#219 - Your Craft Is Your Art

[00:00:00] Let me just put it that way. So if you are an artist, I compliment you. And I think there's something like pretty awesome about treating your craft like art. I mean, take pride in it. Be curious about it. Recognize that there might be a hundred different ways to do something well. And for you, it's just got to be, you know, making it yours. For me, it's making things. That's what I love. That's where I feel free. Now for all these years of trying things and breaking things and figuring

[00:00:29] things out, I'm finally starting to see the vision become real. And I'm excited to see what comes next. I think the next chapter is going to be about finding other people like you who love making things just as much as I do and seeing what we can create together. And if you're interested and you've made it to the very end of this episode and you want to come

[00:00:56] to Shenzhen, China with me, send me a text message. 208-908-3229. I'm going to be organizing a group of creative folks like you that want to join me on a trip to go behind the scenes and watch my soil moisture sensor get made. Go right to the heart of the global technology nucleus, Shenzhen, China.

[00:01:23] Do you want to come to Shenzhen, China with me? Send me a text message. 208-908-3229. If you are an irrigation professional, old or new, who designs, installs, or maintains high-end residential, commercial, or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business,

[00:01:50] to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems. This show is for you. What's up, Sprinkler Nerds? Welcome back to another episode of the Sprinkler Nerds show. Today, I want to talk about art, which, yeah, it's just an interesting thing. When we're young, art is awesome when we're young. Maybe it was awesome for me, but I think when you're really

[00:02:15] young, art is awesome for everyone. And then at some point, when you start to, when kids start to realize that other people start judging them, then we start judging art, and somewhere along the line, we start to wonder if our art is good. Is my drawing good? And then somewhere along the lines, there becomes a separation where some kids are drawn to art, and they're okay with art, and others

[00:02:39] say things like, I can't draw, I can't paint, I'm not an artist. And I'm actually not considering that to be wrong. I'm more curious to why that is, because I don't know how you can actually judge art. I don't know how someone could even grade art, because it's not like math, where one plus one is

[00:03:02] two. There is an answer. It's either right or it's wrong. Art isn't that way. And so I just think it's interesting that at some point in our lives, we create our own mindset. I'm good at art. I'm not good at art. Why is that? Side tangent from what I really wanted to talk about, but I think that when I start this episode and I say, today I want to talk about art, it probably sounds a little

[00:03:28] strange coming from a guy like me, who spends much of my time working with soil moisture sensors and writing some software and connecting wireless devices and thinking about irrigation systems and dirt and soil and plants and water. What in the world does that have to do with art? But that's exactly why I want to talk about it. Because in many ways, I consider what I'm doing and what you're listening to here. And maybe you can take this through your own lens and think about what you do. I kind of think

[00:03:57] about this as art. And I don't really mean it metaphorically. I do really consider it art that sensors are art. Software that I'm building, that others are building is art. And I've been thinking about a lot why I feel that way. Because I don't know if art has to be a painting hanging on the wall, or I don't think it has to be a painting hanging on the wall, or any particular, you know,

[00:04:23] it doesn't have to be pottery or painting or drawing or playing a specific musical instrument. Like these are all things, these are all buckets that we like stereotype art as sculpture. But I think what happens when you take something, you just imagine it in your mind, and then you find some

[00:04:45] way to bring what is in your mind out into the world itself. Maybe that's art. Maybe there's art in everything. So in some ways, like the technology just happens to be the material that I'm currently working with, like clay, or like charcoal, or watercolor, or oil paints, what have you. You know,

[00:05:13] some people write music, some people build furniture. And like that, I make things. You guys out there make things. You are either making the most badass irrigation system, or you are making a fucked up irrigation system good again. Maybe your art is unfucking irrigation systems. That is truly art. And I absolutely love it. So I want to kind of have you or have you I want to offer you the opportunity to

[00:05:44] have freedom to make, have freedom to do have freedom to, to try something new on that next manifold recreation or fix. I think that one of the things I love most about making things is that freedom. There's something just so awesome about sitting down with an idea. I mean, you could be literally falling to sleep and you could have this idea, oh man, the next time I replace that one inch PGV valve, I'm going

[00:06:13] to put a ball valve behind it. And I know it's not going to be in the job. I just want to do it because I've never done it before. And I know it could enhance the system. So let me give that a try. How is that not art thinking about something and then wondering about it, wondering if, and then bringing it to life. Like what if you tried this? What if you approach the problem differently? What if you took something that already exists and you used it in a completely different way? Like, yes,

[00:06:40] you could take, and I thought about this often with a baseline soil moisture sensor because it's ultra sensitive. You could just take the sensor, turn it sideways. So instead of putting it in the ground like a knife, you could put it sideways like a, like a plate. And as soon as water hits that thing, that is going to sense the rain, right? So you could take something that already exists, use it in a different way. It's not going to measure rainfall, but it could tell you exactly when it starts raining.

