MythBusters' Adam Savage on Problem Solving: How I Do It

fora tv' the world is thinking so I used to play pool I used to play billiards quite seriously I played about two to three hours a day from age 19 to age 23 and while I never became a really great player I got close I got close to being really really good there's a there's something you need to play a game really well that I don't have you have to have this not just competitive spirit you have to have this sort of killer instinct Willy Marconi who was the second huge star of billiards in the middle 20th century Willie Mosconi said that in order to be a good pool player you had to be willing to spot your grandmother spot means give her you had to be willing to give your grandmother 49 points you had to be willing to give your grandmother a forty nine point lead in a game 250 points you had to be willing to give her a forty nine point lead and then you had to be willing to beat her and I don't have that I don't have that bone in me I don't have that killer instinct I'm competitive but I got as good at pool as I've gotten at a bunch of other skills I got good enough to see how a truly good and excellent practitioner is but not good enough to match them and many of you I'm in a room full of skilled collectors I know and many of you know that once you start to learn something you start to really understand how really good people are that can do it you start to see how advanced what they're doing is there are subtleties and Poole someone once said that in order the the ability in billiards and pool to sink a ball into a pocket is only 20% of playing the game and it took me three years about a thousand hours of playing pool before I actually understood what they meant the theaters that I cut my teeth on in San Francisco and there was a lot of them Berkeley Rev climate theater Eureka Theatre Beach Blanket Babylon George coats performance works project art oh that ability to play well with others gives you a tremendous amount of opportunity theater is all about the big picture literally the big picture it's about what's going on on stage therefore while the prop should look pretty good it's going to be seen from about this far away so it doesn't have to be perfect it's the prop is telling a story it's not the thing in and of itself everyone works towards telling the story I never see the other thing the prop needs to be is indestructible I never cease to be amazed at how actors could destroy welded steel things in one show just by seemingly handling it at any rate the cogs in the machine of theater need to talk to each other which is good because theater people I found are really talkative by nature and since the process in theater is about a zillion years old I mean there's very little difference between a production of Hamlet today and a production of Hamlet 300 years ago because this process is so old there's very little secrecy which means that there's plenty of room to learn which was good for me because one of the things that I had learned up till then was that I was good at learning skills and in theatre I became like a sponge carpentry electronics rigging upholstery lighting set design set painting everything I could get my hands on I pointed towards I asked if I could try it sometimes I tried it for free until I had the skills to get paid to do it but I reached out and grabbed everything that I wanted to learn theatre as I've said before I've talked biographically before theatre led to a job in film which is like theatre on steroids in in some respects there are differences there's more secrecy people are a little more highly specialized there are bigger budgets which always means more micromanaging and more stress but in film I learned that this wide array of skills that I brought was an asset there's this thing that happened once I started doing special effects everything I'd done up till then was a job that I got paid to do with something that paid the rent so I would go and do my job at a theater and then I'd come home and I'd make some sculpture or I'd make a robot or I'd do something that I wanted to do and when I started really rolling into the into the film industry into special effects I just noticed after about six months and I hadn't made any sure and having spent time shifting my attention from skill to skill I knew that I could only focus my attention on one thing at a time and there came this point at which I felt like I was making a transition from being a sculptor to working in special effects like I was applying all of my creative skill in this new field and it was weird it was a departure I was willing to go with it because the money was really good and at 26 years old I finally felt like I had found something that was a viable career something I could actually call a career I also made a promise to myself that I wasn't going to say that I used to be an artist I know my mental processes I know what they do and I know how important they are to my makeup so I knew that the same thing was happening whether I was animating beer for a commercial or I was making a sculpture now the output is different one as I'm making something a product for someone else but in that small regard of the creative output of the problem-solving for me the result at that point was the same I was diving into this new career and I said I'm never going to say I used to be a sculptor this is the same bones being being moved around being being challenged this gets into a deeper philosophical conversation about art as problem-solving but suddenly in this film industry applying my creative energy all of these disparate skills came into focus each one became like an arrow in my quiver I'm not an expert I've