My First Encounter with the Felix Cepeda Approach
So, there I was, totally swamped. Not with water, thankfully, but with my own projects. My workshop, my digital files, you name it, it was a complete mess. I’d kick off a new project, super enthusiastic, you know? And then, bam! It would just get buried under a pile of other new shiny ideas or I’d just plain forget where I left off. I’d heard the name Felix Cepeda floating around, mostly in some old forums and dusty corners of the web. Not like a big famous guy, but more like a whisper about a certain way of doing things. Didn’t really think much of it at first, sounded like just another one of those self-help fads, to be honest.
Getting My Hands Dirty: What I Actually Did
Alright, so one Monday, I was feeling particularly fed up. I’d misplaced a key component for a build I was doing, for like the third time that week. That was it. I told myself, “Something’s gotta change, mate.” I remembered that Felix Cepeda name and decided to actually look into it. There wasn’t some fancy course or a best-selling book. It was more like piecing together little clues, bits of advice people shared that they said came from his way of thinking. The big appeal? It wasn’t about buying expensive organizers or following some super rigid twenty-step plan. Seemed more about a mindset.
So, I tried to distill what I could find into something practical for my cluttered workbench and scattered brain. Here’s the gist of what I started doing, my own little ‘Cepeda experiment’:
- The ‘Touch It Once’ Rule: This was a big one I picked up. If I picked up a tool, or a piece of paper, or opened a file, I had to deal with it then and there. Put it away properly, action it, or trash it. No more “I’ll sort this later” piles. My brain really fought me on this one. I love a good “later” pile.
- Visibility is Key: Instead of hiding everything in drawers to make it look tidy, the Cepeda-ish idea I got was to make essential, in-progress stuff visible but organized. So, I got a couple of cheap, clear bins. Not pretty, but functional. One for ‘current project parts,’ one for ‘tools for this job.’
- Daily Reset – No Excuses: At the end of each day, I had to spend 15 minutes, just 15, putting things back where they belonged, or at least into their designated ‘visible-but-organized’ spot. This was tough, especially when I was tired. But I forced myself.
- Focus on Flow, Not Perfection: This was less about a specific action and more a vibe I got from the Cepeda mentions. Don’t aim for a magazine-cover workshop instantly. Aim for a workspace where you can find what you need and move smoothly from one step to the next. Improvement over immediate perfection.
The Aftermath: What Changed and What I Learned
Let me tell you, the first week was a proper struggle. I felt like all I was doing was tidying up. My actual project work felt slower because I was constantly stopping to put one thing away. I nearly chucked the whole idea in the bin, thinking this Felix Cepeda, whoever he really was, must have had way more patience than me, or maybe just fewer tools!
But then, around the second week, something started to shift. I went to grab my soldering iron, and boom, it was right there. I needed that specific resistor? Yep, in its little compartment in the ‘current project’ bin. The 15-minute daily reset started feeling less like a chore and more like… well, a reset. It was actually calming.
It wasn’t like a miracle happened overnight. My workshop still isn’t going to win any beauty contests. But, and this is a big but, I can find things now. I waste way less time hunting for stuff, which means more time actually doing the making. The frustration levels have dropped massively. It’s funny, because the ideas I associate with Felix Cepeda are so darn simple, almost too simple. But I guess sometimes the simplest things are the ones that really work, especially when you’re prone to making things more complicated than they need to be, like yours truly.
I still don’t know the full story behind Felix Cepeda. Maybe he was a legendary craftsman, maybe just a very organized dude someone wrote about once. But for me, taking those little snippets of wisdom and just trying them out, that’s made a real practical difference. It’s not about grand gestures, just those small, consistent actions. It’s an ongoing process, for sure, but I’m no longer scared to walk into my workshop, and that’s a win in my book.
