It’s Time to Publish This
Many development teams implement a practice called continuous integration in order to ship with an agile philosophy. This is running a series of checks on content to decrease the amount of manual testing required.
While this is possible when you are marketing around your work, you CANNOT have this mentality with your marketing. Simply put,
the internet is just too fast
Imagine if you had to constantly update all the content you ever created? That wouldn't work; we would spend an eternity fixing things that are not really broken.
How do you handle the imperfections of your work? Do they ever see the light of day? Do you constantly tweak them out of existence?
I am not perfect, but very much a perfectionist. In fact this piece of writing took a few days to complete. I wrote, modified and wrote and modified some more. In fact, the original concept of this post was about how no one knows what the Hell they are doing, including me.
I am working on this bad habit of mine and I promise the hours of thought that I wrote, crossed out, wrote, and crossed out again will see the light of day (it's good information).
But here are some thoughts on creating and perfection.
You Have to Create
In order to be a creator, you must first and foremost create.
Some of the coolest creators I've enjoyed are constantly creating. one of my favorites is Giaco Whatever. He makes things because they seem interesting or as he puts it...
"Because I Can"
Another example is Laura Kampf. She finds "Junk" and turns them into something amazing.
Neither of these creators can look up how they do something perfectly because they are often creating one-of-a-kind things out of other things!
Innovation comes from the failures before them. If you wait until you can make something perfect, you will greatly limit your ability to create.
Share what you've made (Publish)
Many of the most famous works of artists are inherently flawed. In fact, some of the most viral videos are not perfect they were ideas that were executed on.
There is a Japanese form of art called wabi-sabi. This is appreciation in the imperfection of the things you are doing. The flaws and errors we make a sense of uniqueness in the things we create. Knowing there were mistakes and that you would do better next time gives you something to look forward to in your next creation.
"What if someone points out your flaws?" That's the point right? We want to find out about mistakes we've made. Don't listen to the haters but take to heart those that love your work and want to see it continue to improve!
Review your Work and Commit to Improving
Although we should be constantly making new things, it is important to take a few minutes to reflect on not only the finished product, but the process required to make it.
Commit to small regular improvements. These micro-adjustments will exponentially improve your skill as a creator.
As a bullet journalist, I make notes in my notebook when I think of a way to improve my process. At the end of the notebook (I go through a notebook in about 4 weeks), I go through the (72) pages and transfer any important notes and thoughts.
I also save all the tweets I like to my pinboard and review them regularly. This allows me to look at things I like and get ideas on how to share and promote my content in the future.
This is all done so that my content will continue to improve and that I can better recall the things I've been inspired by.
I hope that me finally releasing this will help convince you to put out the stuff that you've been working on.
I look forward to seeing it and of course if you need any help with that, just let me know! 😉