As entrepreneurs and creators, it’s easy to get stuck under perfectionist expectations, waiting to create until we know we can create perfectly. This happens when we look at our chaotic exploration and uncertainty—our “creative thrash”—as failure. But here’s how this creative thrashing actually leads to your best work by making room for experimental learning.
For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you…It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions…It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Ira Glass
I received a celebratory text from a coaching client earlier this week: “Susie, I just recorded Episode 100 of my podcast! Can you believe it?”
Before I could type my response, she added, “I’m changing my entire approach to how I am doing the show. I finally know exactly what the podcast is meant to be!”
Over the past 14 months, she has experimented with various topics, guests, and interview formats. She has made a lot of content and explored the edges of what resonates with listeners as well as what brings her alive.
She has found her creative journey to be fun and frustrating, enlightening and, at times, exhausting.
Every minute spent in the creative thrash has shaped her, elevated her, and brought her ever closer to surfacing the work she has been searching for her entire life. She now not only has clarity as to what her Big Idea is but also a powerfully resonant way to articulate her show’s purpose and ideal audience.
Through experimental learning, she has landed in the sweet spot of alignment and authenticity—the zone where we are profoundly connected to ourselves and those we are most passionate about serving.
How do we all sail to these shores?
We gotta make a lot of stuff.
And experiment with the courage of an 1800s explorer.
Embracing Experimental Learning: Why Creative Crash Is a Good Thing
Cultural messaging tells us that we should get everything figured out quickly, perfectly. That we should be clear at the beginning what it is we most want to say, who we most want to reach, what it is we want to make. That our work should be stellar right out of the gate, with no room for experimental learning and growing.
This path is not only one of misery, but it also separates us from the joy of playing and trying things on.
The lack of experimental learning separates us from our most evocative, fulfilling, and lucrative work.
What projects have you shelved or never started because you were worried you didn’t have everything all figured out in advance?
It is the doing, the time in the creative thrash, the painstaking but exciting experimental learning that reveals to us what we most want to know.
We have to let things be mediocre or even downright bad for a while as we learn and discover the connecting dots of who our work is truly for and why we are so passionate about its transformational nature.
Let’s embrace this gangly phase of the creative process. As we release suffocating perfectionism and dive into the uncertainty of experimental learning, we can make our way forward.
Each day that we show up and try with an attitude of “I wonder what would happen if I…,” the more we unleash the best of our thinking and capabilities.
Every time we step into the unknown and embrace experimental learning, we signal to our subconscious mind that we are seekers willing to go on an adventure—one that ultimately brings us home to our essential nature and closes the gap.
