Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Don't be perfect!

One of the best bits of advice I ever heard was in a book about teaching art. There was a pottery class, and the teacher told his students that they could be graded by the quality of one piece they made over the course of a semester, or they could be graded by the pounds of stuff they made, the more, the higher the grade. The funny thing was that the people who chose to get graded by the pound made better quality things, because they had to go through the process of making the stuff many times and learn from experience, while the people who focuses on making one great thing didn't get much experience and tended to get hung-up thinking about what was best.

The way I think about it is: don't try to be perfect, just try to make stuff happen and you will learn. Nobody gets it right all the time, and nobody gets it right if they don't gain experience and make mistakes first. Non-action and hesitation is worse than mistakes.

"Now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." - John Steinbeck