Why does a busy man build a shed?

Building a shed is a finite process with known steps that produces a tangible result. If you spend time on it, you will make forward progress and be able to see it.

If you are a knowledge worker, this is frequently lacking. You might spend months or years working on something without knowing of you'll succeed. You might get stuck (eg, debugging) and not be able to see any progress for long periods of time. You might be blocked from making forward progress because you are waiting on other people. And at the end of the day, what you accomplish might not be very visible or might end up being finished but useless.

So it's nice to do something where you feel like you actually did something.

>why does someone create work for themself

Your question only looks like a puzzle or paradox because the word "work" is overloaded with many meanings and it includes simultaneous connotations of negative "unpleasant chores" and positive "fulfilling efforts". (related concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation)

If those multiple meanings are not understood, one can twist themselves into rhetorical puzzles such as:

- If marriage is work, why do people get married? I thought people hated work?!?

- If raising kids is work, why do people have kids?

It's because the type of "work" above are activities where many people desire to expend the effort. There's a higher goal than any so-called "work" above.

Same idea as a home sewer that "works" for weeks on their own dresses and jackets while the factory sewer only thinks of needlework as "working at a job". If one asks the home sewer if making that jacket "took a lot of work", the hobbyist will answer "yes" without any irony at all.

So asking, "why did the home sewer create extra work for themselves to create dresses?" ... would be another variation of your question about you building sheds.

Many years ago, I read a book from a library whose title is lost to the mists of time.

It posited that we each have x amount of capacity for different things and success in life hinges on figuring out how to hit x consistently across all categories.

Someone whose capacity for reading is 5000 pages per week who has a job that requires 4000 pages of reading will come up with hobbies that provide another 1000 pages of reading. If crunch time requires 5000 pages per week temporarily, the hobby will disappear. If he gets a job requiring 5500 pages of reading, the hobby will disappear and he will start to burn out.

Building the shed filled a different bucket. It required different skills and activities that met some unmet need. Kind of like still having room for dessert after you are too full for more of the main course.

Your job is probably triggering a fight/flight response constantly.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding...

Working with your hands and retreating to your shed allows you to sooth / calm rather than getting deeper into those stress hormones.

For me, it also gives time for reflection.

From the BBC: Men's Sheds: 'It's about so much more than making things' -> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-northern-ireland-49615371

Have you read Daniel Pink's When?

He talks about rhythms with most people being morning people - alert in the morning and ready for analytical work, entering a trough in the afternoon, then recovering in the evening. Are you mainly doing your shed work in the afternoon/evening, after work?

I've been spending my time wiring my house for ethernet. Sure, I could pay someone it would save me time and money but I've learnt a lot about my house and how to fix dry wall :-p. I've had to make 5 different Home Depot runs in the last two weeks cause I always discover something new.

I think a lot of us are type A, we can't sit still but also know our brains need to recoup and do something else. I tried to write some code but honestly I'd rather finish my ethernet project. Life is a marathon not a sprint. You gotta recharge sometimes and honestly you may learn something different that shapes how you think. Steve Jobs always said Calligraphy was the reason he thought about fonts on a GUI. Why the hell was he taking that class instead of hustling? :-p

It's completely wise. We aren't designed to just do one thing over and over. Life is so much more than building a SaaS or making money. You know we could go tomorrow right? Anything could happen and the future isn't guaranteed. Obviously, stay motivated and keep driving but sometimes you gotta replenish your gas tank and take care of your physical/mental health.

First caveat, I'm writing at the end of a boozy night so hope this isn't all rambling.

I think there is a confusion with working and relaxation in today's world.

We look at the world as work as the necessity and relaxing as the goal.

I think the Jordon Peterson line of 'purpose' is key.

'Work' is doing for someone else for a living. Purpose is doing for self. And building Saas infrastructure sounds like helping someone's else company, but that shed is for you.

For me I moved to a small farm a few years back and working from home. I'm always busy, like non-stop something to do between work and farm. I've had one proper holiday in 5 years as the farm consumes life outside work but the farm work is my purpose. While it's not 'relaxing' it's fulfilling and the moments I pause and take in the view while sweating away it completes you.

Now this next opinion I'm less confident in, but I think this ties in to above and there are certain personality types that need to do stuff vs relax. For me I don't do nothing well. It seems the dream but whenever I've tried it doesnt suit me. I need projects to be fulfilled. Sometimes when tired and stressed I wonder why I keep adding tasks to my life, but I'm more happy that way than going the other.

