On the perils of expecting too much from first attempts and building resilience
Hockey great Wayne Gretzky is often credited with the phrase “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Let’s call this Gretzky’s Law. It’s something that coaches of all stripes use to motivate people to go for it, despite fear or doubt. It can be a helpful motivator for those of us who tend to hold back, rather than getting going.
But there’s more to this idea, which can be characterized in the following alternative law. Let’s call it Gretzky’s 2nd Law:
Getting better involves missing a lot of shots for a while, until you stop missing so much.
The very first time we try something, it usually doesn’t work out. So you try again — and usually miss again — for a while. Then you make one, maybe two or three. Then you (probably) miss again. Fall on your ass, fall again, fall once more. But maybe next time, stay up for a bit longer — before falling again. The falling is inevitable. Missing shots is inevitable.
This is the general structure of practicing something. You suck when you start, you keep sucking for a while, and you slowly but surely begin making some shots. It’s how humans have gotten better at things for millennia.
The Shitty First Draft
In her book Bird by Bird, Annie Lamont talks about the concept of the “shitty first draft”. I don’t think much explanation of it is needed of what that concept means. It’s pretty much what it sounds like. It’s a first draft, and it’s shitty. But it’s not shitty because you’ve done something wrong, or because everyone else is better than you. It’s shitty because first drafts are almost always shitty. Because they’re the very first version of something.
You usually miss the first shot you take.
But how many of us forget this? How many times do we refuse to finish or publish, or push out a version — something, anything — because everything we do has to be perfect? I do. I forget constantly. And so I sit in a proverbial dumpster filled with drafts I’ve never bothered to finish and push out.
Hell Is Your Unfinished Stuff
Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that “hell is other people.” What he meant is that so much of how see ourselves is based on what others think of us, or how we believe we compare to them. Because of that, we end up creating a unique hell for ourselves that exists due to the mere existence of other people in our lives.
I’m not sure I fully buy into Sartre’s assessment — though it’s a point worth pondering. But I think there’s another version of hell that’s just you and all of your unfinished work. What’s more, I think many of us live in that hell for some portion of each day. We ruminate, we beat ourselves up, and yet somehow, on top of all that, we demand perfection of ourselves. And we refuse to move until we see it on the horizon.
But it never appears. So we are left in that hell until we find a way out. Taking Gretzky’s advice, the only way out of that hell is taking that first shot — the shitty first shot — and then taking a bunch more, which will likely be just slightly better than shitty. And so on, and so forth, until we look back years later and we’re better than we were when we took our fist shot.
When it comes to taking shots, expect the worst from the first. Then expect more of the same for some time to come.
If you continue to take shots, though, you’ll make some here and there. Over time, you miss fewer of them. But if sports are any indicator of other endeavors, you’ll miss at least as many shots as you make — if you’re really good.
Sucking is Job 1
Back in the 1980s, Ford Motor Company ran ads whose slogan was “quality is job 1.” It’s a great sentiment, but your job 1 isn’t quality — not at first. When you first begin, job 1 is sucking out loud. The out loud part is important. Produce things, knowing they will probably suck. Then keep producing, get feedback, and make tweaks.
The key is to stop expecting much of anything from your early tries at things. Stories of people who stumbled into greatness have two traits in common: they are very rare and the success is usually short-lived.
Luck is a part of every success story, but the difference between success that lasts and success that quickly fades is that luck is accompanied by having failed and learned a lot first.
Start by sucking. Embrace the suck. Suck less often over time. But still expect to suck at times. You’ll miss about half the shots you take, even when you’re pretty good.
Perhaps, then, there’s another variation of Gretzky’s Law. Let’s call it Gretzky’s 3rd Law: You’ll never make 100% of the shots you do take, unless you’re not taking enough shots.
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