Do more bad work
by Yann Girard
90% of my blog posts suck. An even bigger number of my podcast episodes suck (not my guests fault though). Same with my YouTube videos. And my books.
I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just the way it is.
And you know what? I don’t even care about it. The only thing that matters is to take away the pressure. The pressure of always having to deliver perfect work.
Creating perfect work is a vicious circle. As well as never making mistakes. And always being right.
If you always deliver perfect work, the pressure will get bigger and bigger. The pressure of delivering perfect work will crush you, sooner or later.
And this will kill your creativity, sooner or later.
You’ll always do the stuff you know that works. You’ll never try something new. Because the danger of failing is just too big. The danger of screwing up is too big.
And then you’ll stop reinventing yourself. Until doing the same thing over and over again bores the hell out of you. Until you bore the hell out of yourself.
But why is it like this? Why are we humans like this? Why do we stop reinventing ourselves once we found something that works?
I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I think it’s just the way we humans roll.
When we become good at something or find something that works, we don’t want to screw it up. It already took so much time to find just that one thing that works. So we do everything we can to not screw it up.
What usually happens though when you do everything you can to not screw up is that you’ll definitely screw up.
And when I say you, I’m basically talking about myself here.
So instead of trying to always deliver perfect work, instead of trying to always be right, try to experiment. Try to reinvent yourself. Try to screw up every once in a while.
It’ll take away the pressure.
And most importantly try to accept the fact that no one will ever be able to constantly deliver perfect work.
That’s the only way to REALLY figure out what works and what doesn’t. That’s how you take away the pressure that will sooner or later crush you. That’s how you learn the most.
By doing and accepting your bad work..
