I love this video. It is so wise. I know the 20-something me wouldn't think so, but the 30-something me knows so. I'm sure this is the reason I basically gave up on my music composition back in my mid-20s.
The stuff I was making just didn't live up to the high standard I had for what I considered to even be adequate, let alone actually good. It's so hard to do, but the trick is to power through that period and be OK with churning out crap, because the experience of creating all that crap ends up making you better. And then—only after you put in your 10,000 hours—will you start to create content that lives up to your expectations.
I look back on the user interface designs I created early in my career, and some of them are just crap. I mean horrible. C-level work. But it's a necessary part of getting to A-level results. Ira say it well:
So you've got really good taste... but it's like there's a gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good... It's trying to be good; it has ambition to be good; but it's not quite that good.
But your taste—the thing that got you into the game—your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you...A lot of people never get past that phase, and a lot of people at that point quit...
Everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, and they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short... Everybody goes through that... It's totally normal, and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Do a huge volume of work... Because it's only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will finally be as good as your ambitions.
Read the full transcript here.
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