Anyway I feel I'm starting to ramble a little but I think it boils down to is adding work is not a negative, and more work is a positive within reasonable bounds and something you can feel achievement. The task is balancing between work for others purpose and your own is what matters.

I took this fall off to build a 1500 sqft garden so I have some direct perspective here..

Frankly, it's a nice break. We spend most of our lives in the ethereal, the abstract, and where we often thrive on guess and check without physical consequences/limitations to what we do. Building my garden required measuring, digging holes, cutting lumber, unburying issues (literally), adapting to mistakes, and all of my ideas turning from paper to reality over a span of weeks.. many weeks.

It exercised a different part of my brain, taught me a bunch of new skills, gave me some perspective, and was completely exhausting, but it's AMAZING to look out the window and see it there ready to go for the spring.

I documented my work here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVPpofrZKG8MKVbl0qMYPgw

Because it's important to do something different. Using my hands to create, instead of just my mind, helps me clear my head and revisit other problems fresh. If all I ever use my mental energy on is my day job, my performance declines because I never stop thinking about my work and it's difficult to see other paths.

Also, it's fun?

Shelter, food, water, warmth — all these are primal needs. I think there's an inbuilt satisfaction that we feel when we satisfy one of these needs with mind and body. There is little else that produces that feeling. So, though we are busy, though our time may be more costly than hiring an expert, we build buildings, we raise meat and vegetables, we split wood, we light fires, and we feel the satisfaction that our earliest ancestors must have felt when they did the same.

It is good and right that we do these things.

I am unsure of the original source but is has been said that "If You want something done ask a busy person." Some say it was Benjamin Franklin.

I think there is truth in this statement and believe that asking my next door neighbor that has built two sheds in their back yard to help me with a job would work out far better than asking my next door neighbor on the other side that is always lounging on their deck with a drink in their hand.

I’m not of the wise yet, that’s why I work on cars instead :)

It gives me a sense of completion amongst all the chaos, the never ending deadlines, numbers, algorithms all of that. I also find a sense of pause and rewinding when I work on cars whereas doing anything even remotely close to the office, be it reading a nice book. Still gives me some anxiety, so the change of location (especially now) is really nice.

Plus, I’ve noticed that when I work with my hands, I get less issues related to pain in my hands/wrists. It kind of acts as a workout for my fine motor skills, that would otherwise atrophy if I’m only typing or doing less strenuous work.

I've heard of a couple of CEOs, and a few freelancers now doing hands on things in their downtime.

IMHO, software development is a rollercoaster of exciting highs and lows. While woodwork, creating something tangible with your hands... it's something else. It's a perfectly balanced sweet continuous feeling of pure zen that you don't want to stop.

I believe it can make you more productive when you return to your main work.

Did you enjoy building the sheds?? If so, you gave your brain a vacation and did something fun for you. If you didn’t enjoy it, hire someone next time.

Either way, it’s the past - you’ve already built the sheds and can’t get that time back.

Life is short and fun is good. You’re going to die anyways. Might as well enjoy the time you know you have. This includes giving past you some leeway.

Over a pint a friend once said he never understood why his dad had a shed until he himself got married hand had three kids. Now that I have two kids of my own I look forward to building my own shed with relish!

You might want to checkout Matthew Crawford’s writings. He talks a lot about the desire to work with your hands and the agency it brings us. An agency that is often missing from corporate knowledge work.

Some call it Yin and Yang, others call it "Mens sana in corpore sano" [1], yet others see it as part of a striving towards becoming "Homo universalis" [2] but in the end it all comes down to the realisation that those hands and feet are just as essential as your head in making your way through this mortal coil. Feeding the one while atrophying the others is a sure-fire way to create problems along the line so pick up that axe and saw and get building. I bought a 17th century farm so I'm set for life in that respect, especially given that the place is heated using wood and I cook on wood as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath

I needed a distraction this holiday season so I built a basic wood shop in my basement.

I'm not a woodworker, craftsman, artisan, artist, etc. but tinkering in that shop has brought me more joy and peace than I've had in years.

As happy as I've been with some of the work I've produced on a computer it just isn't the same (to me).

If you time it just right, you'll run out of space for more sheds in your yard/garden right around the time you burn out at work. Then you can start a business building sheds.

