Perfectionism is a paralyzing pressure we put on ourselves to create stuff that completely captures our taste. When we first start creating, our taste simply exceeds our skill. This can be painful to admit, but without acknowledging the importance of practice and iteration, this gap can never be closed.
Iterate: Make It Better
In college, I spent a free elective on a screenwriting class because I thought it would be cool to write a full-length screenplay (120+ pages). On the first day of class, our professor described how we would be critiqued: On your assigned day of the week, a section of your script would be read out loud in front of the entire class, and then everyone would take turns ripping it apart.
At first, this sounded like it was going to be brutal. I had no creative writing experience and I don’t like doing things I’m not good at in front of a lot of people. Everyone in the class seemed to share that same sentiment. Our professor then told us something that has stuck with me to this day. Perhaps one of the most important lessons I have ever learned:
Don’t worry about sucking. I can guarantee you that whatever you come up with will suck. All that matters is that you keep trying to make it better.
This seemed like such a novel idea at the time. I had never been told that I was going to be bad at something I had never even tried in such an inspiring way. Our professor went on to explain the importance of flexibility and constructive criticism when trying to tackle as daunting a task as writing a full-length screenplay. The best screenplays are revised and rewritten many, many times.
Practice Makes Perfect
After covering other procedural things, our professor asked how many of us had friends who consider themselves writers. Almost everyone in the class rose their hand. When he asked which of them had actually written anything significant, almost everyone put their hand down. Sometimes we like the identity that comes with doing something better than actually doing it.
When we look at where we want to be on a macro level, it simply won’t happen without practice. Translating your imagination onto paper, for example, is a difficult skill to master. The best writers get better not by taking classes, reading books, or going to conferences, but by simply writing. The best writers have mountains of material they have written that will probably never be shared with anyone.
In the interview above, Ira Glass talks about closing that gap between your taste and your abilities. He shares a clip from earlier in his career to show how long it took him to get to where he wanted to be. He also emphasizes the importance of creating a volume of work as a form of practice (See also: Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule).
Conclusion
I’m nowhere close to being satisfied with where my skills or creations are, and I constantly have to talk myself out of giving up. When I hit a creative obstacle like writer’s block or run out of inspiration, I have to remind myself to push through and just try and get better.
Without relentless practice and iteration, your skills and creations won’t improve and you will probably end up quiting and moving on to something new. George Orwell’s character Gordon Comstock, a writer trying to write an epic poem in Keep The Aspidistra Flying, captures what losing this struggle looks like quite well:
It was too big for him, that was the truth. It had never really progressed, it had simply fallen apart into a series of fragments.
Whether you’re an aspiring writer, designer, filmmaker, musician, programmer, or whatever, if you don’t have any rough material to work with, you won’t have anything to revise or rewrite, and you will ultimately end up with nothing. Don’t give up; pace yourself. Perfection can’t be attained on the first try, and having a long-term outlook is the only realistic way to approach ambitious goals.
This post was partly inspired by this HN thread. Special thanks to Professor Finley, _pius, xmasher, DocSavage, and, of course, Wikipedia for ideas and links.
