1. The first one is one I didn’t learn from. I didn’t fight it when my math teachers thought teaching me was a waste of time. My primary and secondary school math teachers were not effective, and I didn’t complain when they put me in alternative (non-math) classes. I should have been more involved in my math education and asked my teachers to challenge me more, or simply invested more effort into it. Having a stronger, more confident base in mathematics is something I could use every single day. It’s a lot harder to catch up with some of that learning as an adult.
2. Second is not bringing in an expert. I’ve made this mistake more times than I can count and I still fight with it. I come from a very DIY background and I’m really curious, so I want to know how everything works and how to do it. That means that I take on tasks that I hate or are much better suited to a domain expert. I’ll spend hours/days/weeks trying to learn how to do something I don’t want to do, or that an expert can do better and faster. While it’s great to learn a new skill, sometimes it’s not a good investment. Trying to do it all myself keeps me from working with some really great experts and soaks up my time that keeps me from working on more projects.
I highly recommend checking it out. There’s a lot of good advice to be found!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
