Perfect vs. Good Enough

After watching a series of recorded talks and presentations, I have become a fan of Seth Godin. Like his talks, his blog is an explosion of ideas, and each idea is worth spending some time with and giving some serious thought. They are the type of ideas that even if they all turn out to be wrong, a person is still better off for having thought about them. The ideas are fresh. One idea that is stressed more than once is the importance of abandoning the idea of perfection, and shipping a product that is good enough.

At first, this didn’t sit very well with me. “Good enough” is a phrase I use very often. I am by no means a perfectionist with every detail in my life. The only area where I do strive for perfection is my art, because the arts are one area where I strongly believe that “good enough” is never good enough. Only the very best that I am capable of producing is ever good enough. This must be an area where business advice does not apply to the art world.

But this might be too literal of an interpretation on my part.
Read the rest of this entry »

After watching a series of recorded talks and presentations, I have become a fan of Seth Godin. Like his talks, his blog is an explosion of ideas, and each idea is worth spending some time with and giving some serious thought. They are the type of ideas that even if they all turn out to be wrong, a person is still better off for having thought about them. The ideas are fresh. One idea that is stressed more than once is the importance of abandoning the idea of perfection, and shipping a product that is good enough. At first, this didn't sit very well with me. "Good enough" is a phrase I use very often. I am by no means a perfectionist with every detail in my life. The only area where I do strive for perfection is my art, because the arts are one area where I strongly believe that "good enough" is never good enough. Only the very best that I am capable of producing is ever good enough. This must be an area where business advice does not apply to the art world. But this might be too literal of an interpretation on my part. Godin's real point, I think, is to raise the question, "is it better to never ship perfect, or always ship good enough?" This idea fits in really well with one of Godin's talks, where he was promoting his booklet, Ship-it. In the talk, Godin emphasizes that "good enough" doesn't mean "bad" or "half-assed". "Good enough" means that it is good enough for what people want/need/expect. In the case of art, the work itself might have to be perfect, but if it's hung a few centimetres too high, and lowering the painting requires patching the hole from the first nail, and re-painting the gallery, and it's 20 minutes to show time, then it's OK to stop, shrug, and say, "good enough." His chart, however, really struck a chord with me. It's not exactly a scientific chart, but it is an image that explains the idea far better than words ever could. Rather than post a link to his chart, I have created my own version of it: As a beginner, small amounts of practice lead to big gains in quality. As skill level improves, the payoff for each hour of practice becomes less and less. The same is true for effort or resources put into a project. Most of the really big gains are made in the early stages. By the end of development, large expenditures give imperceptible improvements. Eventually, a point is reached where further improvement just isn't worth it. I'm reminded of an old programmer's joke: "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time." I'd be surprised if this joke is unfamiliar, since it has it's own Wikipedia entry. The same rule in programming is equally true for art. These past 3 weeks, I've been working on two paintings. I've known exactly how they were going to look when finished by the end of day 3. Reaching that point is 90% of the image-making process. The image is there in the under-painting, I just have to tweak it and make it look finished. The remaining 18 days have been spent trying to making the paintings look good. It's hard to explain this in words, but I can look at a piece of art and say, "that looks amateur", "that looks like student work", and "that's professional". Getting my work to reach that level of professionalism that I demand from it takes a lot of time, even though it looks 'almost done' or 'good enough' throughout most of that period. It's a little demotivating to pour hours into something, and when it is finally good enough to be declared 'finished', it looks no different from the initial under-painting in the documentation. All those little extras that take up 90% of the studio time are completely lost in the photos I take! I think the gist of this idea is that an obsession with perfection in all things isn't helpful. Sharp focus on key details, the details that really matter, that is what's important. The "Take a Picture" project is a perfect example of focusing only on what matters, and accepting "good enough" in other places. The part of that project that really matters is the secret image that appears on the back of your digital camera. It has to be clear, sharp, and refined. At first, this project looks like a piece of extreme minimalism. It looks very minimal, considering there is absolutely nothing on the canvas. Since the fist impression of this project is likely to evoke accusations of laziness on our part, we knew we would have to do something to counter this kind of reaction. We wanted the hidden image to look very crisp, flawless, and perfect, almost mechanical, so people would understand that a lot of skill, and a lot of work did go into this. If their first impression of us was followed with imagery that is rough and sloppy, it would reinforce that initial opinion; that's not what we want. What people see on the front is what matters. The electronics stuffed in the back aren't nearly so important; they don't have to be perfect. They just have to work. They have to be durable. They have to be hidden from view to not spoil the surprise. They have to run safely. Brads design does all those things. His design is extremely flexible, it's parallel, so if one board were to fail, the rest of the chain will still work. The design allows for any number of additional circuits to be added to the chain, and each circuit can branch off into 3 separate chains, going in separate directions. But is it the absolute best circuit design possible? I don't know; we didn't spend a lot of time trying to invent new designs. Having the best possible solution or circuit doesn't really matter in this case. Perfection doesn't matter; functionality does. Brad's circuit design might not have been the fastest for us to manufacture. It may not be the most elegant to look at, or the cheapest to manufacture. This design was well tested; we know it works. And we had a bit of a stock pile left over from building the prototype, so re-using the design gave us a head start. Maybe we could have done something smaller, something simpler, something prettier on the back. We didn't spend months of development, we didn't consult world-leading electrical engineers, we didn't tour numerous top-of-the-line manufacturing facilities. None of those things are important to this project. Fussing over these details would only have taken our attention away from the areas that do matter. We picked a design that we already had, one that we know for certain will work, and we know how to make it in large quantities. It does the job it has to do. It is good enough.

