Messy over perfect

The thing you're making doesn't have to be perfect.

In case you weren't sure, you can use that statement as permission to move forward in life without lining up everything in just the right way.

If you have to, choose action over deliberation. Ship something and get feedback as opposed to mulling on it internally.

That doesn't mean there isn't space for deliberation, craft, care, making things really nice. But, if you wait too long, you're pushing up against physical forces of entropy, detachment, and just getting to a point where you don't feel it anymore.

I've been working on a little side project, a fun little game that's been in the back of my mind for years. It's not done. I don't know if it will ever be done. But I did get a version shipped, and shared it with a few friends.

Am I proud of it? Not in the least if I were to consider it a complete thing. But if I think of it as an idea that needs to be tweaked? I'm happy with the results.¹

In ages past, I'd deliberate over something forever, build it up in my mind as needing to be perfect, and then chicken out and never ship.

That still happens, to some extent. But more often I find ways to just get my idea out there, and I'm better for it.

Something happens in your mind when you release an idea to the world. You cross a mental threshold where you did a thing. It's almost like leveling up. You know that you got something accomplished, and it leads you forward into trying more things in the future—because you know in the back of your mind that it's possible.

The opposite is true as well. Take too long, build up a habit of never sharing your creations, and you'll start to believe you're not capable of completing an idea.

And that's the funny part of all this. Ideas are never complete.

You'll never reach a point where the fuzzy vision of the thing in your head is fully realized.

Creating something, getting it ready for the real world, requires tradeoffs.

I've never had a project that didn't get chopped up, simplified, modified, and changed from concept to production.

I wish it wasn't the case sometimes. But that's because my dreams are perfect, but reality gets messy.

The closest I've come is my time creating art with charcoal, pen, pencil, or paint.

But that's not what most of us are working on. We have a website to build, a house to remodel, a project to send off to a client. While art can exist in each area of our life, it's not the main thing we can focus on. Instead we just need to get things done and keep moving forward.

So, worry less about your work being perfect.

Look for ways to get small wins quickly, and learn from feedback.

And one final note.

Write down your ideas and seize on them when the moment strikes. You'll lose them otherwise. I used to think that a good idea would keep circling around until I grabbed it. But that's not always the case.

So now I keep an Apple Note file with my ideas.

Recently one of these ideas stood out to me. It grabbed my attention and captured my imagination. I set to work testing it out, playing with it, seeing where it would go. I stayed up late into the night tweaking and getting it to a point where I could share it out. And I did. I shared with a friend, and we used it as the basis for pushing a concept forward.

Sometimes it's better to give yourself an artificially short deadline—see what you can do in an evening—to force the natural constraints of time and create something as soon as possible.

Passion and energy don't always come, but when they do I've learned to appreciate them, and bring them on as allies for my ideas.

1. I've written about this a bit before, but the game is about a beaver trying to collect resources and set up a home. I'm about a dozen iterations in, and I just can't figure out how to make it fun. But that doesn't stop me from trying. I've spent time looking at other games, studying the mechanics of video games—and all in all I'm wondering if it'd be best to rest this idea and take everything I've learned to a simpler concept. I'm not sure yet.