This is obviously your subconscious planning for your next career :-)

You get results you can see and explain. It's might be very important to revamp some library in your build system, but at the end of the day it doesn't do anything you can see, nor is it easy to explain to others.

24 hours a day. Anyone telling you that you could work 24/7 building a startup or working for someone is lying to you. We are not robots. People need a break, something different to do.

Because you’re not supposed to engage in bikeshedding at work.

I’ll see myself out.

This hits home in so many levels.

I’ve built a shed for many of the reasons mentioned and it was such a rewarding and gratifying experience.

Just seeing that constant tangible progress and the primal feeling of building something that protects you from the elements felt strangely satisfying.

I documented the process in here. https://eduardosasso.co/blog/how-i-built-a-wfh-shed/

Of interest, Winston Chuchill took up bricklaying while performing many other duties, became a member of his local bricklaying union, and build a bomb shelter in his back garden.

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest...

Well for me, probably because I wanted to and it feels productive enough to break away from the other work that keeps me busy.

It’s also nice to have a low stakes hobby, I haven’t made a shed before but spent the last year getting into fixing things (automotive & household items) as well as home improvement.

(Highly recommend getting the basics of car repair, just being able to diagnose a problem will save you so much frustration)

As many have already commented, I am part of the crowd that likes to have a direct, tangible end result compared to on going code projects that never seem to end with scope creep and changing priorities. Some of my work projects are still seeing commits 8-9 years in, and they never feel 'done'.

My deck was 'done' when I sat on it one evening and had a beer while my son jumped on the trampoline :-)

My wife comes from a family where they would hire someone, and her mother is amazed that someone 'geeky' like me can actually do work with my hands - In the past year I've done a full kitchen, bathroom reno and build phase one of a large backyard deck.

Even mindless hauling of a few yards of gravel is easy - load the wheelbarrow, push it, dump it, repeat and the progress is quite visible, you start to anticipate when it is about to be done. I don't get that feeling, not like you're watching the line count in the editor to know that when you hit a magical LOC number you're done!

I'll take a different tangent on this...

I think it is vitally important to develop long term interests on one or more things you can use to be busy in life outside of work. For most people this means a hobby of some sort. It can be anything, really.

I say this because I have personally seen the consequences of not having this as older family members grew old, retired and set out to live the rest of their lives.

Those who knew how to keep busy seem the happiest. They are cooking, woodworking, gardening, building and flying model airplanes, etc.

The few who developed no interests or hobbies outside of work quickly descended into a sorry state centered around depression. Most of their time is spent watching TV and consuming the garbage we have on social media today. Their daily regime includes popping pills to control depression.

The shed, for some, might be important for this reason. Not for the present as much as the future. It might be the place that allows you to keep busy and enjoy both mental and physical health as you grow old.

I imagine the same reason I spent 6 weeks this summer remodelling and fitting my own kitchen. The need to stand up, and do something creative with your hands. Learn new skills, and have something to admire and be proud of at the end. Something you created truly yourself that is tangible and understood by the people around you.

Who was it who said “any man who, past the age of thirty, finds himself without a shed, can consider himself a failure”? -Andy, Detectorists Season 3 Episode 1 https://youtu.be/QWJMxigdruM?t=552

Because I like to build shit and need more space for tools.

I really recommend reading “Why we Make things and why it matters” by Peter Korn. Others in this thread have written a lot about the void that you fill by making real progress on discrete things. I think this book looks a bit more at the philosophy of making itself.

My personality somehow ends up with so many irons in the fire that I am always buried in some sort of work. I also builds sheds. You need sheds to store all the tools to do all the shit you're doing. Seems wise to me otherwise your tools will get rusty.

To have an agency, this would be something I did because I wanted to. Most of us lack sufficient agency in our day to day job. We don't wanna be in standups, meetings, or most work activities that are at least to us pointless and maybe are.

I've been contemplating building a large-ish shed but I'm stuck on the foundation. It's New England so inevitably the structure will sink into the ground without a foundation, but I don't want a permanent foundation. Clearly it would be ideal to have a grid of supports underneath the shed with adjustable height (maybe using some sort of threaded mechanism), and make it possible to adjust those risers automatically through some sort of self-leveling like what a 3D printer does. But of course now I will never actually build this :-)

Compared to the abstract, conceptual, and ephemeral nature of engineering solutions from many diverse technologies that are forever transitory and evolving - Making things in the physical world from many different materials with their concrete physical properties that are governed by the laws of physics and require specific skills and tools and sequencing and order to be able to fashion them into a physical object that provides actual utility… Making things in the physical world can be quite cathartic and grounding. More like meditation.

