14
Permission to Create Junk
Weightlifting offers a good metaphor for scheduling creative work.
I can’t predict whether or not I’ll set a PR (personal record) before I go to the
gym. In fact, there will be many days when I’ll have a below average workout.
Eventually, I figured out that those below average days were just part of the
process. The only way to actually lift bigger weights was to continually show up
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — regardless of whether any individual
workout was good or bad.
Creative work is no different than training in the gym. You can’t selectively
choose your best moments and only work on the days when you have great
ideas. The only way to unveil the great ideas inside of you is to go through a
volume of work, put in your repetitions, and show up over and over again.
Obviously, doing something below average is never the goal. But you have to
give yourself permission to grind through the occasional days of below average
work because it’s the price you have to pay to get to excellent work.
If you’re anything like me, you hate creating something that isn’t excellent. It’s
easy to start judging your work and convince yourself to not share something,
not publish something, and not ship something because “this isn’t good enough
yet.”
But the alternative is even worse: if you don’t have a schedule forcing you to
deliver, then it’s really easy to avoid doing the work at all. The only way to be
consistent enough to make a masterpiece is to give yourself permission to
create junk along the way.