You Don’t Succeed By Being Perfect — You Succeed By Doing Good Work Consistently.
By: Anthony Moore
Tags: Life Lessons, Self Improvement, Self, Productivity, Anthony Moore

Look — it’s hard enough to sit down and create something. Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most prolific authors of his generation, said: “When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” If you’re going for “perfect” you’ll be crushed by its weight.

Instead, just create. I once read a prominent, world-class chef say she was grateful that her line of work was cooking, because she makes 300+ dishes a night and if she ruins a dish (or makes one of the best plates she’s ever made!), there’s no time dwell on it — the next order is up. Create, produce, repeat.

Remember — it’s not about being perfect. It’s about doing good work, consistently. The more work you do, the better you’ll become.

In the words of Ira Glass, America radio host:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners…all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

A lot of people never break through this phase — that cold, fragile environment built by the perfectionist demon that lives in your head. Fear of embarrassment and looking stupid have killed more dreams than almost anything; a lot of people are still stuck in that.

Fortunately, you don’t have to end up like that. If you’ve been living in that terrible place, dictated by fear of what other people think — I’ve got good news for you. I have the solution.

The thing that breaks the curse is clicking “publish.”

Clicking Publish Will Make Your Craziest Dreams Come True.

Kind of.

In his book, The War of Art, best-selling author and screenwriter Steven Pressfield described the first truly big movie he produced: King Kong Lives (1986).

On opening weekend, he went to a small-town movie theater and got in line for a ticket. “A youth manned the popcorn booth,” Pressfield wrote. “‘How’s King Kong Lives?’ I asked. He flashed a thumbs-down. ‘Miss it man. It sucks.’”

“I was crushed,” he wrote. “Here I was, 42 years old, divorced, childless, having given up all normal pursuits to chase the dream of being a writer; now I’ve finally got my name on a big-time Hollywood production, and what happens? I’m a loser, a phony; my life is worthless, and so am I.”

He could have quit right then and there. Clicking “publish” had finally confirmed all his worst fears — that he and his work were terrible.

Pressfield wanted to quit. The pain and embarrassment were so bad, he almost did.

But after a short while, Pressfield thought about the magnitude of what he had just done. He had produced a legitimate big-screen Hollywood movie! Even if it was a box office failure, it was still a huge accomplishment. One failure didn’t mean the end of his career.

“That was when I realized I had become a pro,” he wrote. “I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.”

A few years later, he went on to produce multiple big-screen movies that saw enormous financial and critical success. He’s now one of the most accomplished screenwriters in Hollywood.

Clicking publish will do something very important — it will force you to face reality. Either you’ll finally achieve all the fame and fortune you’ve known you were destined to have…or everything will fall apart and you’ll finally realize that you’re simply terrible, nothing more.

Actually, the answer is usually in the middle — your work is fine, but it’s not great yet, and you know it. No matter. You have a direction now. You have something to compare it to. You have something to work with. Create, produce, repeat.

Follow that path. That’s how you succeed.

I’ve been clicking “publish” on lots of things for a long time. And it wasn’t until I started publishing 10x my usual rate that I saw 10x my success.

Frankly, I’ve published a lot of mediocre garbage.

I’ve launched courses that took me 6 months to make that literally zero people bought.

I’ve written books than less than a dozen people ever read.

I’ve published podcast episodes, eBooks, videos, online courses, coaching packages, and all sorts of content that no one wanted.

But I’ve learned a lot. The rich get richer. I’ve learned from my mistakes. I’ve studied the greats. I know more about how to succeed.

I published 3.5 eBooks before I got my first book deal.

I re-did my online courses 3–5x before I got my first sale.

I posted hundreds of articles before I got my first 10,000+ readers in a single day.

Clicking publish will make all your dreams come true — eventually. You just need to publish.

In Conclusion

Do you know how many unpublished drafts I have lying around my computer?

I checked. Currently, there are 771 unpublished pieces of work on Medium alone.

Not everything is gonna be a winner. But you’ll get more winners if you publish more. Back in the day, I probably wrote 1 article every 3–4 weeks. They all…sucked. I wasn’t learning anything, just writing the same mediocre content over and over.

It wasn’t until I published 30 articles in 30 days (April/May 2017) that I saw an explosion of readers. I started learning, I got better, and people started listening.

You don’t succeed by being perfect — you succeed by doing good work consistently.

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