109 Things To Do

[thundering drum intro]

Good morning, everyone!

This is the first day of what I hope will be a new chapter in the building of the Marble Machine X:

I am going to learn how to work organized.

[laughter]

As a little symbolism of how things used to be

this is my work bench that I wake up to.

Not really super easy to do a lot of work here.

Yesterday we launched a discord server and started the video submissions and that feels amazing.

So cheers to a new chapter of the Marble Machine X building project.

Let's get some serious organized work done.

Priorities... so an example from Elon Musk.

His to-do list looked like this:
build a house, go to Mars,

transition to EV, digital brain interface, etc.

I asked myself what would Elon Musk do?

He stated in an interview that he would go OCD on the house design

and decided to not build a house
and put "go to Mars" as a priority.

Let's look at my old priorities.

I think I've been very obsessed with youtube growth over the years.

Maybe because of my impostor syndrome,

seeing growth has validated me in front of myself.

Making relevant content has maybe been on the backfoot even

and these two are very often contradictory because the flawed human psychology.

And then I made a lot of music demos and I thought a lot about MMX aesthetics.

Then come functionality and the audio engineering

and totally forgotten is the MMX project management.

I'm gonna switch this list upside down and I'm going to shoulder the project manager role.

This is a role that I wished I could have delegated but I think this project is so special,

it's time for me to take this responsibility.

The functionality is going to take all my focus from now on,

aesthetics will be on the back foot and for youtube

I'm gonna make relevant content like the content you are watching right now.

This is relevant, but it might not lead to a lot of youtube growth.

First task for the PM is to delegate

and I have so many over-competent people who wants to help me with this project.

During the spring, this part has been ignored.
I've been focused on building

so instead of me doing one task
I can use my time to create maybe 10 tasks

and there we have a 10x multiplier in efficiency already.

So what I need to do is that I need to map out the state of the Marble Machine X completely,

I need to write a long list, a searchable list,

that shows me all the tasks that we have to do

and I need to format in a way so the list will tell me what I can delegate and what I should delegate.

I was like this, you know, like a little larvae here. Pretty happy going around.

And now: PM butterfly!

It has his mouth down here for some reason.
[laughing]

Enjoy that because that's the only entertainment we're gonna get in these videos from now on.

[adventure music]
[♪ unreleased/The Maker Larvae ♪]

The tale of the maker larvae who wanted to become a project manager.

Chapter one: The maker larvae had just realized the importance of delegation

and not only how important and powerful it could be to delegate a task to someone else

but also the importance of how to delegate properly.

The maker larvae was bursting with excitement and ran out of the house to try to delegate something

and he didn't know where to start.

He was overwhelmed and realized that he needed a plan.

Chapter two:
Project management master plan.

[music stops abruptly]
This is my project management master plan.

Number one: fully take on the role as project manager.

Number two: define the goal posts for the MMX.

So it's important that I define the goal posts so I don't keep on moving them when we reached a goal.

Martin and the Marble Machine X
can play an entire song

and record it live in one take without mishaps, repeatedly.

Step three: perform a full scan of the MMX situation,
map out issues and tasks.

These lists will help me delegate tasks to collaborators,

so I'm gonna ask the team members to become sub-assembly project managers

and be responsible for pushing a part or pushing a design project or pushing themselves,

so I'm not bottle-necking up the process.

If I'm delegating hundred tasks and
I get hundred questions back on each task

then everything bottle-necks up at my table again,
which is normally what happened,

because I didn't do the project management properly.

The maker larvae now felt very pleased with having a project management master plan,

but still felt that he needed counseling about how to implement it.

So he journeyed to the distant land of discord. A land full of angle grinder emojis.

He met a new friend called Andy.

Andy was a Six Sigma master black belt engineer

and the maker larvae had no clue what that meant, but it sounded very impressive.

So the maker larvae followed Andy into the nearest voice chat to ask his new counselor for advice.

What I wanted to ask you right now...

Instead of posting a chat post saying
"Hey, I have this idea" loosely,

I want to have one person from the team who takes on the role as sub-assembly PM

for that part and I want to say to that person,

"I want these parts... to France
and we need four of them"

"and you can use the team as resources."

"Reach out to the other members for whatever competence you need."

Is that a good idea, to be clear in the delegation that people have an agency of their own

and they don't have to come back to me, because I'm becoming a bottleneck very quick.

Andy: - I'm going to say a "conditional yes", because I have a question.

Do you feel comfortable doing this?

Martin: - Yes, I... Yes, I would love to do this and it...

