Shit is the Path to Great

One thing I’m proud of is how many things I build that are absolutely terrible. I thought about this while uploading YouTube videos these past couple weeks. My strategy is simple: do it a lot, fail a lot, and get a little bit better each time I do it.

It’s a strategy I learned over years of creating things. The first time you create something — it’s going to be bad. It’s not going to be anywhere near what you’re aiming for. But you need to create it. You can’t skip that step. You can’t skip it by thinking deeply. You can’t skip it by watching tutorials. You have to make the shitty stuff to get to the great stuff.

There’s a strategy to learning languages that emphasizes this idea. I’m not sure where I heard this language learning strategy, but it’s stuck with me. You have a jar with 1,000 marbles. Each time, you make a mistake, a marble gets taken out. We often approach languages, fearful to make a mistake. However, the journey to fluency will never happen until you get rid of all the marbles. You want to race to take them out of the jar. So, what do you do? You speak. You make mistakes. And you learn.

That’s the path to greatness. Not being afraid to start shit.