Can we talk about how I used to measure everything twice before cutting?

For years I would measure a board, double check it, measure again, then cut. It took forever. Then about 6 months ago a retired framer named Pete at the lumber yard told me to just trust my first mark and cut fast. He said if you take too long you psych yourself out and mess up anyway. Now I measure once, cut, and move on - my mistakes actually went down. Has anyone else had that old school advice flip their workflow around?

2 comments

2 Comments

gavinh269d ago

Six months of double checking everything and Pete just waltzes in and fixes you in one conversation?

holly_foster9d ago

Oh wait, that's not quite how that went. I still mess up sometimes, don't get me wrong. It's more like Pete told me to measure once but then commit to your mark without rechecking seventy times. I still pause and look at my mark for a second before cutting, I just don't start over with the whole measuring process. The real shift for me was realizing that most of my errors came from rushing or shaky hands after obsessing, not from the first measurement being wrong. So it's not perfect every time, but cutting down on the overthinking helped a lot.