[00:07:06] And sometimes that's all you want, a kill switch. So I'm saying this because there's art everywhere and art comes in all different shapes and sizes. And maybe art is just a way of thinking. And what if everything you assume about how something should work was wrong? And I love those questions. The best part is that you don't need to know the answers before you start. You can just start

[00:07:31] making. And that's kind of what I'm thinking about in terms of the freedom to make. You don't have to do it the same way every time you can consider little changes, slight changes. You could make the change, install the sprinkler and then go, you know what? Ah, it's not, I actually like it better the other way. That's totally cool because the best way to do something different is to try it, to actually do it.

[00:08:00] So I don't think that you really need to follow anybody else's like guidelines, instructions. You need to do it this way. And I don't think you can kind of like work from a predetermined like rule set. It's not. It's of like, this is how you're supposed to do something. It's maybe more about exploring.

[00:08:23] And sometimes what you make is not going to work. Actually, probably much of the time, what you make, your art, your experiment isn't going to work. And it's not going to be maybe worse than before, but maybe it's not better than before. And it isn't necessarily about being worse or better, but maybe what you thought in your mind and then what you built and what you made, maybe it just doesn't come out to the way that you thought it was going to be. So

[00:08:50] sometimes personally, I might spend hours or all day trying to figure something out because I just go down this rabbit hole only to realize I've been approaching the problem from like the wrong angle the entire way. And then you got to start over. So sometimes I have to be careful about this because if you let your mind wander too much, wow, you can, it can be hard to get things done. But at the same time, that's where the magic happens because letting your mind wander is where the art comes from.

[00:09:18] And so I just think that, uh, part of this is like learning, learning how, or just learning becomes part of that next version, if you will. So you learn from the one you're doing what worked, what didn't work or what you like, what you don't like. And then you can make an

[00:09:42] adjustment for the next version. And that's all part of this art. And so for me, I enjoy the process. I enjoy the difficulty, the struggles, the sort of like figuring it out, the puzzle. And I especially enjoy the moment when something that existed only in my imagination suddenly becomes real.

[00:10:08] And it's pretty incredible that something that may not have existed yesterday, last night, this morning, last hour, all of a sudden, right now it exists and it exists because I made it or you made it, or you fixed it in this new and different way that had never been done tomorrow. And tomorrow you might even make it better based on what you just learned. And to me, there's like that,

[00:10:36] that is the art. And there is no right way. Let me say that again. There is no right way. Something I've come to sort of like, I don't want to make it sound like I'm preaching or anything, but there is no single right way to make something. There are only many ways. And quite possibly,

[00:11:01] this is why I, throughout my personal life journey, have always been drawn towards the arts and less towards school. Because when let's just take a multiple choice question or SAT questions, I would often see many right answers because I would say, well, it depends how someone's asking this question. And people that are good at tests would know exactly how the person is asking the question. But for me,

[00:11:29] I just saw many right answers or many ways. And I think that's an important distinction. We spend so much time of our lives being taught how to do things, how to follow these instructions. Step one, step two, step three, use this process, do it this way. And I'm not suggesting that instructions or processes

[00:11:53] aren't important because yes, they are. They are very important. But I think sometimes we confuse the way something has always been done with the way it has to be done. So those are two very different things, especially in our industry. We have our own conventions and standards and products and practices that we've had for decades. And over time, those things become familiar to us. They become comfortable.

