Why Making Things is Powerful and Important in Our Lives

Closing the Distance From the Everyday Things in our Lives

For centuries, making things was a daily necessity for most of the world’s population. You made your clothes, you made your meals, and you tended crops and animals. You made things to trade for things you couldn’t make. It was a much more common experience to start with raw materials and make them into something else.

The Industrial Age created more distance between people and their basic necessities. Food, clothing, and other daily items were more likely made in a factory than in the home or by a local craftsperson. Globalization and the Information Age seem to have made this distance greater. Though there are movements to close this gap.

Our society has continued in the trajectory of information- and knowledge-based work. Fewer jobs require physical tasks and object manipulation than in the past.  And the immediateness of the physical aspects of much of our work has become more removed. For example, imagine the local newspaper changing from typeset to computer generated. Certainly, there was always a strong intellectual element in the composition, but the process of getting those ideas, words, and paragraphs from the mind of the writer to that of the reader has become more abstract and less physical while taking less time.

The Covid 19 pandemic put more of us in touch with our maker selves. More people spent more time at home. We turned to baking, tie-dying, and stitching to enrich our lives. Experiencing the challenge and satisfaction of making something for yourself was on the rise even before the shutdowns. As we find our new normal, we may not make as much. But if you experienced the dopamine hit of making something yourself, you may not give it up soon.

Why Making Things Makes Us Feel Good

Often, making something requires organization and patterns of action. Your brain likes this order. When life feels uncertain or beyond your control, you can focus on something that you can control and feel more certain about because you are organizing physical things and performing certain actions.

When you make grandma’s vegetable soup, you gather the ingredients. Then you follow the steps to prepare the soup. Organized and ordered. It allows you to slow down and push aside other thoughts and concerns in order to focus on accomplishing a specific task. 

Making things releases dopamine—that feel-good brain chemical. Dopamine helps create a state of flow - a close focus on a task often associated with creativity and productivity. Engaging in the task itself can release dopamine. As can the act of checking something off a list. 

Learning a new skill is good for our brains. You’ve probably heard the expression that we don’t get old until we stop learning. Making things allows you to learn new skills and develop ones you already have. Trying out different cooking techniques, using a different stitch in a sweater, or testing a new kind of wood stain are all ways you can develop skills as you make.

You want that good feeling of accomplishment when you’ve made something. Whether that’s the evening meal of soup and bread, mittens to keep your hands warm, or a metal garden ornament. The tangible object itself and the feeling it gives you are valuable.

You Don’t Have to Be Creative to Benefit from Making

If you are thinking to yourself, “but I’m not creative.” Stop. You don’t have to be creative to benefit from making. Creativity has a host of benefits itself. I have a keen interest in creativity and explore it often.

But I want to make a distinction between making and creating. A distinction. Not a preference for one over the other. We need both to function well and to have enriched lives. 

Making involves producing a finished product or task by performing a series of actions. These actions are known or learned and can easily be shared from one person to another. Think again of grandma’s vegetable soup. The ingredients and amounts are all there. The steps are regular and predictable. The finished product will be (mostly) the same each time.

Creating may also produce a final product by performing a series of actions. However, these actions are likely to be more individual. The process or steps may not be known at the beginning of the process. The finished product will be unique.

Think of it as the difference between making vegetable soup from a recipe that you follow closely—even if you are making it by heart. And making a completely new kind of soup, spontaneously without a recipe.

Creativity has a special role. New, imaginative, and innovative are all good and exciting.

But making has an important place too. Making allows us to develop the skills and confidence we need to become more creative. By following a recipe or a set of instructions, you learn the skills needed to produce a certain result. How to hold the brush to get a particular paint effect. How long to cook the vegetables. How to keep a consistent thread tension.

Making is also useful when you don’t have the time or mental energy to be creative. Or when you need a predictable result. Not every night can be “new” soup night. There are many times when you want grandma’s vegetable soup that makes you feel good. Or you have just enough time for a task that you are already familiar with. Or new and different is not appropriate. 

Making Within a Consumer Society

Have you heard of the 80/20 Principle? It’s the idea that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. Or that 80% of the content on a platform is created by 20% of the users. Or any other situation of creators and consumers.

Don’t get hung up on the specific percentages. But consider how much in your life is you as a consumer compared to you as a maker. How often do you eat food prepared by someone else? How often do you pay for services for tasks you could do yourself? How often do you buy a gift instead of making something?

I’m not suggesting we all set out to be completely self-sufficient. That would be unreasonable. Even though I live on a farm, I grow weeds much better than I grow vegetables, so I’d starve pretty quickly. Clothing construction? Only if togas make a comeback. And that wouldn’t be pleasant during Midwestern winters.

But think about what areas of your life you might be able to incorporate more making. Perhaps you make a meal instead of ordering delivery. Perhaps you progress from putting a pre-packaged lasagna in the oven to assembling the lasagna yourself.

Hobbies are often places to shift from consuming to creating. I’m not going to give up reading, but I could shift some of my reading time to writing time. You could take up an art or craft hobby to replace some of your screen time. 

Making things benefits us in a variety of ways. We keep our minds and our hands active and learning. We close the distance between ourselves and the things we use and do every day. We get the satisfaction of being able to say, “I made that myself.”