never been an expert in any one of these skills but the total gave me this edge I was fast I could innovate I didn't mind changing direction on the fly I wanted challenges I learned really fast I've said some of this before but what I wanted to talk about today this is all an introduction to talking about problem-solving I wanted to talk to you a little bit about my process of problem-solving there are question basically I look at everything as problem-solving and Francis Bacon the painter talks about this in a fantastic book called the brutality of fact he's one of the only artists I've ever read who actually can speak about things like truth and beauty and he doesn't mean these disparate out in the world concepts he's actually talking about very specific ideas that he hasn't he he talks about them very articulately he says that every artist starts a project with a problem to solve and even if it's an abstract painter they have some type of formalism they want to apply to the canvas and this problem-solving when you embark upon it you embark upon a goal you you go through a set of steps and I wanted to talk about my set of steps so the first question I ask myself is what is the problem I'm solving and while this seems trivial and simple you have to be super super clear about this if you've been given a problem to solve by someone else and you don't check to make sure you know what that praat what that problem you're solving is you're going to screw it up because you and the person who's given you that project aren't really clear jamie has this thing which he calls drilling the hole on the X it is a test that many in our shop have failed Jamie gives somebody a piece of wood with an X drawn on it and says please drill a hole on the X you'd be amazed at how many people have not been able to do that they come back with four holes well I thought maybe it should be this way or they come back with a hole near the X but not quite on its it's unbelievable you need to be clear about what problem you're solving second question and I go back and forth about which one of these is more important but in this order second question is what is the big picture and this is one that I've noticed that not a lot of people ask some people ask it those people that ask it that want to know what the big picture is I always want to work with them more where does the problem that I'm currently solving fit into a larger array am i solving just a singular problem in and of itself or is what I'm doing going to fit into something bigger how does it fit in can you see the whole picture sometimes you can't see the whole picture but you need to see how what you're doing is going to relate to other things otherwise it's not going to relate to other things in that case I keep asking the question can I see the whole picture and there are times I mean honestly for the waterslide episode I knew how that waterslide was going to work I knew we're going to lay down ply but we're going to lay down carpet when lay down vinyl it's actually pretty straightforward the problems to solve weren't the overall picture they were actually more like how do you move 50 sheets of plywood in a reasonable period of time to build the ramp in two days how do you grease down the ramp with soap etc so in those cases I see the big picture easily that's how the small parts all line up in an amount of time that's reasonable and as I go I keep asking that question can I see the big picture now and you keep on noticing I keep on noticing that as I keep on going I fill in bigger and bigger parts of the picture how much time do I have is there a deadline now the Maker Faire is all about DIY and tinkering and working working on your own projects working on things that you want I do a tremendous amount of that and I thrive on deadlines I find that if I don't have a deadline I don't get things done I want to give myself a challenge if I'm even if I'm doing something I might be doing something like I have to make 40 of something as I'm doing 40 of something I'm thinking well how long is it taking me to do this one oh three and a half minutes okay three and a half minutes I've got 40 to do times that it's going to be that how much time I'm going to finish by four o'clock I wonder if I can finish earlier am I going to mike is there a way to make this process go faster and I start doing the math I do in my head as I go becomes this sort of Zen meditation as I'm working but it's all racing against the clock and it actually also keeps me involved in the drudgery I mean doing repetitive tasks is really difficult it's a key part in making anything and it keeps my mind on the total goal when I want to give myself those time those time constraints how am i doing now that's a key component of how much time do I have how much time do I have now how much time do I have left where am I in terms of the goal that I'm going to reach how precise do I have to be this is actually a really big one how precise do I have to be the difference if I hand you a board and say drill me six holes in at about six inches apart well one way you could do it is literally just to estimate and drill me six holes and that takes about a minute another way is to go find a ruler and find a pen and carefully measure it all out and then you've taken 15 minutes and like I'm asleep at that point it depends upon how precise you have to be do I need the holes every exactly every six inches or do I need them approximately every six inches and this also has to do with how it's going to be seen this is something that needs to fit with another part in which case it does need to be precise or is it something that can be really loosey-goosey no one's going to see it it doesn't