Today marks day two of my monthly commitment to daily content creation.

As I am taking big steps towards career discovery, an important part of my process has been embracing and practicing imperfection.

I am inspired to write this post today because my fear of imperfection has been the most difficult part of beginning, but it will also be the most rewarding in the long term.

Let’s talk about why this has been so impactful to me, and why I feel it’s important enough to talk about with you.

Getting Ahead by Doing It Badly

“It’s in the act of making things that we figure out who we are.”

Austin Kleon

A crucial part of meaningful career exploration is based in experimentation.

I have been sent on a more unconventional path in life. And it often feels quite uncomfortable and uncertain not being under the umbrella of a large institution.

Instead of switching majors, my exploration looks like writing about a new topic, posting on a new social media site, engaging with strangers, and reading copious amounts of information.

Finding and developing thoughts to take with me along the way.

It’s challenging to understand your goals and feel as though you’re able to “make it” when things aren’t always so black and white. It’s a daunting task to live in uncertainty.

Instead of allowing these feelings to win, I have found more confidence through being okay with imperfection.

Here are five things that creating “badly” has taught me so far:

• Quicker experimentation. Imperfection allows me to experiment with a bigger volume of media–it’s quicker to narrow down what works and doesn’t work for me.
• Learning from mistakes. Instead of fighting to make everything I do perfect, I have found that I learn more from incremental improvements.
• Rapid growth. In a time of rapid growth, I will find things to change in what I made last week anyways. No matter how “perfect” I deemed them.
• Happy accidents. Being too uptight in a time of discovery will make you miss out on things right in front of you.
• Personal direction. Things that are hard to replicate, or that you’re bad at, point to your personal style. Imperfection shows you who you are.

Ultimately speaking: perfection steals creativity.

Austin Kleon’s Perspective

As I highlighted a quote from him above, this is another cool illustration made by Austin Kleon, author of “Share Your Work!”:

Perfection + Deliberate = Boring Mastery

Perfection + Unintended = Dumb Luck

Imperfection + Unintended = Mistakes and Failure (…to learn from)

Imperfection + Deliberate = Punk Rock, Chance Operations, Wabi-Sabi, Navajo Rugs, ETC.

Austin’s book “Share Your Work!” has been an impactful read for me and gave me a foot forward in pursuing creation out loud.

His perspectives give me comforting reassurance of what I already know–the experimentation that I’m doing right now is paving the way for a unique and influential career.

To close, here is another quote I would like to share with you:

“If you ever find you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.”

Austin Kleon

Thank you for reading,

Olivia