JLC Online: In my last article, “Rules for Better Framing” (Nov-Dec/23), I introduced some guidelines that are important to follow to be a good house framer. These were general concepts that apply to any complex job that is part of a larger, integrated project, and they were mostly aimed at the person managing the job. In this follow-up article, I summarize principles and habits that are necessary to adopt to be an efficient and valuable worker, whether a laborer or a highly skilled artisan. As in the previous article, these are general concepts that apply to any trade.
3 comments:
Reading this article was fascinating. I often wonder when I am working how I can be more efficient and work faster. Some things I know I can do faster and other things I will just take more time no matter how many times I try to find a way to speed it up. I know that while I hate setting up and getting everything I’ll need for the day in the beginning, it will make everything go faster. Because if I do not have to make a million trips to the trap or the shop I will be more efficient even if it feels like a pain. So reading this article which pointed out other things that can make a worker more efficient I was interested to see how many things I already do and what were some of the things I had not thought about yet. Overall I thought it was a worthwhile read.
While it was the title of the article that really drew me in, I think that this article presents some genuinely useful tips for maximizing personal working efficiency that can be applied to a lot of different workplaces. Ideas like the value of time, knowing what tools to use for the job and how to use them well are big ideas that sometimes get skipped in today’s world, and are really important for becoming a valuable resource and member of any team. I think that sometimes, we skip the big ideas like those straight to the minute details and we lose a lot when that happens. Working ‘smart’ is important in our industry both for longevity in the business and just overall efficiency as a whole, as this article points out. In the end, I agree with the closing (and overall) sentiment of the article - if something’s worth doing, it’s certainly worth doing correctly and learning how to best do it in that manner.
A lot of this advice felt intuitive but it was still a good read. I liked the section about watching people who know what they’re doing to mimic their good habits. I find that point rings true to me whenever I’m in the shop working with someone like Sean and seeing how he does things that are way more efficient or accurate than how I’d probably approach something and keeping that knowledge as a tool for the future. I think the tips about how to work smarter not harder were very rudimentary, such as when you need multiple sticks of lumber at the same length to cut them at the same time. Or to keep only the most essential things in your belt tool storage. However, while I think the tips were a little basic I also see how I often don’t use them even when knowing better; for example when ripping down a sheet to 91” to measure the 5” side instead of the longer measurement you actually want to avoid dealing with a long tape measurement.
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