“Do Things Badly”
This is not a piece in favor of incompetence. Quite the contrary, it’s a call for competence via incompetence. Read on, you’ll understand…
I’ve had several discussions lately about timing. When do you do something, like, say, make a short film project. And certainly timing, and planning, matter. But more often than not, in waiting for the perfect moment, which of course never arrives, we don’t do anything at all.
Over the course of my life I’ve had dozens and dozens of ideas for projects, most of them reasonable. This is not an over-estimate. I keep a folder of ideas, and were it not now a digital folder, it would be overflowing. And over the course of my life I’ve completed… a few… and that’s being generous.
There is always a reason not to do something. Especially if there is any chance, any chance at all, that it might not be perfect.
For years I convinced myself that I couldn’t do things because I lacked certain elements – equipment, time, money were always in the mix. Flash forward to today: the equipment I so stubbornly claimed was out of reach now costs less than a weekend getaway, time has never really been my problem, and money, well, things have become so absurdly inexpensive, that even that isn’t really a factor. (Note: I’m not talking about making “Avatar.”)
And yet, my old buddy perfection comes along and demands to be involved in the project, so I come up with a new list of reasons I can’t do something. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.
So here’s what I’m thinking: let’s do things badly for a little while and just see what comes out of that. We can apply some insight teachings and just notice what happens, with as little judgement as possible. Then we can take a look at the final product.
It may even be pretty good…