Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It

Loved the quirky one liners that real dove deep into the main idea— functionality and realities behind the inspiration of making. Such a fun read with actionable ideas that can be applied to all makers!

I bought my first copy of Adam's book when it first came out in 2019. After reading, I gave it to a fellow DIY/maker. I bought a second copy to re-read some of Adam's great suggestions on tool organization and storage. I have adopted his "first order retrieval" philosophy on tool storage and it has made my shop much more productive. The stories of his maker career are very interesting as well. It will make you become a subscriber to Adam's YouTube channel. It is a worthwhile read for DIY/makers of all types.

Well written for fans of Mythbusters, the Tested channel on YouTube, and ‘makers’. You know who you are if you’re familiar with Adam’s work! I’ve given it as a gift to multiple people, all of whom have loved it.

If you’re thinking about getting this book then you’re probably already a maker. There are things you’ll already know, but it’s good reinforcement and there are plenty of nuggets of wisdom from a true professional. It sometimes reads like a self help book, but there are enough personal stories to make it interesting.

Adam Savage is probably best known for hosting 14 years of Mythbusters before moving on to his own projects and activities. He recently wrote the book Every Tool’s a Hammer.I’ve recently added it to my list of books every UX Designer should read.Seems like a bit of a mismatch, on the surface.Adam makes things with his hands, with actual physical tools, in a workshop, where he passes them on to clients or advertisers, or uses them on a TV show, or whatever.A UX Designer like me makes things with little electrons on big screens, with expensive software, in whatever workspace I happen to be occupying but most likely a cube farm, where I pass them on to product owners or project managers or developers, or whatever.Hell, I don’t even make the final application in most cases, just prototypes, and even then, I crank out a lot of flat prototypes.Compared to what I do in my garden, or my woodshop, or my knitting, UX Design can feel like it’s a long distance away from Maker culture.And yet, in his introduction, Adam says this:"“CODING IS MAKING!” I said enthusiastically to that young man. Whenever we’re driven to reach out and create something from nothing, whether it’s something physical like a chair, or more temporal and etherial like a poem, we’re contributing something of ourselves to the world. We’re taking our experience and filtering it through our words or our hands, or our voices and our bodies, and we’re putting something into the culture that didn’t exist before. In fact, we’re not putting what we make into the culture, what we make IS the culture. Putting something into the world that didn’t exist before is the broadest definition of making, which means all of us can be makers. Creators.Everyone has something valuable to contribute. It’s that simple. It is not, however, that easy."The next 296 pages of the book go on to explain what it means to be a maker, and how to be a successful one. The skills and experiences that Adam talks about and illustrates with stories from his own life are shared among makers and include:* Using your passion to kick-start your desire to make things* Finding inspiration on a regular basis* The importance of both techniques and tools, and how to build comfort with both* CollaborationI would estimate that roughly a third of the book is dedicated to collaboration, either through examples or recommendations on how to collaborate better with your peers and with those who work for you. While it’s clearly not a book about managing people, it’s definitely a book that acknowledges that no one creates in a vacuum, and how you work with the people around you will significantly impact how your creations turn out.* Using deadlines to prune your decision trees* Handling the inevitable mistakesThis is probably another third of the book, if one counts “ways to avoid making mistakes” and “ways to handle mistakes” as a single topic. Let’s face it, if you’re making something you’re also making mistakes. Some mistakes are both bad and permanent, and some mistakes are iterations that lead us to a better state on the other side. Understanding the difference between the two, and what to do about both of them, is a crucial life skill.* Information architecting your spaceAnd here’s the other third, really. From how you structure your to-do lists to make your work understandable and keep your momentum going, to how to structure your workshop so that you can work within your values, to how to iterate and evolve your own work (using collaboration and mistake-making as guide rails) a huge bit of the book is dedicated to a love of information architecture without ever muttering the words together.Adam doesn’t focus on the usual IA topic of “structuring somebody else’s stuff”. This is seriously meta “information architect your information architecture” stuff. Without being forceful, Adam makes it clear that honing your craft through observation, organization, structure, and iteration, will allow you not only to apply those skills to the tools you work with, it will also allow you to make yourself into a better designer.And that’s some hard stuff to learn, yo.Adam Savage is the kind of writer who doesn’t throw other people under trucks. He rarely (if at all) references mistakes others made around him. When he’s telling stories about both success and failure, he’s the main feature. At first glance, this might seem almost egotistical, and sometimes a the stories feel a little shallow, but it’s really quite polite. Even if we only looked at his 14 years on Mythbusters it’s clear that if he wanted to tell stories about other people’s mistakes, he’s seen things. But those stories aren’t his to tell, or at least, he doesn’t tell them. He approaches the book the way he would a conference session, handing out praise to the people who have helped him succeed and turning a blind eye to the mistakes of the people who’ve failed and learned around him, unless he’s quoting them directly.He tells some funny and heartwarming stories of growing up with parents who encouraged him to make and do and build. He explains both what went wrong and what could have gone wrong in various project, activities, and life decisions he’s made. He avoids showing us gory photos of all his injuries. He shows us lots of his own sketches, sculptures, checklists, process notes, and finished things.Most importantly, he reminds us that making is creating, that designing is never easy, that even if we were all given the exact same specs the things we’d create would be unique to each of us. Adam reminds us that we’re all growing, and that growing is good.So yes, definitely a book I now recommend, because it outlines the culture and decisions that makers, including UX Designers, struggle with daily. And it reminds us that despite those struggles (or in some cases because of them), making things — even arranging electrons on a screen — is a hell of a lot of fun.

