The Art of making what you love with Vaibhav Chhabra [#TBS Eps 22]
Engineer, Carpenter & Founder of Maker’s Asylum, Vaibhav Chhabra talks about quitting his job to build Makers Asylum, a leading maker’s space in India, How maker’s community enable people to build what they love and what stops us from giving our ideas a physical form.
On the show today, I have Vaibhav Chhabra. A mechanical engineer, passionate carpenter and the founder of Makers Asylum, a makers space in India where creators, artists and makers like him come together to build what they love. Vaibhav travels around the world to spread the word about makers community and has been recognized as Indo-French Young Leader by The President of France. If you love tinkering with tools, working with people, get your hands dirty and build anything, you should definitely check out his place.
Important Questions from the Episode
1. What is a maker space? (02 min, 26 sec)
2. What do you mean by a community driven space? (04 min, 40 sec)
3. What prompted you to start makers asylum? (07 min, 24 sec)
4. At what point did you decide to quit your job? (17 min, 13 sec)
5. What convinced you to take this plunge? (18 min, 40 sec)
6. In hindsight, do you think it was a good decisions to start makers asylum? (21 min, 00 sec)
7. What goes into transforming an idea into a physical product? (22 min, 14 sec)
8. What holds people back from making what they want to make? (24 min, 30 sec)
9. How is makers asylum helping people learn to make what they want to? (26 min, 52 sec)
10. What are the biggest challenge in teaching people ? (33 min, 20 sec)
11. Can you share examples of collaborative work at makers asylum? (35 min, 21 sec)
12. Were there moments when you wanted to shut this and go back to your job? (36 min, 50 sec)
13. Does it pinch that you still don’t earn as much as you did 6 years ago from your job? (38 min, 20 sec)
14. How do you guys earn money? How do you support yourself? (39 min, 04 sec)
15. Summary of Takeaways (42 min, 23 sec)
3 Big Takeaways from the Episode
The biggest obstacle to making what we want to is picking up the tools and making it. Very often, Our inability to get out of our comfort zone is worse than any external challenge. May be we are afraid of failing, may-be we are afraid of not knowing how to build but then, you can learn. A maker’s community is defiantly a great place to learn. But learning requires time and effort. We cannot binge watch Netflix and then expect to learn to build something incredible.
You learn Faster when you have a problem – This has been my personal experience in last few months. Curiosity is a great way to learn but if you are like me, very low on curiosity, then a great way to learn something new is to find an interesting problem to solve. When you focus on a great problem, your brain churns its creative juice. You identify your blind spots and fill them. You learn to use tools both physical and digital (and Even Mental Models) but most importantly, You will meet interesting people who will help you, some of whom may become your friends or some, your mentors.
Arouse curiosity before offering knowledge – I don’t exactly recall but I once heard on some podcast that great teachers do not teach but reveal, they do not bother about covering syllabus but they uncovers what is hidden, they surprise you. When teaching, Instead of trying to pump knowledge into your students mind, let their curiosity lead them and offer knowledge when throw questions at you. That way they will retain what you offer and also use them
Resources mentioned in the Episode
Links related to Benis Kumar