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    Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It
    Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It
    Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It
    Audiobook7 hours

    Every Tool's a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It

    Written by Adam Savage

    Narrated by Adam Savage

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In this New York Times bestselling “imperative how-to for creativity” (Nick Offerman), Adam Savage—star of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters—shares his golden rules of creativity, from finding inspiration to following through and successfully making your idea a reality.

    Every Tool’s a Hammer is a chronicle of my life as a maker. It’s an exploration of making, but it’s also a permission slip of sorts from me to you. Permission to grab hold of the things you’re interested in, that fascinate you, and to dive deeper into them to see where they lead you.

    Through stories from forty-plus years of making and molding, building and break­ing, along with the lessons I learned along the way, this book is meant to be a toolbox of problem solving, complete with a shop’s worth of notes on the tools, techniques, and materials that I use most often. Things like: In Every Tool There Is a Hammer—don’t wait until everything is perfect to begin a project, and if you don’t have the exact right tool for a task, just use whatever’s handy; Increase Your Loose Tolerance—making is messy and filled with screwups, but that’s okay, as creativity is a path with twists and turns and not a straight line to be found; Use More Cooling Fluid—it prolongs the life of blades and bits, and it prevents tool failure, but beyond that it’s a reminder to slow down and reduce the fric­tion in your work and relationships; Screw Before You Glue—mechanical fasteners allow you to change and modify a project while glue is forever but sometimes you just need the right glue, so I dig into which ones will do the job with the least harm and best effects.

    This toolbox also includes lessons from many other incredible makers and creators, including: Jamie Hyneman, Nick Offerman, Pixar director Andrew Stanton, Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro, artist Tom Sachs, and chef Traci Des Jardins. And if everything goes well, we will hopefully save you a few mistakes (and maybe fingers) as well as help you turn your curiosities into creations.

    I hope this book serves as “creative rocket fuel” (Ed Helms) to build, make, invent, explore, and—most of all—enjoy the thrills of being a creator.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMay 7, 2019
    ISBN9781508286493
    Author

    Adam Savage

    Adam Savage is a maker, designer, television host, producer, husband, and father. He was the cohost of all 278 hours of MythBusters on the Discovery Channel for fourteen years and host of its 2019 spinoff MythBusters, Jr., as well as several other TV shows. He also makes stuff and tells his sto­ries on his website Tested.com. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, twin boys, and two amazing dogs. Every Tool’s a Hammer is his first book.

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    Reviews for Every Tool's a Hammer

    4.5/5

    226 ratings17 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Great for makers and creators and anyone who loves to try something new.
    • 4/5
      This is not a book about Mythbusters. The show does get mentioned a few times, but it is more about the career of Adam Savage and how he became a maker. He talks about the way he approaches projects, what gives him happiness when he works, and ways to do various things. Sharing ideas and skills seems to be what he enjoys doing in his craft. Hearing tidbits about various movies he either worked on or made props for his personal use was fun. I enjoyed this and I think that anyone that likes to tinker will enjoy the book as well.
    • 5/5
      Great book, honest and real. For makers of every stripe. Including people who don't consider themselves such. Includes a lot of insights I am going to try and apply to my life and work
    • 5/5
      Adam Savage provides some great advice on project management and leadership along with talking about cool stuff he's done and built.
    • 5/5
      A great read. If you’re a maker I highly recommend this one.
    • 3/5
      This book is not a general one on creativity but rather very specific on creating, meaning actual physical creating of models and other projects done in a shop. It's good I guess but I don't spend that much time doing that.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book, amazing Author, amazing subject. This book was inspirational. This book makes me wanna create more. It also makes me want to be creative. I recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      A lovely book, and a fun listen. It definitely has some clear advice for people who want to get into the sort of creation that Adam Savage specializes in, it holds solid advice for people who create anything at all. It also holds many stories from Adam Savage's life that any Mythbuster fan would enjoy hearing about regardless.
    • 5/5
      I really loved this book, more than I thought I would! Inspirational for me & Adam is an impressive craftsman. Go check out the BladeRunner blasters he's built on Ytube.
    • 5/5
      If you have any inclination towards creating, making or anything even tangentially connected to those, you need to give this book a go.

