21 hours ago
- Fear of making something lame is a major barrier to doing great work, as many ambitious projects start off unimpressive.
- To succeed, you must push through the early stage where your work seems unimpressive, even to yourself.
- Inexperience leads to harsh judgment of early work; we need to treat new ideas as challenges to our imagination.
- Silicon Valley's culture encourages new ideas and has evolved customs that support ambitious projects despite initial lameness.
- Self-doubt and skepticism are powerful forces; techniques to overcome them include overestimating importance, overconfidence, and ignorance.
- Surrounding yourself with the right colleagues and teachers can help you see the promise in early work.
- Focusing on the rate of change rather than current state, and treating work as a sketch or experiment, can reduce discouragement.
- Curiosity and learning from failure are effective motivators to push through the lame phase.
- Studying histories of great work can help recalibrate your judgment of early efforts, recognizing their true value.