In high school, I worked on a yearlong screenwriting project. It was something I had always wanted to do, and I finally got the chance to commit time and effort.
However, in the beginning, I spent so long procrastinating and not writing anything down because I wasn’t happy with any of the ideas I had vaguely come up with. I was afraid of coming up with bad ideas, so I took forever to actually start.
When we’re excited about a project, the last thing we want to do is get frustrated or feel ill-equipped to effectively carry it out. So we avoid working on it for as long as possible, temporarily stifling our fears of failing.
It seems easier to not write down anything at all than accept the fact that we’re not as talented as we imagined ourselves to be. If we don’t start, at least there’s still the possibility that one day we’ll come up with something incredible and important and renowned.
Starting a dream project shatters the illusion of perfection you’ve created for yourself. Suddenly, you have to embrace your inexperience and work really hard, rather than sit around thinking about all the accomplishments you’ll definitely have one day.
It makes your goals real and tangible and therefore subject to analysis and ridicule — mostly, if not entirely, of your own doing.
Our high expectations for ourselves are shaped by our surroundings, the abilities of those nearby and our own prospects of perfection. When we want to film a movie, our basis of comparison is the feature films we see in the theater.
When we want to play basketball, we watch professionals on television. When we want to get better at drawing, we compare ourselves to the amazing artist sitting next to us in class.
There’s an illusion of polished perfection that comes with success stories. When looking at the final product, it’s nearly impossible to recognize how much work and frustration had to occur first. We don’t truly think about all the bad ideas and bad decisions and many mistakes. The successful make their accomplishments look easy.
We only see this final, perfect product, and therefore feel discouraged about coming up with unpolished ideas. So instead of creating lists of brainstorms and writing down everything that comes to mind, we do nothing at all. We wait around for some profound idea to strike us, and when it doesn’t, we assume we’re not cut out for the project.
We have the wrong understanding of bad ideas. We’re afraid of writing them down because it seems like a negative representation of ourselves, and something we could never be proud of.
Even when we’re good at something or are confident and excited about a project, we’re still deterred by not being perfect right away. We expect ourselves to immediately come up with some brilliant, life-changing decision without ever allowing ourselves the time to make mistakes, slowly develop our skills or come up with rudimentary bad ideas.
Rationally, we recognize that success takes a lot of time, energy and persistence. We have heard the stories of rejection that turned into fame and of limited skills transforming into lifelong passions. We know that nothing comes easily and understand bad ideas are necessary to eventually come up with something we’re truly proud of.
But there I was, unable to commit to my screenwriting project, not wanting to relinquish the expectations of perfection I had dreamt up. Now, I am so grateful for all of the bad ideas I came up with first. They allowed me to move forward in my project and finally complete my goal.
My final product was far from the expectations I had set for myself after watching feature films with $100 million budgets. It was not what I pictured at all. But it was a start, an effort and something of an accomplishment. And that is so much more valuable than an untouched, dust-collecting dream.
