Make more bad stuff

About this episode

The episode discusses the importance of producing work despite not meeting personal quality standards in order to develop talent.

Who's a global genius? Not me, not Col, and (sorry for crushing your dreams) not you either. But we'll forgive Col opening with a Picasso comparison, because it points to a useful idea. Your vision is capable of imagining quality beyond what your talent can presently produce. So there's a painful period, that lasts anywhere from a few months to forever, where what you create doesn't meet the standards you aspire to. Continuing to produce, in the face of that shortfall, is how you develop talent. It can be frustrating and annoying, but that's the price of quality. For me it was posting weekly videos before I thought they were good enough (Peter Cook and Alicia gave me the weekly framework, before then I posted exactly nothing). For Col it was doing clunky public speaking that fell short of his ambition (pretty sure Pete helped him too!). Quality matters, but it’s most usefully developed by focussing on quantity. The people whose work you admire have almost all been through some version of this process. You’ll never regret the clunky early stuff.

People in this episode

Hosts: Col, Cam

Topics covered

• talent development
• quality vs quantity
• creative process
• public speaking
• artistic vision

Keywords

• talent
• quality
• quantity
• creative process
• public speaking
• artistic vision
• frustration

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Picasso

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