How Much Practice Does it Take to Make Perfect?

How many times have you heard the phrase, “practice makes perfect”?
      Does it really?
      What about talent and genius?
      Is practice really all it takes?

When I was five, my family moved to a new neighbourhood. Unfortunately, a bully lived next door. I couldn’t go outside without having someone twice my size beat me up. To ensure that my teeth stayed in my mouth, I stayed in the house. I stayed in my room and I drew. I drew a lot. I would lock myself in there for hours at a time, where I would draw until one of the parents came up and got me; then they would make me stop for a bit and eat dinner. Afterwards, I would go back upstairs and draw some more. I did this until I was 15. That was when I discovered ‘QBASIC’ on the old IBM PS/2 386, and computer programming started to dominate my attention and free time for the next 3 years.

For 10 years, from the age of 5 to 15, I drew nearly everyday for about five hours.

            300 days X 5 hours X 10 years = 15,000 hours of practice.

Fifteen thousand hours of drawing.
Read the rest of this entry »

How many times have you heard the phrase, "practice makes perfect"?       Does it really?       What about talent and genius?       Is practice really all it takes? When I was five, my family moved to a new neighbourhood. Unfortunately, a bully lived next door. I couldn't go outside without having someone twice my size beat me up. To ensure that my teeth stayed in my mouth, I stayed in the house. I stayed in my room and I drew. I drew a lot. I would lock myself in there for hours at a time, where I would draw until one of the parents came up and got me; then they would make me stop for a bit and eat dinner. Afterwards, I would go back upstairs and draw some more. I did this until I was 15. That was when I discovered 'QBASIC' on the old IBM PS/2 386, and computer programming started to dominate my attention and free time for the next 3 years. For 10 years, from the age of 5 to 15, I drew nearly everyday for about five hours.             300 days X 5 hours X 10 years = 15,000 hours of practice. Fifteen thousand hours of drawing. Wow. I honestly didn't expect the number to be that high. That number reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell's 2008 book Outliers, and the idea of 10 000 hours. If you haven't read Outliers, then you should go read Outliers. This book looks at success from a very different angle than most other books on the subject. If you've ever read a book about a successful person, it usually goes something like this: "I'm brilliant, I worked really hard, then I became successful" How often do we stop and think, "But I know plenty of people who are brilliant, work hard, and aren't successful"? Outliers ignores all this. It focuses on the social conditions surrounding success. Success depends on opportunities, and opportunities depend on a combination of luck, preparation, and where you come from. The biggest idea in the book was probably the one about 10,000 hours. To be good, really good, outstandingly good at anything, you need to have put in 10,000 hours of practice. Any difficult, creative, complicated task requires 10,000 hours of practice. If you look through history, all the really big, successful people started out with a little bit of luck that let them get started on something. Then with some more luck, they were able to keep on going and get in a ton of practice. The combination of luck and dedication creates a chain cumulative advantage that leads to that person being very, very good at something. We all know the old saying, "practice makes perfect". Now we know exactly how much practice it takes to make perfect: 10,000 hours. Of course, there is more to it than that. Just doing something for 10,000 doesn't mean that you will inevitability become a grand master at it. You need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. That means 10,000 hours spent focused on learning how to do something better. Play a song faster, draw a line straighter. Don't just do it a lot, do it to get better, and do it for 10,000 hours. This whole idea seems kind of prescriptive; kind of convenient. Nature is messy, it can't be a nice round, even number like 10,000! That's too easy! Remember that 15,000 hours of drawing I was gloating about earlier? That wasn't always done with the intent of being better. Sometimes, I was just doing it for fun. I always wanted to be an artist when I grew up, but I didn't know exactly what it took to be an artist. I wasn't concerned with being better each time, I just loved making art, so I made as much of it as I could. In high school, things changed. In high school, I finally found a teacher who would challenge me, and I started working to get better. I put down my pencils and picked up a paintbrush. It's time to hit the reset button on the counter. I was starting over from scratch here, I was entering new territory, but it felt good. I put in long hours, at least two