Hey friends,

I'm back in the studio! 🎉 More on that later but let's first pick up where we left off last week.

🧠 Flow-State

Continuing my quest to understand why I find most DIY a very fulfilling pastime but not so much for some tasks like painting, I think there are at least two factors at play.

Evolutionary Tendencies

There are things in life which give us a deep sense of pleasure that can't be explained by reason and instead hark back to our hard-wired evolution. One of them is fire, used by our ancestors of various different Hominin species for over a million years. While electric lights and radiators are certainly a much more efficient and convenient way of obtaining well distributed light and heat, there's just something about building and sitting around a campfire that satisfies something deep within us. The same is true of building shelter. A shed or garden room is really just a modern version of a mud hut. And I see it all the time in the woods behind our house: kids build wigwams and forts from sticks, purely for the pleasure of it. I doubt many kids are taught to do it or how but like a bird knows to make a nest or a spider a web, it's just innate.

I think this is part of the puzzle, and connects to the next...

Flow-State

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term to describe our state of mind when we're doing particular tasks:

“There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback,” 

I'm sure people enjoy flow-state from a very varied range of tasks (I sometimes get it when editing a video for example) but that's how I'd describe my experience when doing DIY - I'm fully immersed, I'm problem solving, I know the goal and I can see the progress. Add in the endorphins from moving your body, being surrounded by trees and nature (the Japanese call it 'forest bathing') and getting out in the sunlight, something like building a fence is one of the most pleasurable activities I can do.

It's not surprising that something akin to ancient activities like hunting, gathering, tool-making or building shelter invokes flow-state whereas modern day tasks like answering emails, work meetings or painting - a fairly stationary, monotonous and indoors task - doesn't.

I'm definitely not alone, in the last couple of years, YT channels like Primitive Technology have had incredible numbers of views despite the skills serving very little purpose in the modern day. People still go hunting despite supermarkets being a thing. I do think that many of us are not in total harmony with society today.

Here's an excellent, less hastily written, blog post on flow-state if you want to explore it some more.

🦸🏻 My Sidekick

This is Joe, Abi's Dad. He's 74 and recently retired from a job he loved and as far as I can tell is finding retirement incredibly dull. He and Abi's mum come over regularly; she takes over baby sitting duties and Joe helps me with the DIY. While I'm pretty content to work on my own most of the time, the extra pair of hands is super useful as is having someone to bounce ideas off, problem solve together and celebrate the victories. In that film I like, Into The Wild, the real-life protagonist concluded happiness is only real when shared. There's a lot of truth in that.

Joe seems to have more stamina than me, which is concerning - perhaps I'm the sidekick? He'll no doubt appear in future videos so I'm glad to introduce him.

I'm not sure if I've said before, but they're from the Philippines. I met Abi, who was born here, a few years after my stay there but having knowledge of the culture did make it easier for me to win her parents over 😉.

🎥 Video

Here's another short video on how I lifted the floorboards in the studio. Initially I was going to lump it in with insulating the floor but sometimes a long edit feels like climbing a mountain so these shorter ones suit me well while I'm spending as much of my free time as possible on the DIY.

🖥️ Studio, Continued

With the laminate laid, I could crack on with my list.

With floor trim you have two choices - match the floor or match the skirting. If you're matching the floor then really you have to buy it from the same place you get the flooring which may be more expensive. If you have white skirting then you can get it much cheaper from Screwfix. One product caught my eye as I'd not seen it before - plastic trim which is good for bathrooms or kitchens where the otherwise MDF-made trims wouldn't fare so well coming into contact with water. The other good thing about it is you can cut it and it's white all the way through. For this room I decided to go with MDF with a white foil wrap and glued it with mitre bond and in some places with my second-fix nail gun. I then filled the nail holes and painted over which made for a seamless finish - something you can't do with floor-matched trims.

See that smudge on the wall in the photo above? The dark paint definitely shows dust and smudges much more readily than lighter colours which at first seemed counterintuitive but since dust is grey it makes sense, though I wasn't expecting it. I guess grey or silver would be the best option for hiding dirt, much as it is for cars, but overall I'm really happy with the colour.