Andy: - It means it may result that you may lose a bit of control over what's happening,

and it may be a bit, you know...

discomforting feeling that it's not in the end your, you know, son or creation,

but lots of other people added their part

and if you feel comfortable,
absolutely green light, go with it.

Martin: - The machine is already 99% what it is...

so I need to let go of
that last little percentage of control

to be able to move this project forward.

Andy: - Then that is very important, then you need to very openly and

clearly communicate to these, let's call them sub-assembly owners.

What are their roles and in what case you want to have an interaction with them? For example:

Do you want to delegate the engineering decisions?

Probably yes, because as you said the decision is already there, the solution is already there

so they should not buzz you every time there's a question.

They are free to solve that and that would help a lot in... in both ways and things like that.

So these kind of roles and responsibilities discussion needs to be

done with every single person you are going to delegate to,

the sub-assemblies, and then they will feel free

you know, to move an act and make

even complex decisions without buzzing you every day.

Martin: - I've been having my fingers in everything.

This is a big shift in culture, in the project.

I actually created this situation completely myself,

because when things were going bad with the Marble Machine

I was so happy to be disturbed by something else,

I was happy to be presented with a smaller problem.

"Should we go M3 or M4 on this bolt?"

I love to get those questions because that took me out of my misery, so to speak.

[both laughing]

Andy: - I fully understand you, I fully understand.

You know, you started with the first version.
You were there alone, probably,

and then it was really like the child of your imagination

and now this child is becoming a bit like a monstrosity but it's still under your control and your supervision.

And as you said it's 99% still, you know,

your imagination and your ideas and your thoughts,

but some people just simply could help you to make it a final product.

Otherwise it will never be done.

[dramatic flute music]

[voice echoing back]
"Some people just simply could help you

to make it a final product.
Otherwise...

it will never be done.
It will never be done..."

The counselor's last words were echoing in the head of the maker larvae when he was trying to go to sleep that night.

He knew that the counselor had spoken the truth:

If he couldn't get help from other people
the product would never be done.

[happy music]
Chapter 3:

Populating the issues list.
[music stops]

Today I'm gonna start with the issues list,

that I got help to format in the phone call with Andrew,

which means that I'm going to go
to the Marble Machine X physically

and I'm going to look at every single little spot like this.

And I'm gonna write down all my issues,
except my personal ones.

To get some kind of structure I will start from the bottom and work my way to the top.

For example:
The electric motor is not mounted

and we need a user interface and we need a better power supply.

I can list 200 issues from my mind with the electric motor,

but to keep this kind of workable at the moment,
I will just say "electric motor is not mounted".

If Alex accepts being sub-project manager for the motor project,

it will be on his task list to find out all these 200 issues within that project.

Because otherwise this will explode for me

into the unmanageable task
that is the Marble Machine X at the moment.

I'm so overwhelmed, but I'm actually

less overwhelmed... right now than before.

[epic music]
The maker larvae looked out

over the desolate desert that is commonly known as the issues list.

This was a vast desert full with issues of the Marble Machine X.

The maker larvae assigned an issues number,
a name and a description of what was wrong,

a severity score, a root cause,

an occurrence frequency score
and a monitoring score

and from that he could multiply the three scores and get a risk priority number.

If this risk priority number was above 125, this issue needs to be taken care of.

The maker lavae has put a link in the description

to this issues list, if you want to read it closer.
[laughing]

It took the maker larvae 91 issues before he reached to the most important one.

Number 92: "Kinetic fingers",
severity score 10,

frequency score 10,

monitoring score 10.

This meant that the kinetic fingers was the only issue

that had a maximum risk priority number of 1000.

The maker larvae pondered over the gloriousness of the kinetic fingers for some time

and noted down "dab on the haters" in the comment column.
[music ends]

I'm already ecstatic about the function of this issue list because I realized:

One issue we have, a big issue,

is that the CAD model of Marble Machine X isn't exact like the real model.

I posted an idea in the Wintergatan discord server idea-vault, about

maybe we can create the whole MMX CAD-model

together in the large Wintergatan community?

The CAD model of the MMX would be not only usable for us in this project,

we would open-source it for all the makers out there to have fun with.

You can create VR experience and stuff like that.

It's a huge work to transform this into a CAD model and we got little stuck at the end,

so if you want to help us with that, check out the idea vault on discord

That's a project that I can delegate. We need a project manager for that project.

If we have hundred volunteers doesn't matter if we don't have leadership.

This already makes me happier. This feels like I'm becoming an octopus with thousand arms.

You guys are the arms.

[epic music]
Chapter four: The thousand armed octopus and

populating the task list.

Yet again, the maker larvae was journeying the distant land of discord,

where he met the thousand armed octopus.