[00:12:22] Eventually they become expectations. But I love questioning those expectations. Why? Why does it have to work that way? Why couldn't we approach it differently? What would happen if we started over? And sometimes you discover there's a really good reason something is done in a certain

[00:12:44] way. And sometimes you discover there isn't. It's just the way it's always been done. And that's where things get interesting. And that's where the magic happens because suddenly you have the permission to imagine something differently. Actually, you don't even need permission. You can just try. Who is standing with you in the field telling you it's got to be this way? Just you and your mind. Now, granted,

[00:13:13] if you're listening to this podcast and you're a beginner and you're a rookie and you're out there, you might have a supervisor telling you it's got to be this way. And some companies, it's like that anyway. And it would be careful because a lot of times this gets into personality traits and whatnot. And I'm as guilty as anyone of wanting something to be done a certain way. But I think that's one of the most important things that we can learn. There are so many different

[00:13:37] ways to arrive at the same solution. And just because someone else found one way doesn't mean there aren't 10 other ways. And to me, that is freaking exciting because it means the possibilities are almost endless. And I think that's where creativity really is. That's the art. It's being willing to explore those possibilities. And I had to do it myself. I've been thinking about that, how I got here.

[00:14:06] I had to do it myself. And something I've come to realize is that to get where I am, and I'm not saying I am anywhere different than you. Maybe it's like, no, to learn what I've learned, I've had to do so much of it myself, including building my own damn slow moisture sensor from the ground up. So I didn't have to listen to someone else. No, it's just information. Let me learn from you. Tell me how yours works. Tell me how yours works. Ask questions. Try again. Because for years, I had my

[00:14:34] own vision in my head, an idea about how things could work differently. And I could see pieces of it. I could imagine what it might become, but I couldn't quite fully explain it. And I'm, I still don't have true clarity. And I certainly couldn't hand someone like a set of instructions and be like, here, I've written it all up, build this, even though I am working on exactly that right now. But the point is,

[00:15:03] I didn't know exactly what build this was yet. You have to discover it. You have to play with it. You got to go in the sandbox. How, how do you know what the ultimate Tonka truck is going to be? Unless you play with all the Tonka trucks in the sandbox, you got to play with all of them enough where they start breaking. And the only way for me to know and how to discover it is to work with them and then

[00:15:28] make it. So that's what I did. I start making things, trying things, learning things. I didn't know, making my own mistakes, changing directions, starting over one by one, little by little. And at each time you think you've had a breakthrough and you're like, Oh man, this is going to be the best ever. And you're not wrong until you keep playing with it and you go, Oh man, it was so good

[00:15:51] until this happened. Oh man, it was so good until water got on the board and it shorted out and it stopped working. Frick. All right. Guess I'm going to make this thing so water can't get in. It's like, these are all like really fun things that are really no different than trying to build the ultimate Tonka truck. And how can you build the ultimate Tonka truck if you've never played with another one

[00:16:18] before? And personally, I didn't play with a lot of Tonka trucks with other kids. So I'm just using this as a metaphor, but I play with a lot of soil sensors before lots of them for a long time. Anyway, off on a, off on a side tangent. Uh, so let me find out where I was here. Hold on. All right. I wanted to talk about the relentless part. I wrote this note down to myself,

[00:16:43] relentless because for me, it's like a switch. I don't care about a lot of things. And then I flipped the switch and I care about a lot of things. I'm relentless or I'm not relentless. It's like I'm awake or I'm sleeping like a light switch. And so for the things I care about, which is why I'm, you know, having this conversation with, with you all is that this kind of thing, I'm relentless. And when I get interested in something, I have a really hard time leaving it alone. I'll work on it

[00:17:12] forever until I get it functioning. It's like when something doesn't work, that is the ultimate, that is my ultimate, uh, it gives me the most joy. Let's say when something doesn't work, because now I get a chance to figure out, figure it out, make it work again. And for, let's say a few minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, 50 minutes with it, I'm good. And then I'll start thinking about how to make it better. And it's this endless cycle. It's like, great.

[00:17:41] I got it to this level. This feels so good. And maybe it's dopamine or some other brain chemical. It's like, great. Got it here. Good. It's good. And then I'm like, all right, I'm happy with it, but oh man, I think we can make it better. What could I change? What could I simplify? What did I learn from the last one that I can now change and improve and make on the different, on the next one? What could I, what could I do differently if I just started over this time?

