Perfection Erases Humanity

I read a lot. Mostly online, but I try to read a couple of pages every day from books also. Some days more, some days less. Anyways, I’m deviating.

One skill that I wanted to hone for a long time is writing well (according to research this is one of most important skills for a fresh graduate). I never really put in constant effort. I scribbled a bit here and there, but I never had a systematic approach to train myself in this area, it has never been a priority. Reading a post from Seth Godin and watching a speech from Casey Neistat flipped the script. I will start small: I want to write something, anything, every day for the next 2 weeks.

Because of these guys (who are great daily inspiration for me by the way) I had a new perspective on doing things. Seth’s post about the best ideas that are never put into practice and Casey’s approach of learning through doing and his idea of “perfection erases humanity” shed new light on writing. I got these guys a bit out of context, but these were my kick-starters. You can’t do it well, if you don’t do it mediocre in the beginning. I realized that I can only develop a writing style through actually doing it. Through hitting the dreaded publish button every day I will get into the habit of writing.

It’s not exactly rocket science, I know. But sometimes people need to be reminded about the obvious. Don’t try to make something perfect, try to make it better, but do it every day. I think that by forcing myself to write something (even as simple and cliché as this) daily I will be better off in the long-run, than I would have been if I’d written something really elaborate for 2 weeks per year. Or if I’d written something and deleted it, because it’s not good enough and far from perfect — nothing kills a writing habit faster than doing that, trust me.