Pixar always says that every movie they’ve ever done has sucked at a point during production.
Even Star Wars was awful when its first draft was completed.

But doing iteration after iteration, revision after revision, makes all the difference.
And striving for the best you can be should be the goal.

‘Perfection’ will drive you mad… I’ve been there, it’s exhausting!

Thanks for the article, Richard!

Beau

Ive actually just started exploring sound design after spending a few years engineering and exactly as you said have spent hours researching what I need to do or learn and far too little time actually doing it.

Thanks for the inspiration to actually do something!

Aaron, sounds like you could have written the article yourself! Glad it resonated with your own experience. It’s as comforting to me as it is to you that other people have this same experience.

Haha, that sounds a little defeatist to me. I’d try something like, “one step forward is better than two steps planned” or something like that, but whatever works for you. Glad you got something out of the article.

Hey Claudio, glad you took something from the article. Having recently graduated myself, I know exactly what you mean. I hope you find the right balance between organizing your old work and producing new work.

Things like Microsoft OneNote and Lifehacker RSS Feeds can be massive time-gobblers for “completionists” like me. And instead of just DOING something, I waste countless hours planning to do them (or worse, planning to LEARN how to do them), creating checklists and timelines, setting tasks with reminders for the smallest of things, etc.

Life is so short, and there are too many things that I’m genuinely interested in… which only compounds the problem. After reading your article, I made a decision about a couple of things: first, I’ve already got a very broad skill set and it would be wiser to focus on improving the things I already know how to do than learn brand new skills (like programming 3D animation, ugh).

Second, I need to re-arrange my thought process on tasks that I already know how to do: do it first, then improve it later if needed. For example, I can update my resume without reading every Monster.com article I’ve saved; then, if I happen to come across another article in the future I can just apply the advice at that time. It’s time to unload some of these massive burdens!