Things want to be bad
1. What Ira Glass Taught Me About Creativity
Here’s the saddest fact of all creative work — for average to be the average quality of work, most work has to be average. It’s this sick unavoidable regression to a mediocre mean. It’s heartbreaking.
I’m a huge podcast nerd, and I recently heard this sentiment put succinctly by Alex Blumberg, founder and CEO of Gimlet Media, in a sponsored podcast segment. (Branded podcasts, by the way, are a very interesting advertising model when done well. Congrats, Mr. Blumberg, on the acquisition.)
Alex was answering a question about the best advice he’d ever received about the creative process, and he said it came from his old boss at This American Life, Ira Glass:
I remember him saying one time ‘Things want to be bad,’ and they do, they just want to be bad. And your job is just to try to fend off the bad things and keep it good. It’s a little like — babies — they want to hurt themselves, and so…parenting is just essentially trying to not let them hurt themselves.
I felt like this summed up everything I knew to be true about producing content, creative work, and good marketing. It’s hard to do! As you move your attention from one project to another, the first project begins to slide toward mediocrity, like some kind of slow, high-stakes game of Whack-a-Mole.
Ira Glass, of course, is something of a radio and podcasting legend. The show he founded has been on air weekly since 1995, and those who have worked there went on to create hit podcasts like Serial, S Town, Invisibilia, and of course Gimlet.
Alex Blumberg did a full-length interview with Ira Glass that touched on this bad things philosophy and his obsessive attention to detail.
Even after nearly 30 years on the air and great success, Ira Glass still (though he claims in the interview to be training replacements) produces himself lengthy (many many single-spaced pages) packets of ‘mix notes’ — detailed edits on the timing and volume of each radio story to the tenth of a second. It’s probably why TAL flows the way it does. (Transcript edited for brevity.)
Alex: The thing that I will always feel indebted to you for is this feeling of making it feel special — caring enough about it that other people care… These mix notes that I’m looking at right now- I can’t tell if they are your secret to success, or if you are successful despite the obsessiveness of these mix notes.
Ira: Well the answer is obviously both. Clearly. No, seriously, the answer is obviously both. Without that attention to detail, the thing would not be good enough to be good. Somebody has to do it. At some point, somebody has to do it.
Alex: Somebody has to care that much?
Ira: Yes. Of course. Of course. Like anything that’s going to be good, somebody has to show that level of care for it, or it’s not going to be good. Somebody has to consider the whole thing and consider all the tiny details against the whole, and the overall feeling and every detail that leads to that feeling. That’s making things. If you want something to be good, that’s what you do. If you’re making stuff for people to consume, somebody has to make it good. Unless you are in the business of making something that is mediocre.
2. Making Not-Bad Things
So is there any hope to overcome the suicidal nature of creative projects? Managing a marketing agency, my job is essentially to try to identify the ways in which the things people make can be better. Here’s the attack plan in our battle against mediocrity.
Expect badness
You’ve probably heard something like “Write shitty first drafts,” and that’s probably at least half of it. But I think the culture needed for true creative excellence is to accept that everything can be better. It’s not only that it’s ok to produce a shitty first draft, it’s that every single first draft or proof is shitty.
Good managers of creative teams, or maybe all teams, won’t be frustrated by this fact. It’s not an inconvenience that something sucks, it’s the process. Allow time in deadlines for several revision cycles and allow space in your culture for mistakes to be made.
Create (the right) ownership
Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to own the fit and finish of the final product down to the pixel, font size, and word choice. Take care not just to clarify ownership, but to give these roles to the people who will get on their knees and agonize over these details. This level of care from leadership is inspiring to the entire organization and creates a culture of excellence.
Empower naysayers
On the opposite side of the same coin, it’s important to have a culture that is ok with not shipping instead of delivering crap. There should be someone in every organization with the power to say, ‘You know what, we gave it a try, but we are not going to publish this.’ It takes strength, true creative strength, to say No. And most of the time the process is about revision, and refactoring, and second and third drafts — not just outright cancelling projects. But that option needs to be available when your standards are not being met.
Repeat
Good work is about a process. Strong brands are the result of strong processes carried out carefully over long periods of time — the sum of hundreds of creative choices and standards. In our line of work, this often means iterating over and over. Testing and revising is the name of the game.
Making things good, when they so often want to be bad or just even not special, is about consistently applying high standards over and over across all the projects that land on your desk. Send it back for revision one more time and hire the people and companies that will care about your brand down to the tenth of a second.
Or you know, be ok with being average. Most people are.
