Are you having difficulty trying to figure out how to improve? Here is an excerpt from an article we shared with our Performance Under Fire workshop group last week:
"James Clear
Entrepreneur, weightlifter, and travel photographer at JamesClear.com
Why Trying to Be Perfect Won't Help You Achieve Your Goals (And What Will)
Posted: 01/12/2014 9:07 am
We all have goals that are important to us. But is it our drive to achieve a certain outcome that makes us better? Or something else entirely?
In the book Art & Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland share a surprising story about a ceramics teacher. This story just might reframe the way you think about setting goals, making progress, and becoming better at the things that are important to you.
Here's what happened:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the 'quantity' group: fifty pounds of pots rated an 'A,' forty pounds a 'B,' and so on. Those being graded on 'quality,' however, needed to produce only one pot -- albeit a perfect one -- to get an 'A.'
Well, grading time came and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity!
It seems that while the 'quantity' group was busily churning out piles of work -- and learning from their mistakes -- the 'quality' group had sat around theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Whenever you put in consistent work and learn from your mistakes, incredible progress is the result.
This is why I force myself to write a new article every Monday and Thursday. I can't predict which articles will be useful, but I know that if I write two per week, then sometimes I'll hit the bullseye.
And it works the same way with almost any goal you could have.
Art. If you want to be a great photographer, you could go on a quest to take one perfect photo each day. Or you could take 100 photos per day, learn from your mistakes, and hone your craft......."
"James Clear
Entrepreneur, weightlifter, and travel photographer at JamesClear.com
Why Trying to Be Perfect Won't Help You Achieve Your Goals (And What Will)
Posted: 01/12/2014 9:07 am
We all have goals that are important to us. But is it our drive to achieve a certain outcome that makes us better? Or something else entirely?
In the book Art & Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland share a surprising story about a ceramics teacher. This story just might reframe the way you think about setting goals, making progress, and becoming better at the things that are important to you.
Here's what happened:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the 'quantity' group: fifty pounds of pots rated an 'A,' forty pounds a 'B,' and so on. Those being graded on 'quality,' however, needed to produce only one pot -- albeit a perfect one -- to get an 'A.'
Well, grading time came and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity!
It seems that while the 'quantity' group was busily churning out piles of work -- and learning from their mistakes -- the 'quality' group had sat around theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Whenever you put in consistent work and learn from your mistakes, incredible progress is the result.
This is why I force myself to write a new article every Monday and Thursday. I can't predict which articles will be useful, but I know that if I write two per week, then sometimes I'll hit the bullseye.
And it works the same way with almost any goal you could have.
Art. If you want to be a great photographer, you could go on a quest to take one perfect photo each day. Or you could take 100 photos per day, learn from your mistakes, and hone your craft......."
!