even matter another question I ask what's my rhythm what is my rhythm and how does it fit into this project I have learned very very much in myself a workflow that I like I like to work fast I like to work fast and my crew knows intimately that I hate to look for things so before I start a project I go everywhere in the shop and I get every tool that I need and I put it on the table and I get every material that I need and I put it on the table and I get everything lined up so that I don't have to move once I'm in the sluice once I'm rolling I want to keep on rolling that's my rhythm and if there's a project where that rhythms going to get broken I want to know so I can I can actually anticipate it this actually reached a level of absurdity when I was a model maker at Industrial Light and Magic I had these tool kits which you can see on my website they're aluminum doctor's bags and I filled them full of all the tiny tiny tools that you that you use as a model maker it ended up being something over about five hundred and fifty some odd tools and because I hate looking for anything even in those toolboxes I managed to arrange them so that I could reach and grab every single tool without moving another tool out of the way I actually ended up referring to it as first order retrieve ability and in the end even leaning over into my tool box was too for impatient me and I put them on scissor lifts so that as I sat at my chair they were at either side and I was able just to work and work and put things back and work and move things and it made me fast and that's the way I like to work unbroken like thrush what are my resources resources come in several categories and they all bear upon the what the problem that you're solving is the budget is there a budget do you have control over it if I do how much latitude do I have if it's my money what is the project worth to me when I was starting out I actually there was a whole class of jobs that I took that I would do the job for free for labor the labor would be free but I'd asked the parts that I was using to be paid for on condition that I get to keep the object when I'm done and this satisfied me on a lot of fronts because I do like special-effects props for films and then I get to keep this cool prop at the end and the advantage to me is twofold one I love keeping things that I've built too if I know I'm going to keep it I'm more invested in it and three I'm basically getting someone else to pay me how to learn how to work a new process often location right a second where am I here we are budget budget is large if it's your money I've gotten to that location facility location does the place I'm working I'm solving this problem in help or hinder the process I've worked in some really tiny spaces and I've also you know sometimes there's a budgetary constraint we can't afford the big space we have to work in the smaller space but we only have X amount of time and I have learned over the years to examine closely those little trade-offs because working in the smaller space may make the project take more time and become more expensive because you're working in a crappy space than it would be to invest at the front end in a space that's reasonable when you're thinking about location in solving a problem for us on the show it comes up all the time even the what season it is what's the temperature what is the weather we've now now that with the iPhones on Mythbusters we're actually regularly looking at the Doppler radar of our location to see how the shoot is going to go we were doing that just last week and yeah temperature humidity in model-making and special effects there are entire classes of processes that will screw you if the humidity is too high or too low even down to like watching paint dry and on a super humid day the paint's not going to drive very well but there are there a mold making processes that if it's too humid or too rainy or too dry they're just not going to work people how many people do I have is the team big enough is the team too big the team too big can be just as bad as the team not being big enough what does their morale like is it late are we trying to solve a problem after everyone's been working a full day are they fresh do I have all the skills necessary do I have all the skills necessary and commensurate with that do I have a reason allistic understanding of what my skill level is for the problem I'm about to solve it seems weird that I'm going down this really fairly long list but it really is I realized as I sat down and wrote this over the last couple of weeks this is a checklist I go through for every every project if I'm not very good at something is there enough time for me to get good at it to finish it or do I have to farm it out how long is that person going to take I took lessons in playing pool from a former hustler an illustrator named Bob Kipnis who lived in my hometown he was actually a friend of my dad's for years before I knew he had been a pool hustler professionally for about 20 years and I grew up with a pool table in the house so I asked Bob to come over every now and then to teach me some things about pool and Bob kind of rocked my world he actually said that pool is really really simple he said that when you get into the Crouch on the table you're only asking yourself a few really really simple questions you're thinking where is my cue going to hit the cue ball where on the cue ball what is the cue ball where is the cue ball going to hit the object ball and what are both balls going to do after they collide he said if you can go into the Crouch and answer all three of those questions every single time you go into the Crouch you're going to be a great pool