Show me the bad

I’ve been surfing for 20+ years. In my late teens, I was good. Competed and did well at national level. Then life happened. College, work, family, kids. I didn’t surf much over the last decade and naturally I lost some skill.

The last few years, I didn’t make an effort to surf much because “I’m not surfing well”. I had my “surfer’s block”.

Seth Godin opposes the idea of block. Specifically a writer’s block preventing them from writing something good. He explained it in his blog post and recently on Tim Ferris podcast.

His cure is simple yet powerful. Just write. Remove the expectations, remove the constraints. Just write. Eventually you’ll get rid of the bad writing. Practice and feedback will lead to good writing.

“Show me your bad writing”

Seth Godin

This may not be the exact quote but it’s what stuck with me. And I want to expand it. Whatever block you have “Show me the bad of it”.

• I’m bad at programming. Show me how many bad apps you wrote
• My designs aren’t good. Show me the bad ones.
• My sales skills aren’t good. Show me how many bad sales calls you’ve made.
• My writing isn’t good. Show me the bad writing.

You get my point.

Back to my surfer’s block. Some of my friends have been surfing consistently and they have been improving a lot. To the point where I started wondering why I couldn’t be surfing like my old self or at least improve. Turns out that Seth Godin advice is incredibly accurate. I need to do the bad surfing. I’m getting better again.

Happens the same for my creative efforts. If that’s what it takes, I’ll create bad products first. Dedica was the first. Onto to the next one.