Making Stuff and Doing Things is probably the most useful book on the planet. It's been called more important than the Bible. It's an indispensable handbook full of basic life skills for the young punk or activist, or for anyone else who's just trying to get stuff done - without having to have loads of money. The book started as a '90s zine with dozens of contributors setting down the most important skills they knew in concise, often hand-written pages. If you want to do it all yourself or do it together, this book has it all. Honestly, you'll never be bored again.

Kyle Bravo has assembled a comprehensive book along with dozens of other instructional articles that tell you how to do just about everything. Topics include getting active, direct action, gardening, how to make wine, homeschooling, fixing a toilet, audio phone patch, how to make envelopes, shoe repair, making rubber stamps, how to juggle, composting, DIY toothpaste, getting rid of fruit flies, greywater systems, composting toliets, making hanging and floating tents, saving money at the post office, making posters and stencils, fixing a harmonica, DIY flowerpots, avoiding dangerous household chemicals, preventing ear infections, how women can pee standing up, menstrual massages, and a few pieces for inspiration. I'm sure you can see by now why this is essential.

We all want people to do stuff. Whether you want your customers to buy from you, vendors to give you a good deal, your employees to take more initiative, or your spouse to make dinner—a large amount of everyday is about getting the people around you to do stuff. Instead of using your usual tactics that sometimes work and sometimes don't, what if you could harness the power of psychology and brain science to motivate people to do the stuff you want them to do - even getting people to want to do the stuff you want them to do. In this book you’ll learn the 7 drives that motivate people: The Desire For Mastery, The Need To Belong, The Power of Stories, Carrots and Sticks, Instincts, Habits, and Tricks Of The Mind. For each of the 7 drives behavioral psychologist Dr. Susan Weinschenk describes the research behind each drive, and then offers specific strategies to use. Here’s just a few things you will learn: The more choices people have the more regret they feel about the choice they pick. If you want people to feel less regret then offer them fewer choices. If you are going to use a reward, give the reward continuously at first, and then switch to giving a reward only sometimes. If you want people to act independently, then make a reference to money, BUT if you want people to work with others or help others, then make sure you DON’T refer to money. If you want people to remember something, make sure it is at the beginning or end of your book, presentation, or meeting. Things in the middle are more easily forgotten. If you are using feedback to increase the desire for mastery keep the feedback objective, and don’t include praise.

This step-by-step DIY guide shows today’s entrepreneurs how to create and launch new products, package and market them to consumers, and build a thriving business.Thanks to high-speed Internet, game-changing technology, and innovative new platforms, individuals with vision and heart can go from idea to marketplace on a shoestring budget. In How We Make Stuff Now, Jules Pieri—cofounder and CEO of The Grommet, a product launch platform that helps innovative products reach a community of millions—takes readers through the entire consumer product creation process, showing how individual Makers, inventors, and entrepreneurs have utilized technology, the Maker Movement, and perseverance to turn ideas for innovative consumer goods into thriving businesses, breaking the rules of traditional retailing in the process. Jules details what goes into each of the steps they take: ideation, education, research, design and documentation, prototyping, funding, manufacturing, packaging, marketing, distribution, logistics, payments, customer service, financial and inventory management, and growth. Using case studies of successful startups, she reveals how entrepreneurs overcome obstacles, solve challenges, and rise above them to deliver innovations.If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, Maker, or inventor, the first crucial step in your journey to turning your ideas into products that build thriving businesses is learning How We Make Stuff Now.

Lessons from and for the creative professions of art, science, design, and engineering: how to live in and with the Plenitude, that dense, knotted ecology of human-made stuff that creates the need for more of itself. We live with a lot of stuff. The average kitchen, for example, is home to stuff galore, and every appliance, every utensil, every thing, is compound--composed of tens, hundreds, even thousands of other things. Although each piece of stuff satisfies some desire, it also creates the need for even more stuff: cereal demands a spoon; a television demands a remote. Rich Gold calls this dense, knotted ecology of human-made stuff the "Plenitude." And in this book--at once cartoon treatise, autobiographical reflection, and practical essay in moral philosophy--he tells us how to understand and live with it. Gold writes about the Plenitude from the seemingly contradictory (but in his view, complementary) perspectives of artist, scientist, designer, and engineer--all professions pursued by him, sometimes simultaneously, in the course of his career. "I have spent my life making more stuff for the Plenitude," he writes, acknowledging that the Plenitude grows not only because it creates a desire for more of itself but also because it is extraordinary and pleasurable to create. Gold illustrates these creative expressions with witty cartoons. He describes "seven patterns of innovation"--including "The Big Kahuna," "Colonization" (which is illustrated by a drawing of "The real history of baseball," beginning with "Play for free in the backyard" and ending with "Pay to play interactive baseball at home"), and "Stuff Desires to Be Better Stuff" (and its corollary, "Technology Desires to Be Product"). Finally, he meditates on the Plenitude itself and its moral contradictions. How can we in good conscience accept the pleasures of creating stuff that only creates the need for more stuff? He quotes a friend: "We should be careful to make the world we actually want to live in."

Our massive, global system of consumption is broken. Our individual relationship with our stuff is broken. In each of our homes, some stuff is broken. And the strain of rampant consumerism and manufacturing is breaking our planet. We need big, systemic changes, from public policy to global economic systems. Since founding Fixup, a pop-up repair shop that brought her coverage in The New York Times, Salon, New York Public Radio, and more, Sandra Goldmark has become a leader in the movement to demand better "stuff" and to bring companies on board. Her solution is surprisingly simple and involves all of us: have good stuff, not too much, mostly reclaimed, care for it, and pass it on. Fixation charts the path to the next frontier in the health, wellness, and environmental movements--learning how to value stewardship over waste. Passionate, wise, and practical, Fixation offers us a new understanding of stuff by building a value chain where good design, reuse, and repair are the status quo.

Get Your Move On! In Making Things Move: DIY Mechanisms for Inventors, Hobbyists, and Artists, you'll learn how to successfully build moving mechanisms through non-technical explanations, examples, and do-it-yourself projects--from kinetic art installations to creative toys to energy-harvesting devices. Photographs, illustrations, screen shots, and images of 3D models are included for each project. This unique resource emphasizes using off-the-shelf components, readily available materials, and accessible fabrication techniques. Simple projects give you hands-on practice applying the skills covered in each chapter, and more complex projects at the end of the book incorporate topics from multiple chapters. Turn your imaginative ideas into reality with help from this practical, inventive guide. Discover how to: Find and select materials Fasten and join parts Measure force, friction, and torque Understand mechanical and electrical power, work, and energy Create and control motion Work with bearings, couplers, gears, screws, and springs Combine simple machines for work and fun Projects include: Rube Goldberg breakfast machine Mousetrap powered car DIY motor with magnet wire Motor direction and speed control Designing and fabricating spur gears Animated creations in paper An interactive rotating platform Small vertical axis wind turbine SADbot: the seasonally affected drawing robot Make Great Stuff! TAB, an imprint of McGraw-Hill Professional, is a leading publisher of DIY technology books for makers, hackers, and electronics hobbyists.