[00:18:10] And before you know it, like we're working on the next version. And I think some people might look at that and wonder why, you know, why I can't, or you can't just finish something and move on. And honestly, I, I, they're, they're right. But this, this is the, uh, maybe this is the artist dilemma. I'm just kind of making this up spitballing as I go. Maybe this is artist dilemma because

[00:18:36] there is a difference between creating something and actually putting it into the world. At some point you have to let other people experience what you've made. You could sit in a laboratory and make, uh, let's just use soil sensors. You can make the best damn soil sensor. Cool. It's amazing. Oh, but I can make it better. But if you never let it out into the real world,

[00:19:01] what value does it really have? So at some point you have to let other people experience what you've made. And so I don't think finishing something means you're done improving it. I don't think there's some final version waiting, like for me somewhere, as soon as I have the soil moisture sensor made, you know, there, there, there, obviously there could be a better one. There can always be a better one. Competitor B can have a better one. Competitor C, et cetera.

[00:19:27] There's always good going to be a better one. And that's not discouraging. I actually like that in many ways because it means there's always something new to learn. There's always another possibility, another approach, another version. And maybe that's what continuous improvement really means. Maybe it's not chasing the perfection. It's just about staying curious. It's about never assuming

[00:19:56] the way you're doing something today is necessarily the way to do it tomorrow. And we have to do it certain ways. Sometimes if there is a detailed diagram on a commercial set of construction documents with the valve manifold in a very specific way with very specific schedule 80

[00:20:18] nipples and very specific valves, unfortunately guys, that is, it's harder to find the art in that other than doing it to the best of your ability, but sometimes you got to do it exactly the way you're told to do it. So I just want to drop that in here while I'm talking, because this isn't just a free for all where you try a new valve manifold every time you do it. It's just keeping that thought in your mind. And maybe, I don't know, maybe for me, I don't know how to turn it off, but it's okay. I don't really

[00:20:48] want to turn it off because there's a lot of joy that comes to me from not turning it off. It's really like that discovery, that experimentation, the opportunity to make something a little better than it was yesterday. And the next note I've got here, because I got to have to come from my notes. Sometimes it's really hard to just come in front of the mic and completely riff. So now I'm going to bring this over to

[00:21:15] becoming real. Something has been changing recently, and this is probably the part I'm most excited about. And for years, so much of what I've been working on has existed primarily in my head. The ideas, the prototypes, I've had things that have worked. I've had things that haven't worked,

[00:21:40] but the bigger vision has been difficult to communicate. I've known what I was trying to create, even when I couldn't quite explain it to someone else. And now it's like little by little, I sense things are changing. The pieces are starting to come together. Things that were just ideas, becoming things people can actually see and use. And I can finally point to something and say, see,

[00:22:08] this is what I've been talking about. So again, let's take soil moisture sensors. In the past, and it's a great product, you could buy a $6,000 baseline control system, and you could see the soil moisture. But that means that not everybody is going to be able to see it. And I want every irrigation contractor to see what happens when they run their rotors for 30 minutes, 45 minutes,

[00:22:34] 60 minutes, it doesn't matter. When they turn their drip on for 40 minutes and they go, wow, look at all that water. And I'm like, yep, because you got 0.9 drippers at 12 inch spacing by 12 inch rows. Yeah, but shouldn't we run all drip for 40 minutes? Inside joke here. But the vision is for everyone to see it. And that's what I'm talking about. Not just a concept,

[00:23:00] not just an idea, but something real. I think that's pretty freaking awesome, especially when you spend years to get there. This thought that I first had, 2002 in the truck with Paul Bassett. How do the sprinklers know when to come on? Hmm, good question, Andy. Because it's the right time. What does that mean? How do they know it's the right time? Well, because it's 7 a.m. on Monday

[00:23:29] morning. That's it. So I'm not saying I have everything figured out. I got nothing figured out other than how to see some data. Do I know how to automate with it? Nope. I know lots of ways. It's pretty complicated. Do I know the right way? Nope. You could ask me a million questions about it. I'll give you a million thoughts on my experience, but I don't have an answer yet. And I think there's

[00:23:53] still a thousand things I want to improve. There are still things that haven't been built. There are still questions that we don't know the answer to. But the vision is becoming more tangible. And I think that's like a huge thing. Here we are, 2026. This is a completely different landscape than it was in 2002. And there's completely different opportunity available that didn't exist in 2002. And there's