Saying "I want to build a shed", is like saying "I want to lose 10 pounds", it is a way to achieve a measurable goal. One where it is easy to see your progress, humans like the constant reward (or reminder).

We live in a world where even if the outcome is measurable, often times, it is not in our control. A shed, the gym, other such "hobbies" are tangible goals with indicators along the way where our influence of control intersects the measurable progress we see. These are essential to sanity, methinks.

I started building a bike shed during the 1st year of covid of the course of 2 or 3 weeks. I made the foundation and the sides myself and had help from my dad to complete the roof and doors. It was a nice change from work and looking after the kids and every time I walk past it it feels like an achievement and a shared experience with my dad. I spent about the same on wood and fittings as I'd have spent on a crappy self assembly plastic equivalent and I got to make it exactly how I wanted it.

Because you can't sit and chill in a distributed message queue.

The urge to build a shed seems to be pretty common. I've been thinking about it for a couple years now. As David Lynch said, "whenever you can build a shed, you’ve got it made."

https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2003/08/18/david-lynch-o...

I alternate very busy and sabbatical periods. When I am busy, I discipline myself to do relatively boring things. Then I have a lot of ideas of very cool things to do. Then I stop being busy and I am not interested in those anymore.

Why do I find those interesting only when I am busy? My hypothesis is that some unconscious part of me is trying to escape the discipline.

Upon hearing the student ask this question the wise old man looked quizzically for a moment and then asked another question in response: "why would a man who is busy building not one but two sheds in his garden create additional work for himself by taking the time to grow and maintain saas infrastructure?".

What else are you gonna do with your spare time? Run the treadmill of eat/work/shit/eat/work/shit/gym/eat/tv/shit/sleep? Doing something new that you enjoy and feels productive makes life feel a little more meaningful. It doesn't have to be as big as building a shed.

Another angle: finding a good contractor is almost impossible. Often you find a mediocre contractor who you need to constantly manage, which is stressful.

If you do it yourself, you know it will be done right. No corner cutting.

Although this "can't let go" or "can't delegate" mentality can have its own set of issues.

I’m renovating our bedroom right now on nights and weekends—the room is currently gutted down to plywood and drywall. Economically, it makes sense for me to hire the job out, but I get so much satisfaction doing it myself, working with my hands and seeing the job well done.

Because work is more fun than fun.

I recommend this book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp...

I promise you you'll get more retrospective satisfaction out of those sheds than your saas.

I feel like there is nothing like working with your hands to unwind for a screen and email infused day. And if you really make something, you can feel proud afterwards.

I do this too and it works for me. Better than binging Netflix. What would be your alternative?

People need more variety in their daily activities than most modern jobs provide. Does your life otherwise provide "planning & decision-making exercise"? (Playing football or hockey would count, running or swimming laps would not.)

Because you enjoy it! Physical labor(in moderation) is good for the body and soul. And unlike your SaaS infrastructure which will likely be gone in 2 years, your sheds may be a lifetime monument to an actual, real tangible accomplishment.

>I spent a great deal of my free time building two sheds in my garden

Is your name, perchance, Arthur?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA8xTGP_M8g

Took half a day and $200. Got me plenty of extra space. Don't overthink it just start building and figure it out as you go.

Pic https://ibb.co/7V50HV8

You answered your own question. Dealing with stress, relaxation and recreation does not mean doing nothing exactly, it means doing what you WANT to do, even if that may be doing nothing, or building something.

Why not? If you like building things and have the time, making a shed is a very valid use of time. Better than playing video games or watching TV. Most men enjoy building things, it's probably innate.

I like taking a break from programming and working on my car with my hands.

Do you enjoy building sheds?

Some men deal with stress by playing with model trains, aircraft, cars, boats etc. Some men play with amateur radio (such as myself). Some men build sheds. Welcome to your new hobby!

Because that busy man has garden tools and other stuff which needs to be stored somewhere?

I think the question is answered by the sentence before it.

Construction therapy to rejuvenate the soul.

Because you need a shed