Staying with the Mess

I was watching a video of Craig Valentine, a former world public speaking champion. A message he articulated in the video captured my attention.

'You can't create a message without first creating a mess'.

Wow. I thought of all the mess I had created. I had articulated a good number of ideas into words and then being dissatisfied with the quality (mess), deleted a bunch of them altogether. Most of my ideas and thoughts never saw the light of the day. Ouch! I realized that I have never been comfortable staying with the mess.

If you are anything like me, you are probably not expressing your passion enough, be it in writing, music or public speaking or anything else. Your need for perfectionism or standards is coming in the way.

So, how can we stay with the mess? More importantly, how can we get comfortable with the mess? Some elements from the agile methodology is definitely applicable here.

1. Stop the self judgement. The way we look at what we create is often very different from how others perceive it. It is quite possible that what we look at as crap could be perceived as a masterpiece by others. Even otherwise, there is no magic bullet to creating a masterpiece without first getting the ideas into creation. Acknowledge that the creation is more important than what our ego is telling us.

2. Share the mess and get feedback. This is the scary part, where we fear that negative feedback from people will actually reinforce what we tell ourselves at the beginning, that this creation of ours is crap. This is however the exact same path that can help us get comfortable with mess. If we can learn to filter out the criticism and absorb improvement suggestions, we are on our way.

3. Never stop iterating. Sometimes, fatigue will kick in and we will be tempted to explore other avenues that will look far more exciting, as opposed to working on the mess. But if we can be persistent and keep iterating, we will get to the message.

When we polish the rock, time and again, eventually the diamond within will shine through. This requires non judgement, ability to withstand criticism and persistence. At the end of the day it is totally worth it when the message or the masterpiece shines through.