Being Too Ambitious Is a Clever Form of Self-Sabotage
Creation is murder—killing the perfect imaginary version to make something real. A photography class experiment proves that quantity beats quality planning: excellence emerges from intimacy with imperfection. Do. Learn. Repeat.
tl;dr
The moment before creation, work exists in perfect form in your imagination. But creation is murder—killing the impossible in service of the possible. A photography experiment proves this: students graded on quantity (100 photos) produced better work than those focused on one perfect photo. Your taste develops faster than your skill, creating 'the gap.' Lower the stakes. Do. Learn. Repeat.
My Thoughts
Really love the article from Maalvika, and you can basically apply it anywhere. I have stumbled so many times planning. Planning is probably my best friend and my worst enemy. I spent a big amount of time just planning how things should happen, when probably I should just be making things happen instead.
A blog? You can just do a link blog with your notes about readings (look at me :D). A boardgame? Get few mechanics down and start playing with it. A drawing? Go and paint/sketch… just do it.
The gap between your taste and what you can produce is just gonna be bigger and bigger if you do not reduce some expectations and start from the simplest you can produce. The photography class experiment is perfect—the students who took 100 photos learned by doing, while the ones focused on one perfect photo stayed stuck in theory.
As the article quotes: the learning never stops requiring the doing. The doing never stops requiring learning.
So do not forget either. You can’t learn your way out of not doing, and you can’t do without learning. They’re the same thing.
This is my personal commentary on the original article. Please read the original article for the full context.