player and again it took me another year of playing before I saw how how not only true that was but also how terrifyingly difficult it is to actually do something like that to ask those questions every single time you do something it's a very difficult meditation so while I'm working those are the broad checklist of things that I look at when I'm embarking upon solving a problem obviously all most of my problems on Mythbusters are our building problems but many of them are also narrative problems we're telling a story as we go that story changes as we go because we're telling the story honestly and we often have to figure out where we are within the narrative but as we go there is a set of questions which are being asked constantly literally every five minutes these questions are being asked how important is this particular step how important is it that I get it right can I screw it up or do I only have one bar of this special type of unobtainium is my machine deteriorating ie me or the tools that I'm using is this a step I might be able to improve later so that what I'm building is a stand-in for my solution am I missing something stupid am I being too clever which is another way of saying am I missing something stupid is there a simpler way which is another way of saying am I being stupid am I missing something stupid am i sure how what I'm doing fits into the larger picture this is actually I've talked about this before Jamie and I have very different working styles but we both actually have the same mechanism which is we have to build something in our heads before we can build it in the world and sometimes you you can't see the totality of what you're doing we just finished this some repeating arrow machine gun that was supposedly designed about 2,300 years ago and the device was so complicated that Jamie and I had to build a scale model and then we had to progress about three-quarters of the way towards building the full-scale model before we both fully understood the total machine now we also have experience with our with our with our process to know what we can and can't fudge with as we go but as we're going work on instantly taking this machine that we're building and putting the parts that are going into the mental picture into that mental 3d model what does the polled picture look like now that I have solved this specific part so in the end the three questions that I'm always asking are you know how where does this step fit into the whole now that I've completed it am I missing something stupid and how does the whole look now that I've completed this step ah and how much time do I have now again I love setting artificial goals if there is no specific deadline I love setting even an artificial deadline like I want to finish before I go to lunch I love finishing things before I go to lunch that do I want to paint what I'm making do I want to add some extra process or make it pretty when I'm done sometimes I'll race to the end of a project just so I can paint it in a way that Illinois Jamie once we're finished I also want to describe that this is not a linear process it is on a graph it goes all over the place and there is a part that I have learned and it doesn't at the 3/4 point in every project that I do about the 75% mark I finished most of the work I can see the end but it still seems kind of far away at that point in almost everything that ice that I work on I reach this point where I think I have no idea what I'm doing and it started well I mean it's been there forever it got really bad when I was in Industrial Light & Magic I would be working on something and you know I work right quite fast so I often build things two and three times before I'm finished with the final thing but I build something and it would be wrong and I build something to be wrong and I'd be waiting for someone to come up and tap me on the shoulder and be like it's time for you to go you have clearly have no idea what the hell you're doing but I've learned that that's a part of the process I've learned that even though I always feel like that and I have to actually address it intellectually because emotionally I always reach this point and I actually have come to respect it as this part of it's kind of an honest intersection with how mystifying this process is honestly every time I've embarked on a project where I thought I know how to do this I have screwed it up every single project I have sauntered into thinking I got this wired it up I talked about that last year and at the end honestly there's almost never this like this bumping pump your fists in the air moment where you're like yeah I did it I finished the project even when things I've been working on on my workbench for 10 years when I finally finished them it's not like I go oh yes I I'm just really satisfied it's done it's actually like a much more quiet and personal moment it's almost even sometimes a little bit sad it's a little bit sad to finish that project start to think maybe maybe it could be better maybe I should make a maybe there should be another one maybe maybe I need three maybe someone I know wants one the main question is what's the next project and there is always another project thank you

Channel: FORA.tv

Views: 462,735

Rating: 4.9053311 out of 5

Keywords: mythbusters, adam, savage, problem, solving, speech, lecture, presentation, maker, faire, foratv, fora.tv, fora, tv, bay, area

Id: BhAt-7i36G8

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 29 2010

Reddit Comments

[u/getawombatupya]

As a Mechanical Engineer... Pretty much sums up a lot of the projects I have had. One such project - "I need you to install a chain." I had poured around 1.5m³ of concrete as a better solution