Brought Brenda to the Bujinkan Taijutsu martial arts class I go to. Afterwards Brenda kept joking about how ridiculous she felt as it was her first ever martial arts class and she couldn’t get anything everything right.
I did my best to tell her this principle I first heard from NLP Comprehensive, and it applies to everyone who’s stretching:
Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly…at first.
When I was studying and had more free time I used to spend hours and hours at Borders bookstore reading whatever I found interesting. Being an animation student, one book I read was Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist by Chuck Jones, a pioneer animator and director of the old Looney Tunes cartoons so many of us know and love. A story from that book made a deep impression on me, and even though I don’t remember it exactly, I want to share the gist of it with you.
When he was starting out, Chuck was told by a senior animator that everyone has about 10,000 (I don’t remember the exact number here) lousy drawings in them they need to get rid of, before they can really start drawing.’
According to Chuck he used that line to spur him onwards, sometimes drawing and re-drawing his work again and again just so he could get that one perfect drawing.
Whenever you do something new, you will most likely suck at it, or even fall flat on your face. Be prepared for it, it’s natural. Finding something difficult can be a sign that you’re learning something new, if it’s too easy it’s probably has elements of what you already know.
Are you ok with that? Are you ok with not doing so well at something first? Maybe even looking bad at it? If you are, remember that anything worth doing is worth doing badly…at first. And when there is learning, there is no failure.
January 20th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Comment deleted on Brenda’s request.
January 21st, 2006 at 5:38 am
that’s actually a famous quote from giacometti i believe
i used to hear it all the time at art school.
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:43 am
Oh, thanks Beth! I had no idea
January 25th, 2006 at 5:31 am
great story Alvin. It often surprises me when people I know won’t try something new because they are scared of “looking like an idiot”. That’s a pretty messed up way of looking at life. When we started The Podcast Network a year ago, I had no idea what it took to run a media company. I’d never been in the media business. I’d never run a company. We’d only been podcasting for a couple of months. But I just kept telling myself “well, cmon, how hard can it be?” And hell, we’ve made LOTS of mistakes. Keep making them every day. But you learn. You get smarter. I remember reading the BRW Rich 200 (an annual list of Australia’s wealthiest individuals) many years ago and realizing that many of our most successful businesspeople had failed over and over in business until they finally got it right.
January 31st, 2006 at 1:00 pm
More NLP goodness – thanks, Alvin. It reminds me of 1) Giacometti (I can’t *believe* beth mentioned him), and 2) Lamott’s idea of writing a “shitty first draft” (from “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”). Disclaimer: I have read neither book yet!
June 20th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Hi
I’m working on behalf of NLP Comprehensive.
We request you changed the link for NLP Comprehensive on your page to nlpco.com.
Your page is:
http://lifecoachesblog.com/2006/01/20/anything-worth-doing-is-worth-doing-badly/
The name is still NLP Comprehensive, we are just consolidating on one domain name, so we don’t get in trouble with Google.
We have also redesigned the site. You can see it at: http://www.nlpco.com
Thanks so much
Bob Erwin
On behalf of Tom Dotz of NLP Comprehensive
Bob Erwin
NewInk Marketing Services
http://www.newink.com
408-230-4144 office
408-723-5074 fax
bob@newink.com
AIM: roberte747
June 20th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Hi Bob,
Sure
April 20th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I love the bit about everyone having 10,000 bad drawings in them. You can transfer that to anything you do, i’ll keep that one for future
I used to get caught up with “Anything worth doing is worth doing WELL” but really if it’s worth doing it’s worth doing. Better to start it than not to because you’re after perfection.
August 18th, 2007 at 1:48 am
I don’t entirely agree with this argument. Some people don’t learn incrementally, or bit by bit. Instead, they ‘know’ or master how to do something all at once, like a switch going off. I’ve mastered many skills not by practicing the same skills and getting better a little at a time, but by doing only a few times, until the switch comes on. After that, only minimal improvement comes from repetition. I’ve never understood why people insist on practice…but I guess it works for most people. Believe me, I wish I did learn bit-by-bit, life gets boring quick when you master things so quickly.
September 18th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
lol, if you master everything so quickly maybe you should start trying to do some actually difficult things….most people can master the art of sleeping or eating after few tries…unless you’re a fantastic genius…