Often I say that I don’t care if people learn the hard way, as long as they learn.
Perhaps this is partially because that is the way that I feel about myself. I’ve learned a lot of lessons in this life, and far too many of them were the hard way. Thankfully I have made it out alive, but still.
In this life, we all have limited time. We only get 24 hours each day, and during most of those days we sleep. Each minute that we waste is one that we will never get back, and every time we have to redo something, we wasted some time.
Though this truth applies to all of us, sometimes it is most noticeable on the homestead. Since a lot of what gets done you’re going to have to do yourself, your time is extremely precious. Today I spent a bit of time redoing something, because I did not do it right the first time.
DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN
When @grandpa-pepper and I were first cutting down trees to make a path for our driveway and a clearing for our house site, I made quite a few piles of logs. I had some long pieces of metal from some grain bins that I had purchased, and planned on using them to help keep my firewood off of the ground. At the time though, I did not make the effort to go grab them. Instead, I just stacked the logs on the ground.
Just so you know, a log laying on the ground is going to rot. Now I sure do have some uses for rotting logs, since I can use them in hugel mounds and such, but there are plenty of rotten logs out in the woods already. These trees that we cut down will be much more valuable to us as firewood for heating our home.
Ideally, stacks of wood for firewood should be stored in a way that keeps them off of the ground. This will help the wood to be able to dry without rotting. My lame attempt at taking a shortcut was not going to work.
Here you can see that after just a few months the wood at the bottom of the pile was already starting to deteriorate. Time to do it all over again.
NOW I’LL TRY THE RIGHT WAY
Though I’ve still got a few more piles to go, I combined three of my stacks into one earlier today. This time, I put down my metal runners first to keep the wood off of the ground.
I even used some T-posts at the end of the pile so that I could stack it higher without making it longer. It sure gives the stack a nicer look when it is finished too.
In the end, it did not take me that long to complete this part of the project, but I still had to do it twice. Also, I’m still not finished. I still have three big piles to restack. Also, I’ll never get back any of the time that it takes me to redo all of this work. All of the other things that I could have been doing will now have to wait.
Guys, I’m sure that you may have heard this before, but please take the time to do it right the first time. If you need to, even ask how to do it right. If you guess wrong, you’ll just be wasting your time. I’ve got some more work to do on this restacking project, but I can guarantee that I’ll be doing every new one right the first time.
Live and learn… but please do learn!
As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:
proof-of-not-doing-it-right-the-first-time
Until next time…
Don’t waste your time online, invest it with steemit.com
Doing it the right way , seems to make so much sense !! Yet for various reasons we take short cuts . I am attempting to SLOW down and make a effort instead of just RUSHING through things to get it done . Thanks for the post!
Very good attitude, and comment! Have a full power upvote from Papa!
learning is the power
Now that is some good old-fashioned hard work! Glad you worked through and got it done right.
Good lesson. 👍
I also think it is always worth doing work in front of you. It is much more productive and allows you to save time on other things.
I've been stacking wood all my life, Dad had a firewood business and taught me young!
We used wood pallets to stack wood on. Lay down a couple of well placed bricks, line up the pallets and your wood is safely off the ground with a little airflow to boot!
I've learned many lessons the hard way. That's OK, sometimes that's the way it goes. But not seeking out wisdom from more experienced people is the true mistake.
LOL - Is that where you got your username from?
In my younger days, I stacked wood. Now I stack silver bullion along with the rest of the gang over at #steemsilvergold
Good lesson @papa-pepper
Welcome to Steemit @dufflepud.
@papa-pepper first I want to extend my warm greetins to you and @papa-pepper tribe..second, I like this your cow boy hat..looks great. To your post, I thnk that doing it right is great and yes some learn the hard way ...In my case, I mostly learn the hardway by doing things late especially buying festival gifts for othere - which is not all that great however its just me...haha. I however learn to be a great wild man from you @papa-pepper
Old boss told me. "We have time to do it right, we don't have time to do it again!" I try and take that in everything I do.
Wow... Always the main hard worker... @papa-pepper very correct...better to do it right than doing it again but good to doing it again than never doing it!😎 Nice one aand keep it up...my regards to all the @peppers
Do it RIGHT the 1st Time...
You are so so right, especially I would think on a homestead.
This was also true when I worked as an Investment Banker, sometimes with transactions in the 10's or even 100's of millions... there was NO room for error.
On this side of the computer, have the so called largest Hurricane barreling down where I live on my sailboat... unfortunately I live about 1/4 mile from the ocean... so wish me well this weekend. I'm staying with my sailboat and will keep an eye out for others boats around here, as well.
Cheers !!
