into simple repetitive tasks for the cheap unskilled, has turned on it's head. Office jobs can now be outsourced, there are layers of management, no personal responsibility, often no evidence that you have created anything of real value to anyone. These days, you go to college and then end up in a job in front of a computer as a knowledge worker. Whereas the trade professionals can make more money and have direct evidence of the value they create. I'm not saying computer work is valueless, I've just written an eBook. But increasingly it seems that a lot of office work is intangible.

My friend's new job at the UK National Health Service is 'Policy Officer'. He sits in front of MS Word all day writing and editing documents such as, on what to do if a madman enters the hospital with a gun or the Ebola virus breaks out. Documents that will probably not be read or turn out to be useful anyway. But it means someone's arse is saved from litigation.

I need to find my passions in life. I can't quite see myself under a car all day, but I like working with my hands and I want to get out and about.

[Lakshyayidhi Lakshmihi]

I have never looked down on blue collar work? I actually had a thing for carpenters for a long time. My son's father has been a carpenter for 21 years now (though he started when he was 19....most of the men in his business started in their late teens/early 20s).

They are a pretty rough bunch, though.

[Mynder]

Well, what have you recently done with your hands that you loved doing, and the result of which really struck you as a beautiful thing?

Maybe figuring out a material you want to work with would be a good first step. Try wood, metal, clay, rock/stone...

[rei]

How about landscaping with emphasis on planting things? Any appeal? Or become a forest/park ranger? I know of someone who went to school for industrial design - he's self-employed making furniture. (If you're a guy, girls may enjoy that. It's sexy. Not that you need to choose your profession based on this, and I don't recommend doing so.)

You could be self-employed making furniture without the college stuff, though.

I don't look down on blue collar work myself - even though I was raised to over-value jobs based more on applying your mind than your body. I think blue collar work keeps a person much more balanced than intellectual desk-job work actually. I think kinesthetic work is great for mental health. It definitely beats getting up at 5 am so you can go by the gym to work out before your cubicle job.

[Alstar]

I think there's no need to divide one or the other. Both have negatives to them, IMO. A balance in between is preferred.

[NewSimon]

I don't actually like getting my hands too dirty! By what I mean is oily from cars, although I've fixed my own cars when I could. Working outside, well perhaps but gardening isn't really my thing.

I have done small bits of woodwork over the years and I have done metalwork - lathes etc. Furniture making I've looked into, it really doesn't pay well considering the cost of wood and amount of time. Plus you need tools, work bench and a workshop and considerable experience.

Fixing watches kind of appeals to me at the moment.

My father was a carpenter/bricklayer/plumber/builder, but he never went self employed, as my parents are quite risk averse. I always used to think that building work was poorly paid and down-market because for my father, it was. It's a shame, he built an extension on the house back in the 1970s, but thought you needed to be a businessman just to go self-employed.

[ellie]

I'm very hands on person too. I love making things with my hands. When I was a kid, I was always redoing furniture, sanding it back, painting/polishing.

What I also like, it also takes you away from any stress, you're just concentrating on the job at hand, almost like your in mediative trance.

[SireneB]

Originally Posted by NewSimon

He talks about the tendancy over years to push anyone who seems bright into college and then into a white-collar 'knowledge' type job at a desk with it's often absurd and meaningless output.

This is something that I've been very aware of for quite some time. I think there are many kids who would be a better fit for a vocational school, being made miserable on the university track. I have a lot of admiration for people who work with their hands and find happiness in it - there is something pure and simple there, and I think important.

I'd say, in your case, do both. Spend this time you have developing a hobby that you can potentially turn into your livelihood. It will likely take some time to find your niche and develop skills, and approaching it as a hobby at first might take some of the pressure off while you are going through that process - no reason you can't look for a job in your current field at the same time, and if you get one, no reason you can't have a day job and an evening/weekend hobby, until you feel ready to flip the hobby into your job.

Good luck with this.

[Brutha]

White collor work doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have to work with your hands.
Surgons work with their hands.
Biologists work a lot with their hands.

If you would want to start a hand on business I would probably go with the maker community.
Adrino powered shower system would be one business idea.
If you combine an adrino chip, a few heat sensors and a pump for restwater you could produce a shower system that can save a lot of water.

Today showers get sold by companies by plumbers that aren't into technology and don't innovate.

There are a lot of manual made products that get sold for >500€ that don't have any technology in them. Integrating ardrino, a few sensors and motors might make them a bit better.
Rich people want to buy fancy stuff and they might want to pay money when you are able to give them a custom ardrino based solution.

[Elrond]

This feels like a relevant question for me. I have often thought about the pros and cons of going towards an office white collar job. I have thought that I might prefer something that is more of a mix - but leaning more towards using your mind. Perhaps office/mind work with one or two days a week of something more kinethic. I have tried driving and maintaining armoured vehicles, and while it could be satisfying, it felt perhaps a bit too manual and that I wasn't good at it (though I had absolutely no prior knowledge when I began, as opposed to most others). I tried mucking about with more electrical stuff, and it was more appealing, although I did that far less. Right now I sometimes work with sound because I wanted to find out if that was something that I'd like. But I don't feel very fulfilled with the more manual side of fetching equipment from A to B and 100 cables getting tangled up in each other. Nor have I felt very much like 'wow that felt like it was good for me' in that it makes get a break from other stuff than reading and other 'mind work' that I usually do. I just feel slightly tired.

Thanks for the links. Why must life have so many choices!?

[Elrond]

It seems like many craftsmen get tired of their job for reasons that are often inherit in them. For example carpenters from it being very manual, and for having to be outside all the time (in what is often bad weather). Even a guy that I know that is very fond of hunting and that are often referred to as a chuck norris kind of guy for being so badass, has often complained that he is tired of his trade.

But I guess for many of these jobs, you can get a more desk-like job if you get more experience and/or education, perhaps to the point where you can get pretty much removed from the hands-on stuff. It seems harder to educate yourself into a white-collar office job and then work your way towards a more hands-on job (that is, a job that is similar enough in theme etc that working towards can be more of a natural progression, as opposed to say an engineer that has hardly ever seen a tool in his life working towards being a craftsman in that field).

[Elrond]

I don't know anything about this guy or his profession, but "fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture" seems like a job that could be 'less than useful', or perhaps the sort of job that is very hard to see the direct benefits of (to "the environment" in the widest meaning of the word).

[Andrew Gubb]

my girlfriend feels very drawn to hand made stuff; she names her clothing brand "Roser Handmade".

there's something lovely about working with the body. it connects you with the here and now. even though i love writing and internet work, i'm looking to create a restaurant in the medium future so i can enjoy physical work too.