The More You Fail, The Better You Succeed
Vol. 064
The More You Fail, The Better You Succeed
Quality is a probabilistic result of quantity…through constant process and failure, you’ll find better and more success.
A quick bite:
“You learn from your mistakes.” Well, how does one learn from their mistakes if they’re too busy trying to “be perfect” and not make any mistakes? Perfectionism can be the death of your creativity. To get used to failing is to get used to learning and growing. This will lead you down a path to quality work and a successful creative practice.
Continue reading below…
To quote Malcolm Gladwell, who cited Dean Simonton in his 2011 New York Times article:
“...The difference between [famous composer, Johann Sebastian] Bach and his forgotten peers isn’t necessarily that he had a better ratio of hits to misses. The difference is that the mediocre might have a dozen ideas, while Bach, in his lifetime, created more than a thousand full-fledged musical compositions. A genius is a genius, Simonton maintains, because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations, and unexpected connections that he almost inevitably ends up with something great. “Quality,” Simonton writes, is “a probabilistic function of quantity.”
Simonton’s point is that there is nothing neat and efficient about creativity. “The more successes there are,” he says, “the more failures there are as well”—meaning that the person who had far more ideas than the rest of us will have far more bad ideas than the rest of us, too. This is why managing the creative process is so difficult.”
The poignance of this quote might make your head explode.
Perfectionism runs rampant in the creative industry. Graphic designers often measure their vocational worth based on the success of a particular project. Artists often find themselves unintentionally placing our self-worth in the success or reception of a particular piece or series of work.
As a creative, your work is so ingrained in your identity — how could you not take it personally? To combat that vulnerability, to prevent the possibility of failure, we employ perfectionism.
When asked how something is going or how a particular piece or project is, we use the excuse of “it’s not ready” or, “I’m still working on it.” We use the excuse of perfectionism.
Because it’s not yet “perfect”, it can’t be released. If it’s not released, I can’t be judged.
The reality of being a self employed creative is that you must resist perfectionism and focus on getting your work out there. We must prioritize a perfect end goal, and focus on the process of creating. We must focus on a large quantity of work, as that will help us learn, pivot, adapt, and ultimately arrive at a high quality of work.
It is important to remain in the discovery phase, the sketching phase and the ideation phase as long as possible, because for every rock you overturn, you’re that much more confident that the solution you move forward with is the correct one.
Through process and output you’re learning with every piece, every painting, every logo design, and those learnings and findings help inform the process of the next piece. If you create 10 pieces quickly or slowly, you’ll learn similar lessons — the (wo)man who creates quickly will learn quickly, and therefore become better faster.
Now, I’m not suggesting that you need to overturn every rock to ensure that your creative solution is correct: you don’t need to design 45 logos in order to know that the second one you created was the right solution. In fact, I believe that sprint-based timelines actually help us as creatives and graphic designers to create better work.
Though, Simonton’s quote suggests that through trusting the process and creating as much as possible, all becomes easier. We become better.
Think of it like this: what was it like the first time you presented a branding project to a client? How was the process of painting your first mural? If you’re anything like me, it was probably a pretty bumpy road…
However, through doing these things over and over again (quantity) you continue to do it slightly differently every time, the mistakes of the previous continually informing the process of the next.
As you continue to focus on process, output, creation and practice (and you learn from these experiences) you truly get better with every instance.
This perfectly exemplifies why being a perfectionist is a waste of time!
When you approach quality through quantity, you’re allowing for slow, steady growth, and this allows for your next to always be incrementally better than the last.
To employ perfectionism is to reduce your “quantity”. Reducing your quantity reduces what you can learn. And, a lack of learning and adapting will prevent you from achieving the quality you’re after.