I re-attached the radiator, added white pipe sleeves and then cut the wooden collars to fit.

Next up were the shelves which I made in exactly the same way as the one in the bedroom as I liked it so much. The purpose of them is to store and make easily accessible my filming gear. Over the years, I've let ad revenue from my videos accrue and can do three things with it - stick it in my SIPP, pay tax, or buy some fun tech to improve production value. So I've mostly gone for the latter and called it a business expense. So whenever you've sat through an annoying ad on my channel or clicked an Amazon link this is where it goes 😊.

There are so many things you can get - fancy tripods, lights, camera sliders etc but I try to keep it as simple as possible while bumping the quality as best I can.

The box to store my GoPro accessories is from Hobbycraft and I stained and varnished it to match the shelves.

While I was at the reclaimed timber yard picking up the scaffold boards I got talking to the owner who said that they do get in some pretty new timber that builders throw out in large quantities which made me think that if I sort out my workshop plan sooner rather than later and work out the lengths and quantities I need for the walls, it would be worth the trip if there are a few available at a time. I could save a bunch!

Here's my workstation in full. I wish my Kentia palm would grow for some better jungle vibes, it seems to be in suspended animation. I try to keep the orchid in bloom year round by secretly swapping it for others around the house 🤫.

I can't be the only one who geeks out on desk set-ups on YT so here are a few nuggets of my own:

• The bulb is a Tapo smart one, much cheaper than Philips Hue and works well enough, though does require 2.4Ghz internet so I had to split mine into 2.4 and 5 to get it to work. 2.4, while slower, does extend further so it's useful if in the garden. I have the lamp angled upwards into the corner for the ambience, blue during the day and 'sunset' during the evenings, voice controlled by the Google Nest Mini which I got sent for free for as a YT Premium subscriber. In fact our Alexa was free too with our internet - ever get the feeling they're trying to work their way into our lives?

• I'm obviously an Apple fan and have used macs for 15 years now. I can't even remember how to use Windows, I know there was a Start button in the bottom left, is that still a thing? The trackpad is a nice addition that Abi got me for Christmas but I only really use it for zooming in and out of the timeline in a video edit. The mouse + keyboard shortcuts are the superior navigators IMO and I'm content with the Apple versions of each, although whose bright idea was it to put the mouse charger underneath, rendering it useless while charging.

• The headphones are Beats Solos which came as a freebie with my iMac. They're decent on-ear headphones but I have been thinking about getting some Airpod Pros 2 when they come out next year for the noise cancellation features. I figure I can wear them under my ear defenders when doing DIY.

• I recommend the chair. Although it's a cheap-ish one from China, it is sturdy and ergonomic. Personally I like the head rest but Abi says it makes me look like Stephen Hawking.

The last thing I've done this week is add curtains which should help with acoustics (I forgot to close them for the narration in the video above, doh). I put them straight up out of the pack so I'm hoping gravity will do the job of ironing out the creases for me. The curtain pole is different to the one I took off (I'm not a fan of gold), but it's one I've had knocking around for about a decade. Good to put it to use.

The sofa came with the house and while it doesn't match anything in here, either in style or colour, it is supremely comfortable. During the lockdowns, I'd swivel my iMac around and Abi and I would lie on the sofa to watch a film purely for a change of scenery from the living room.

When Abi returns to work after mat leave we are going to have to figure out some sort of second office or sharing arrangement in here, so the sofa may have to go.

Here's what's left:

• Trim and paint door
• Lights (getting closer on figuring them out now but still pretty confused)
• Acoustic panels (not a priority)
• Maybe a rug or a chair mat.

I've tidied the garage to better access the walls but no demolition to show you just yet.

👋

To balance out all the shiny goodness of my studio, this was my Thursday night:

🤬

Lastly, apologies to anyone awaiting a reply to their email. I'll try to catch up later today :)

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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