a day, but often, it was closer to 12. But I only had art one semester each year. By the end of high school, I had probably accumulated just over 3,000 hours             6 hours a day X 110 days X 5 years = 3,300 hours. My years in University might be more difficult to calculate. I began showing in commercial galleries on top of my regular school work load. For the first 3 years, I worked very, very hard. during summers, I worked a full time job, and a part time job, so I could only practice my art during the school year. During my thesis year, I had to spend so much time writing, I couldn't paint very much. So I'm just going to guess 200 hours for it.             8 hours a day X 176 days X 3 years + 200 for year 4 = 4,424 So, my final year of education is coming to a close, graduation is in my sights, and I'm at 7724 hours. Ha! I beat the system. I'm going to graduate, and I'm over 2,000 hours short! After graduation, I finally had that piece of paper that says, "I'm an artists now that I've grown up!". The life-long dream was now a reality, and in my first year off, I hit a rut so deep, I don't know how I ever climbed out of it. Everything I did in late 2006 and 2007 really, really sucked. It was just a bad year for me. My sources of extrinsic motivation had dried up. Friends disappeared, the concept of deadlines vanished, commissions fell apart, paintings failed miserably, and my money ran out. I did almost nothing that year. probably less than 800 hours. It was a very lazy year for me. Let's just round the number up to 8,500 Half way through 2007, I said "Aww....eff it, I'm going to have an adventure" (Yes, I actually did say 'eff it', I was on the phone with my Mother at the time. I still haven't acquired the knack for successful profanity. I am working on it, but not when my Mom is around.) I closed down my studio, packed my bags and moved to Korea, where I teached kids to talk English good. I hiked through the mountains, I wandered through the wonderful cities, and I picked up my pencils again. I picked up my watercolours. I took the urban landscape style I had developed during my thesis, and I started to express it in a new medium - graphite, ink and watercolours. I had to change certain things about my technique, I spent about 100 hours that year learning to combine my 15,000 hours of drawing with my 8,500 hours of painting. By the time I had figured out how to successfully depict my subject matter in this new medium, it was time to come home and pick up my acrylics again. As soon as I got home, I got to work, pumping out a series of landscapes while the experience was still fresh in my mind. They rarely turned out the way I had wanted them to, but a bunch of them were good enough. These first few acrylics were a real struggle. I worked on this series daily for 5 months.             8 hours a day X 150 days = 1200 hours. I was depressed, I wasn't able to get what I wanted. On New Year's Day, I officially gave up on the landscapes and went back to my urban landscapes, the one style that really feels like my own. I painted a scene, and it worked. I painted another, and it worked even better. I painted yet another, and it didn't work out quite as well, but it was still good enough. I painted yet another, and it worked. I kept on painting. It was still the first month of 2009 at this point, and already, I had the beginnings of a body of work I could be proud of. The rut I had been stuck in since mid-2006 was finally over! When you're riding a groove, the worst thing you can do is stop and get off, so I kept on riding the groove; I kept on working on that urban landscape series. I am still riding that same groove today, I am still working on my urban landscapes. This might be very hard to properly describe in words, but I had always felt like painting was a bit of a fight, a bit of a struggle. It felt like a sort of wall existed between my body and the image in my mind, or between my mind and my tools. I had my materials, and I had an image in my mind. I wanted to turn these perfect materials in front of me into the perfect image that was in my head, but the only way I could get there was by using these clumsy hands and brushes. It was a constant fight to get them to work right. The brush would wiggle around, run dry in the wrong place, the bristles would spread out, clump together, or or flick when they weren't supposed to, the paint would mix wrong, or my hand would shake; all these things got in the way of being able to create that image that I wanted to make. Now here is the weird thing: during that rush of productivity back in January 2009, the wall disappeared. My materials started to work the way I wanted them too. The fight was over. Now, I can just put the paint on the canvas. I didn't put much though into this until recently. As I was re-reading part of Outliers, I got the crazy idea that I should count my hours and do the math. That January was when I hit my 10,000 hours.

Wasted Time? Business Advice from Art Blogs.

