I read this great post about getting projects off the ground. Sometimes the only way to get a project started, is to go ahead and begin, and do the groundwork .. despite knowing that you might fail miserably at it.
After starting, then just iterate and improve, and the sheer hard work will pay off. I’ve learned that it’s not always beneficial to be a perfectionist. It’s tough to imagine how in life you can get many things the first time right. Kind of like ice hockey, I had to learn how to skate and fall over a million times. I’ve found the following so applicable to myself.
Gretchen writes,
- Because you’re racing, you don’t have time to listen to your internal editor criticize every move. You just put something on the page and keep moving, instead of sitting, paralyzed.
- Progress itself is reassuring and inspiring. Panic tends to set in when you find yourself getting nothing done, day after day.
- Because you’re so focused on your project, you begin to make deeper connections and to see more possibilities, instead of being constantly distracted by outside concerns.
- Because of the intensity, you can hop in and out of the project, without having to take time to acclimate yourself. I have a writer friend who’s married to a painter, and she says their test for working well is when they can sit down and work if they have a spare ten minutes.
- You lower your standards. If you’re producing a page a week, or one blog post a week, or one sketch a week, you expect it to be pretty darned good, and you fret and fuss about quality. Often, however, folks get their best work from grinding out the product.
- Practice, practice, practice. My novel was terrible, but I think the sheer doing of it helped my writing, just the way practicing scales helps a pianist. The more you practice, the better you’ll become.
- Because you have a voracious need for material, you become hyper-aware of everything happening around you — and ideas begin to flood your mind.
- You can use this approach even if you’re working on a creative project on the side, with all the pressing obligations of a job, family, etc. Instead of feeling perpetually frustrated that you don’t have any time for your project, you MAKE yourself make time — for a specific period.
- It’s fun! I don’t have the urge to climb mountains or run marathons, but I got the same thrill of exertion from writing a novel in a month.