Please, please do be careful! Do you have any escape routes planned? Don't forget - the aftermath can be just as dangerous as the storm itself.
What she said!
Thank You Both, Aunt Deb & Papa-Pepper...
Of course it's always better to do something right the first time, but I also think that we get a stronger feeling of personal improvement when we learn from our mistakes. We can look back and see a clear difference between our past self and our present self.
Dear OP, maybe spend some time on your writing style.. once you have that down add posts like this to the work or life section, but this should not be posted under philosophy.
@papa-pepper really appreciate your full documentation of you and your crew in your various experiences/lifelessons/steemskills posts...your competitions have been a bit extensive for me to commit to being apart of but thanks for being an edifying member of steemland...I hope to one day cross paths - I'm no homesteader but do try and live my life with a high level of values, moral standards and family values...thanks for being awesome
I think ..his say what he mean...but at the end it's true :) I guess his in "wood business", but the same principle could be pass over anything else. And it's the beauty of his post
Very good post @papa-pepper . . I like your post. .
good work @papa-pepper. Sometimes our time is wasted with siya - siya. because we are not good at managing time for useful things. great post and thank you for reminding us papa :-)
I believe in learning the hard way and honestly some people just need to take that path themselves no matter how much you tell them. I am a huge fan of "hacks" Which are processes we do every day or have to do yearly etc that you can do better and faster. Always tons to learn from others and I appreciate you taking the time to show up a better way.
Gotta love the hacks, anything that saves us precious time while still getting solid results is a huge blessing! Thanks man!
Thanks @papa-pepper
Sometimes we just have to do it slow to see if we're doing something wrong
Good point! Very good point!
totaly agree... making same mistake over and over , it's stupidity. Doesn't matter what you do, this it's quite te key. But as wierd as it is, not many people get it, and keep doing wrong. Is sad, cause you can start anything, and even if you do it wrong away, by correcting your self, you will become from zero a Hero in your things.. like your post well done! @papa-pepper
Thanks @vedernikov!
I prefer doing it fast, because in a lot of cases you don't even know what "doing it right" means. Also, when you do it fast, you see results quicker, which can motivate you.
That's valid, but I knew the right way to do it and still chose not too.
and I'll bet grandpa-pepper suggested the right way at the time.
Sometimes silver hair equals a lot of errors done it the past learning the right way to do things. LOL
Actually, I did not. I was too excited with the big picture of clearing the trees for the driveway and home site.
From this silverhaired grandfather, Slow Down, Do it once, do it right.
My bum is still sore from the number of times I was told that when I was younger.
I once was availed of a huge stack of free building supplies. As a homesteader, I leaped at the unexpected opportunity.
I had several tons of 8"x16" concrete blocks for free!
But... I had no idea of what to do with them until I needed them, so stacked them near my woodshed. Then I had to rebuild the woodshed and they were in the way, so I moved them. Then, after the woodshed was rebuilt, I moved them back.
Etc...
I really regret getting all those free bricks. They cost me more than I can relate. Sometimes, it is far more profitable to just say no, or to sit down and do nothing but think, until you come up with the right way to do something.
Good point, lesson learned.
This reminds me of the old saying "measure twice, cut once." This implies if you do not careful to measure right the first time, expect to do it over again. @ironshield
Very good saying!
I cut it three times and it is still too short!
Lol...maybe there's a reason for that. Reminds me of another saying: "When you find you're in a hole...STOP DIGGING!!!"
heheh doing it right the first time is ideal and though it too is ideal for us to learn from others to avoid making mistakes, i certainly feel like everyone would benefit dearly when the mistakes are made by them. often times it hurts either physically or egoistically when mistakes are made but that pain is the ingredient to help you remember the lesson. The deeper the cut, the deeper the lesson gets impressed in your memory. great post and thanks for sharing papa.pepper.
good job. i upvoted you and follow you so you may also follow me and upvote my posts @kicktheword
I vote for doing it right the first time! I am guilty of stumbling through something, then realizing I could have done it better/cheaper if I would have done my "homework" first!
Never leave for tomorrow what you can do today, is a saying used here where I live in Venezuela, always have the opportunity and time to do something, haslo .. do not postpone it, the time in this life is limited and there is to make the most of it, life is one and you have to enjoy it obviously in a good way, always doing good without damaging your neighbor.
the human being is sometimes peresozo, always says tomorrow I do this, and tomorrow comes and then we say better I postpone it for another day and it happens that happens and time passes and you regret not having used it, then it's late, it's only that this sentence is very valuable.
greetings dear friend @papa-pepper
Do it right the first time so we don't need to do it again. If this is the approach, we all need to slow down and do the task methodically.
work casually ,, while enjoying coffee and playing a smartphone is a relaxing thing.