          Lately, I have been spending a lot of time trying to focus on the business end of my art career. I feel like the creating art side of my life is in a very good place right now. I’ve been working on paintings more or less non-stop for over a year now, and with every brush stroke I make, I can feel the difference that my constant practice has made possible. I would imagine that I am really close to my 10,000 hours by now, or maybe I’m already past it, I honestly don’t really keep track of my hours in the studio. All I know for sure is that this past year has done wonderful things for my art making skills, both in technical ability, and in problem solving abilities. When a painting just doesn’t work, I used to feel stuck, and I would either work myself into a creative rut, or I’d give up on it for the time being, with every intention of coming back to it later. Those aren’t problems any more, I’ve developed techniques for dealing with those situations, and I get the feeling that something wonderful could begin to come together in my work at any time now.
          But the whole marketing and business side of my life has been at a standstill. Other than the occasional website update, which I don’t do nearly often enough, or mass mailing, which I never do (How can I spam people, then expect to sleep at night?) I really haven’t done much of anything to keep up with or expand upon the business side of things.
          After the solo show at Open Gallery, and the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and Nathan Phillips Square, I took 2 weeks off to read up on a bunch of art business stuff. I wanted to know more about branding, marketing, and presenting a more professional image to the world.
          I’ve always been the type of person to research something quite heavily before getting started in it myself. I like to know what I’m getting myself into, what to expect, and how to handle unexpected situations that might pop up along the way. I like to make sure that I’m not getting ripped off, screwed over, and most importantly, I like to be sure that I’m not making a huge mistake that I will regret for years to come.

          So, like any curious person who wants to know about something, I turned to Google. After a few keyword searches, I discovered a glut of art blogs; and much to my (initial) excitement, most of them paid a lot of attention to marketing and selling art online, and had a lot of ideas about getting noticed.
          “Perfect, thats exactly what I want!” I said aloud, without any concern for what the neighbours must think of this strange fellow talking to himself at 4 in the morning.
          I began clicking on every link that looked remotely interesting. Over 50 tabs were opened in my browser, and the next 2 weeks were spent reading, jotting down notes, and adding them to the wall of crazy that lives beside my computer. After I had taken all the information in, I began sorting through it, organizing it, comparing it, and I slowly began to realize something.
Read the rest of this entry »

          Lately, I have been spending a lot of time trying to focus on the business end of my art career. I feel like the creating art side of my life is in a very good place right now. I've been working on paintings more or less non-stop for over a year now, and with every brush stroke I make, I can feel the difference that my constant practice has made possible. I would imagine that I am really close to my 10,000 hours by now, or maybe I'm already past it, I honestly don't really keep track of my hours in the studio. All I know for sure is that this past year has done wonderful things for my art making skills, both in technical ability, and in problem solving abilities. When a painting just doesn't work, I used to feel stuck, and I would either work myself into a creative rut, or I'd give up on it for the time being, with every intention of coming back to it later. Those aren't problems any more, I've developed techniques for dealing with those situations, and I get the feeling that something wonderful could begin to come together in my work at any time now.           But the whole marketing and business side of my life has been at a standstill. Other than the occasional website update, which I don't do nearly often enough, or mass mailing, which I never do (How can I spam people, then expect to sleep at night?) I really haven't done much of anything to keep up with or expand upon the business side of things.           After the solo show at Open Gallery, and the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and Nathan Phillips Square, I took 2 weeks off to read up on a bunch of art business stuff. I wanted to know more about branding, marketing, and presenting a more professional image to the world.           I've always been the type of person to research something quite heavily before getting started in it myself. I like to know what I'm getting myself into, what to expect, and how to handle unexpected situations that might pop up along the way. I like to make sure that I'm not getting ripped off, screwed over, and most importantly, I like to be sure that I'm not making a huge mistake that I will regret for years to come.           So, like any curious person who wants to know about something, I turned to Google. After a few keyword searches, I discovered a glut of art blogs; and much to my (initial) excitement, most of them paid a lot of attention to marketing and selling art online, and had a lot of ideas about getting noticed.           "Perfect, thats exactly what I want!" I said aloud, without any concern for what the neighbours must think of this strange fellow talking to himself at 4 in the morning.           I began clicking on every link that looked remotely interesting. Over 50 tabs were opened in my browser, and the next 2 weeks were spent reading, jotting down notes, and adding them to the wall of crazy that lives beside my computer. After I had taken all the information in, I began sorting through it, organizing it, comparing it, and I slowly began to realize something.           I realized that I could have saved myself a lot of time by only reading the first post, then ignoring the rest. Out of all of those entries and tens of thousands of words, only a small number of distinct ideas were actually present. And it wasn't an even distribution of ideas between blogs. I started to realize that every blog was giving me pretty much the same advice. The top 20 lists were each in a different order, they all had different wording, but they all had the same 20 points. When Information is repeated like that, it can mean several things: 1. These points are the only points worth knowing, and somehow, each one of these points has been independently discovered by hundreds of different art bloggers all over the world, from every background, in every stage of the career imaginable. 2. They are all copying each other. I strongly suspect it's a case of the latter.