The thousand armed octopus looked back at the maker larvae

and said "I can help you, but I need to know what to do".

"I need you to populate the task list and then for each and every task

I needed to do something very special:"

"You need to write a project charter."

"I am very hungry and the only thing I eat is project charters."

The maker larvae went to work.

Populating the task list was kind of easy,

writing the project charts though, turned out to be a massive task.

It's important for the octopus that the quality of the project charters are high.

The maker larva wrestled for days

with target specifications, defect definitions,

deliverables and definitions of completion,

and communication guidelines.

The maker larvae then started to feed the octopus by sending out the project charters to the MMX engineers

And it was exactly at this moment it happened.

The maker larvae came out of his shell

and out came a beautiful
project manager butterfly!

The plan had worked out perfectly.

Starting with the project management master plan,

that led to the issues list, that led to the task list,

that led to the project charters,

that led to feeding the octopus,

that led to the multiplier in efficiency of the Marble Machine X project.

And as far as I know, the butterfly project manager is still writing project charters,

as he has another hundred and four project charters to write.

Now when I've set my priorities straight, there's something I have to do...

User settings, edit,

change avatar...

Here we go!

Apply, save!

Zaop has said that "kinetic fingers has a risk priority number of 1000, I love this".

"I believe in #92"!

Laughing crying smiley Wilson emoji...
"A single wish is invisible and inevitable,"

"like a butterfly that beats its wings in one corner of the globe"

"and with that single action creates a tornado half way across the world."

[laughing and clapping]

You're in the fun at the Wintergatan discord server. What can I say, what can I say?

I take my discord avatars very seriously!

[buzzing bass beat]

[Martin singing]
♪ Community corner! ♪

World premiere edition. Here we go:

- Hey Martin. I wanted to show you my progress on what I'm doing because of you and your inspiration.

I started out playing a miniature drum set a long time ago

And I wanted to build my own that actually had working bass drum pedals

and working high hat system.

I even had to make a big list of how to attack that word "procrastination".

Woo, it's a big one!
But thanks to you and your inspiration,

here is where I am so far:

Custom-made cymbals, 3D-printed drum rims and my own made heads. So it's been going great!

Thank you very much for inspiration. Have a great day.

Martin: - What? I had no clue there was such a thing as miniature drums, and I noticed a detail...

I saw a little stopwatch in the beginning of the video,

which kind of tells me that you've been practicing the presentation to get it down under 30 seconds.

Five Wilsons out of 5! That looks really cool. Please keep us updated when the pedals are working.

We need really to see that!

Frédéric: - I have a suggestion for recording the sound of the vibraphone

by using a guitar pick-up under the bars.

As you can see I have my my hand-pan...
[strikes three tones]

With a coil right above the nodes, which is connected to my computer.

So if I record the signal and strum a note....

[reverberating tone]

I can actually play it back as you can see...
[tone repeats]

and it records without the... the noise.

I had to put a magnet on the instrument itself because it is not ferromagnetic,

but I think it would work on vibraphone bars.

Martin: - Wow! Frédéric Druppel, thank you.

I had no clue about this technique.

I think it won't take the vibraphone vibrato.

But really cool!

Graham: - My idea for the Marble Machine X is related to the music.

I think you should outsource...

some of the creating of the music to the community,

by making an MMX simulator...

a website or app so

musicians can create music for the Machine and then

these ideas could be then, like, posted in some sort of forum

and then voted on by the MMX community.

Martin: - That's really really nice, Graham. It's a great idea.

I would not outsource the Wintergatan sound but...

to have, like, a lot of songs online,

and, like, then we can choose some that

I actually also perform on the Marble Machine X itself, would be amazing.

I really love how you put the graphic layout as well. Thank you!

Martin: - What is this? A marble machine? MMT, yeah!

[rattling from cogs]

[three tones on glockenspiel]

[two cymbal gongs]

Yeah!

Awesome!

[background music]
[♪ Wintergatan: Marble Machine ♪]

Wow!

"The machine is still under construction. It will take a while until it is finished."

[laughing]

Yeah, I think you have only five... five to ten years to go.

I'm so happy that you're keeping the company down in this hole.

"Can't play much more than these few notes yet, but I'm confident that it can play more soon."

It will! It looks like you had everything that was needed.

It's so cool that you're actually building a real marble machine.

I heard from a lot of people who said that they were going to build a marble machine

and then I never saw anything
and you are so good on your way.

So please keep us updated about the MMT project. Love it! Well done.

[harp & glockenspiel music]
[♪ Wintergatan: The Rocket ♪]