Great post @papa-pepper
I work construction. I have heard many times "Do something, even if it's wrong."
I abhor this saying. If you do something wrong when you're building, then you have spent the money already budgeted to do it right, or much of it. Then, when you figger out you did it wrong, you have to undo it, and spend that money again. Finally, when you figger out how to do it right, you do it again, and spend the money again.
Instead, I say "Don't just do something. Sit there."
Because sometimes it is a far more profitable practice to sit down and do nothing but think about how to do what needs doing.
Edit: I remembered this too: if you don't take the time to do it right, you'll make the time to do it over.
Whenever I start to do something in a hurry and I know I'm being less careful than I should, I remember a story I read somewhere about a carpenter who hadn't properly squared a wall in the house he was building. He decided to just move on without pulling the wall apart and fixing it, but as he tried to continue building the house the mistake kept getting magnified with each workaround he had to invent to try to compensate and he finally had to take apart all the progress he had made to get back to the wall he'd made the mistake on and get it properly squared. It cost him days of work instead of a few hours.
It's amazing how often not being meticulous about our tasks can come back to haunt us!
You do not want to face the wrath of my bunghole!!
Then the time should be used so that we might not be as good as merugia. that time can't we re like yesterday
very nice article!
Well, ultimately, you learned your lesson and that is what is most important.
Thank you for sharing your lesson with us and emphasizing on doing it right the first time.
Absolutely well said my friend, and this applies to everything we do in life and also in steemit! If only everyone here was doing it right the first time or ask for help before doing nonsense on the platform, success will surely follow!
Your so right and we all make mistakes but not all of us learn from them,great post.
@papa-pepper just curious why are these logs so long? they do not look like they would fit in your traditional box type stove? Thanks for sharing
Had a lot of them, will shorten and split them later, but don't need it all split right now. Now I need to build a house to burn the wood in, do the logs were left long but manageable.
Very good question.
Thanks. Was just wondering for my parents who are older, thought there was an easier purpose.
Make a plan and work the plan! A hard lesson for some folk to just understand time is money, time is energy and if wasted you don't get a redo on it... Great job @papa-pepper! Sharing for others!
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That reminds me the weekends I would go to my grandparents cabin on a lake when I was younger. So many wood piles!!!!!!!!
They were really into sorting the wood pile, having it a certain high, having it set up right, off the ground, so many different things. It would often take them years to get thought all the wood and have go out and get more.
We had the same issue here when we got our first years firewood in. We made the mistake of stacking it outside the backdoor on the ground...almost got buried alive when the stack fell because the logs on the bottom had deteriorated. Lucky for me I forgot my hat and turned around to get it and the pile fell just after I'd stepped back into the house.
We learned our lesson and now always stack the wood in our basement. Of course we've had issues inside as well when someone didn't follow simple directions and stacked in manner that was very unsafe. Thankfully no one was in the basement when it fell over and thankfully it didn't fall towards the basement window. :D
I find that the hardest learned lessons are the ones you never forget so I guess we are smarter now that we've learned our lesson. :D Have an awesome day! :D
As a home improvement contractor I often have to go behind building contractors and fix their shortcuts. Time is money so they cut every corner they can to either finish on time or ahead of schedule. Then I get called in to fix it right. Bad for them but good for me.
I'm embarrassed to say I've never thought of stacking wood OFF the ground. The only wood pile I've ever had was inherited already on the ground. We never made it to the bottom of the pile, just kept adding and taking away from the top. However, we just moved to a new homestead and will be starting a wood pile from scratch - so glad I stumbled upon your post today! Now to come up with something to start it off the ground...
Stack them a certain way, and place them in the right places. Then you have cover for fighting positions. Just remember they work both ways unless you plan them very well! ;-)
Good advice and thanks for sharing :)
NOOO way!!! I just finished doing this exact same thing last weekend at my cabin! I re-stacked a bunch of wood for two reasons. I was too lazy the first time to do what you did and spend 10 extra minutes to prepare for the wood not to be on the ground to rot ANd I also had mixed some good dry wood with newer cut wood. That was just dumb of me. All fixed up now and plan on not being so lazy next time! 👍
Small world... At least we are learning.
We all mistakes @papa-pepper. As long as we learn and don't beat ourselves up over them, then we can move forward. We often try to do too much and in too big of a hurry. That's when we make mistakes and sometimes even have accidents. We need to plan for a job and the slow down and do it right the first time. The new piles look really good.
so nice, it looks like a piece of art :)
do it right, or not at all!