Most of the things I make don’t make it through quality control.
I write tons and tons and tons of blog posts. Most of them don’t make it onto my website. Even less make it onto the feed. Even less get shared on social media.
If you think these ones are bad, just wait until you see the rejects!
To make a youtube video, I put all of my ideas down onto the script, or storyboard, or timeline. And then I cut and cut and cut and cut until there’s barely anything left.
What’s left is the final core of what I want to say, and nothing more (but maybe less).
I write a talk, and then I say it again and again and again and again, timed to a stopwatch. I cut and cut and cut, and rephrase and rephrase, until I learn the words by accident.
I’m not practising the talk, I just need to hear it back.
I make all sorts of things for tldraw. I make non-stop prototypes and demos. Most of them get binned. But one in ten might get taken forward. And one in a hundred might make it big.
That’s the whole point!
I’m not trying to make something good. I’m trying to learn the boundaries of where goodness is, to figure out its shape. I can only do that by making a lot of bad.
I have no expectation to make something good, from myself, or anyone else. I can make stuff, without fear. I get my self-esteem from somewhere else.
Sometimes, when I show people my work, they don’t seem to understand this approach. They feel obliged to tell me “oh no no you’ve got it all wrong” or “don’t put down your own work like that” or “this is terrible, what were you thinking?”
It’s a scrappy fiddle, like you and me.
❌ This blog post was rejected by quality control.
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