I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone who is an artist, writer, coder, builder, ANYTHING. If you make anything you need to read this book. That’s all there is to it. And I’ve gotten so many ideas and had so many revelations from this book alone. It’s so relieving to hear someone of such influence talking about the problems that defined my life as a child and still define my life now. I nearly cried on the third page because I was so relieved that I wasn’t alone in the universe, that my creative struggles were understood, that my emotional struggles were understood… I mean, just to hear someone with that much influence admit to having the same insecurities as a maker and as a person that I have… I can’t explain how, but it was so uplifting. I just had this feeling like maybe I really can do this after all. It’s absolutely a must-read.Adam Savage helped me to find and embrace the maker, the explorer, and the inventer in me as a child, but most of that got driven out of me as I grew up and recently I'm finding myself having trouble finding things I truly love. I'd convinced myself that I'm not a maker, not an adventurer, not an inventer, not a writer... That I'm just some fool who spends too much time daydreaming about things that I'll never do, things that never will be, and things that never happened. This book showed me that the only thing stopping me from doing and being these things is my own mentality about them.Hearing Adam giving permission to take things too far, to love things beyond what seems safe, to have an obsession and follow it until it becomes a reality is inspirational. Because of this, I'm taking my art and my writing more seriously, and when I start feeling like what I'm writing about is something that's only interesting to me and everyone else will find crazy, I remember that there's another perfectionist out there who has invested years into making the most accurate replicas of the most obscure objects and having the most complete collections of things that fascinate him and sharing that endeavor and that fascination without worrying what other people think, and that this person has found and founded communities who love these things, or who love the endeavor, just as much, and that gives me the confidence to do, to say, to write, and to make the way I want to do, say, write, and make. And because of that I've found again my love for the things that I say I love. They've become real and true and my own again. I don't know how else to explain it.This book is a must-read!

A great book by a great maker! Perfect gift for a maker, or makerspace type person.

This book wonderfully captures the inner desire to make things coupled with actual tangible advice from a person with decades of experience. It weaves personal anecdotes, technical know-how, and just overall excitement and passion for making into a cohesive package. As someone who grew up being inspired by Mythbusters and eventually became an engineer, I have a feeling I will be rereading this book for years to come.

I have to say that I’m not a big reader. I never have the time to stop, because I have to many projects to do.It was so worth it to stop during my vacation and to reflect on my past and future projects with the help of Adam Savage.Adam is a great communicator, I have been following him for many years on his you tube channel. In his book he has the time to really explain his processes from idea to completion.As a maker and has a project manager, I could relate to Adam.As a father it gave me great tools and examples to share with my son who is a young maker.Thank you so much!

Livro com conteúdo muito bom e interessante pra quem é maker ou quer começar nesse mundo.

There is more to Adam Savage than I realised and I already thought there was so much! Genuinely a helpful and interesting read.

Super satisfeita! optimo livro de bolso!

I gifted this to someone who is a professional artist and mask maker, and he really enjoyed it. My friend said that the actual writing style was a bit klunky at first (tellingly, Adam Savage says something like 'damn this writing stuff is harder than I thought it would be!') but luckily Adam soon hits his stride and the writing style flows better.The book has many anecdotes, and an obvious obsession with how to organise the perfect workshop, which my friend disagreed with in parts, but he very much enjoyed telling me, and anyone else who might listen, which parts he agreed or disagreed with. And any book that provokes discussion, and (friendly!) disagreements is a winner for me.He said that reading about the 'mindset' of a maker was very interesting: the point of view of a highly practical person isn't often put forth in these times, when so much of life happens online. Adam's views on working in film and TV also echoed my friend's experiences.So all in all it was a very interesting read, from an original viewpoint, and my friend highly recommendeds it.I might go for the Audible (talking book) version myself, which is read by Adam. The sample I listened to sounded good - he has a nice voice- and maybe hearing it might make the slightly klunky writing style easier to take!