      Adam Savage gives a fantastic deep dive into his creative processes and a rousing call to arms for creation of all kinds. If you are not invigorated and ready to start making something by the end of this book, you are definitely dead inside!
    • 4/5
      I was a big fan of Mythbusters, and I've always found Adam Savage -- with his bouncy energy, his heart-felt geeky enthusiasm, his skill, and his ingenuity -- to be a particular delight. Some of my appreciation for that skill and ingenuity, though, comes from the fact that what he does is just so utterly beyond me it might as well be brain surgery, as my own talent for anything involving working with my hands is effectively nil. Which makes me not really the target audience for this book, since it's largely aimed at giving advice to other folks who express their creativity by building physical things.Even I, however, can see that it's pretty good advice, as most of it is less about specific things like which tools to use -- although there is a little bit of that -- and more about the general principles involved in approaching these kinds of projects: organization, being willing to experiment, the pitfalls of trying to do things too quickly, etc. I'm particularly impressed by how successful he is at checking his ego and being willing to actually learn from his mistakes, and to put his failings and missteps on display so that others can learn from them too. He's also very, very good about stressing that everyone has to find the ways of doing things that work for them, rather than assuming that he knows best for everybody. Which, honestly, is something I wish more people giving advice on creative endeavors would understand so well.I'm guessing that this is likely be a really good, encouraging read for maker types, especially those just starting out. For my part, while I'm not exactly in a position to find much of it useful, even if Savage does try to make his advice as broadly applicable as possible, I did at least enjoy this as a glimpse into how he works. And his passion for what he does and his sincere love of sharing it with other people made it a surprisingly pleasant read even for someone who can barely hammer a nail in straight.
    • 4/5
      This is going to be an immense help in a lot of what I do. I struggle to feel like I create. I think this book will allow me to feel better about what I can do, and some tools to do more.
    • 3/5
      Like everyone else, I enjoyed watching Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman building things on television and then blowing them up; I also occasionally watch Savage building things on YouTube, and I like the way he goes around encouraging (young) people to get into workshops and make stuff themselves. So I was curious to see what his book would be like. It turns out that it's a bit of a mixed bag. There are quite a few anecdotes about his career as artist, set-builder and prop-maker, many of which are not all that interesting unless you are as obsessed as the author is with Hollywood monsters, ray-guns and spaceships; there are some handy practical tips about choosing the right kind of glue and not letting people cut paper with your fabric-scissors, but most of the book turns out to be advice. What Savage says about things like planning your projects, getting stuff done, organising a workshop, communicating with clients, co-operating effectively with bosses, subordinates, or fellow team-members, etc., mostly seems very sensible, but it's at a very general level, and it's the sort of stuff that few of us are likely to benefit from seeing in a book. Either we've already worked those things out for ourselves, or we still need to have the practical experiences to teach us whether or not they are practices that will be useful for us. No real person is ever going to start making checklists for tasks because they've read about them in a book. We do it automatically when — and if — we find we're doing stuff too complicated to keep track of in our minds (or we need to share progress with someone else). Savage's voice (both as a writer and as a reader) is pleasant to listen to, but it's probably not a very useful book in the end.Likely scenario:☑ Get Adam Savage's book as gift☑ Read Adam Savage's book☐ Follow advice contained therein☐ Tidy up workshop
    • 3/5
      Easy to skim and glean the main points, or settle in and enjoy the anecdotes.
    • 4/5
      Equal parts memoir, motivational literature and how-to guide, Savage is mostly writing about what it took to have the career he did as a creator of special affects and where the drive came from. While I probably wouldn't have picked this book up if I hadn't have been a fan of "Myth-Busters," there is sufficient meat there for a general audience. One particular point that caught my eye was when Savage is talking about the difference between failure as learning experience and moral failure. That is to say the difference between a project that is not working out as expected, and one literally goes back to the drawing board, and failure to live up to one's responsibilities, such as letting a client down because of your arrogance, or missing a child's birthday party because you were too drunk to bother; things that make you go hmm.
    • 3/5
      This is a pretty good book. Its really an autobiography with some good general observations and life lessons thrown in. He presents things that work for him as suggestions and isn't dogmatic about there being only one way of doing things.
    • 3/5
      As a fan of Mythbusters I was excited to pick this book up. I was expecting more of a memoir from Adam Savage and hoping for some Mythbuster stories along with thoughts about his life and how he got there. Instead, Every Tool's a Hammer is Adam's ode to his life's passion: making. Part memoir and part instruction manual to people looking to get into the craft this ended up being an enjoyable read, though not exactly what I was expecting. Adam's love and passion for making things shines through on every page and is told in exactly the excited and enthusiastic manner he had on the show. Other makers of all skill level will likely enjoy this book.I listened to the audio book narrated by the author. This continues to be my preferred method of "reading" memoirs. I just wish we'd gotten more insights into his life and career and a little less about types of glue and how to organize a shop.