[00:24:20] this great analogy that I heard recently about technology. And it was something like, you could build the world's fastest train that you get you from New York to California in like six hours, nonstop by train. Let's say it was only going to be a $50 ticket. I got some bad news guys. There are no tracks to put this train on. So you could have the world's fastest train,

[00:24:45] $50 in New York to California, but God damn it. If there's no tracks, you got no train. And some of this technology is exactly the same way. Soil moisture sensors didn't have the network connectivity available to work 20 years ago. You could make the best sensor. The network wasn't available. You could make the best iPhone, but the cellular network wasn't ready for it. It did not

[00:25:14] exist. So now we're at this magic point where the technology plus the network infrastructure plus the users are available. Now things become possible. People can understand it. People can question it and improve it, contribute to it, use it, try it, work with it. It's a different landscape. It's pretty freaking cool. So what's the next chapter look like? This is the final note to myself.

[00:25:40] Here's what I've landed on with, with all of this riffing today is that I don't regret having spent tons of time, tons of money, tons of energy effort to just play in the sandbox myself. Not for a second. I actually think I needed to like a requirement. Like you can't just draw a picture on a notepad of the world's best, again, soil moisture sensor, send it off to someone, they ship it to you and

[00:26:07] bing, bang, boom. No, it doesn't work that way. I needed to make the mistakes. I needed to learn how the tools work. I needed to experiment, to understand the problems, needed the freedom to explore without knowing exactly where I was going. That was how this vision took shape. That was like my

[00:26:31] education. That was the creative process. And the creative process is the art. That was my art. But maybe doing it yourself is just one chapter. And maybe the point is never to do everything yourself forever. Maybe the point is to do it yourself long enough to understand what you're really trying to make. And once you can see it clearly enough, you can start bringing other people

[00:27:00] into it. I love that. First, you have to understand it clearly enough yourself, then start bringing people into it. Because I don't think my job here is to stop being a maker. I don't ever want to stop making things because that's what I love to do. But I also want to see what happens when other people bring

[00:27:24] their best imagination, their knowledge and their curiosity into the same room. Like, what could we make together, you guys? What could this become? I don't know. I just know it could become something. And that's maybe the best part because we don't need to know exactly how it turns out. We just need

[00:27:45] to keep making, keep learning, keep improving, keep inviting all you curious people into the process. And maybe that's something worth thinking about in your own work. Whether you're an irrigation technician, irrigation contractor, landscape contract, irrigation designer, engineer, landscape architect, whatever, someone building a business. What's your art? What part of your work makes you

[00:28:14] feel free? What do you enjoy making better even when no one else is asking you to do it? I think there's art in a beautifully installed irrigation system. There's art in troubleshooting a problem. Nobody else could figure out. There's art in building a company. There's art in finding a way to do

[00:28:38] something you've done a thousand times. You don't have to call yourself an artist. And I, let me, let me stop for a second. I like to call myself an artist. That's why I'm recording this entire podcast about being an artist because I think that is a compliment. Let me just put it that way. So if you are an artist, I compliment you. And I think there's something like pretty awesome about treating your craft like

[00:29:07] art. I mean, take pride in it. Be curious about it. Recognize that there might be a hundred different ways to do something well. And for you, it's just got to be, you know, making it yours. For me, it's making things. That's what I love. That's where I feel free. Now for all these years of trying things and breaking things and figuring things out, I'm finally starting to see the vision become real. And I'm excited to see

[00:29:34] what comes next. I think the next chapter is going to be about finding other people like you who love making things just as much as I do and seeing what we can create together. And if you're interested and you've made it to the very end of this episode and you want to come to Shenzhen, China with me,

[00:29:59] send me a text message. 208-908-3229. I'm going to be organizing a group of creative folks like you that want to join me on a trip to go behind the scenes and watch my soil moisture sensor get made. Go right to the heart of the global technology nucleus, Shenzhen, China. Do you want to come to

[00:30:25] Shenzhen, China with me? Send me a text message. 208-908-3229. Who's done that before? Who has organized a trip of creative and curious contractors to go to Shenzhen, China? Is that art? Yes, that's my art. What's yours? So that's it guys. I'm Andy, The Sprinkler Nerd Show, and this is the The Sprinkler Nerd Show show.

[00:30:51] Thank you for listening. Stay curious, and I'll catch you on the next episode.