Woodworking doesn’t just help you build skills that make you a better tradesperson—many of the skills transfer to other areas of your life and make you a better human overall.

Below are a few examples of some of these types of transferable skills. We see these come in handy every day at our lumber store in Houston:

Entrepreneurship: If you’re interested in selling the work you make, you’ll learn a lot about entrepreneurship in a hurry. You might simply sell your items online at shops like Etsy, or you might put them on consignment at local stores in your area. Whatever your choice, you’ll learn a lot about setting prices, marketing your items and facilitating transactions. These are important skills to have in the job market.
Math skills: You know the phrase “measure twice, cut once”? This is absolutely true in woodworking, but they could also add the phrase “add thrice.” Planning out your woodworking project requires you to be able to quickly perform addition and subtraction problems in your head so you can be certain you’ll have an accurate result in your finished project.
Planning: It’s a useful skill to be able to sketch out a project, determine the measurements you need and figure out the best strategies to make the cuts and complete the project according to your desired specifications. There’s a lot of planning that gets done before the actual woodworking begins. The ability to get organized like this and plan out your work in advance is an important skill to have in a wide variety of applications.
Culture: Many woodworking projects have cultural elements to them. You might, for example, be interested in carving a traditional Native American wooden flute, or a bowl that derives from European heritage. This provides an opportunity for you to learn more about other cultures, which broadens your worldview and can make you appreciate other traditions and styles of woodworking.
Other projects: Many of the actual physical skills you learn in woodworking can be transferred over to other projects around your house, meaning you can become a handyman or woman yourself and not have to rely on hired contractors to get every job around your home done professionally. Let’s say you have a sticky door, for example. You can use the same hand plane you use in woodworking to shave down that door and make sure it fits the frame properly. Woodworking also helps you get more comfortable with tools such as chisels, drills and saws, all of which can come in handy for other home improvement projects that don’t necessarily involve classic woodworking.

These are just a few examples of some of the types of skills you can carry with you from woodworking to other areas of your life. If you’re interested in learning more about some of the greatest benefits associated with woodworking or simply need tips about the best types of wood to use for your upcoming project, contact Houston Hardwoods Inc. today, or pay a visit to our lumber store in Houston.