Explore Daniel Kahneman’s insights on creative readiness and why sharing your ideas before they're "perfect" fuels growth, learning, and impactful creativity.
I love this, so brilliant and so true. I even feel the cringe looking back at essays I wrote a year ago. Such a helpful reminder that all I’m seeing is a confirmation of my growth. Thank you!
Great article. I think this is one advantage of online writing (i.e. Substack) - easy to edit or delete down the track. Books seem a bit more set in concrete. I still love books though, but just saying. 🧡
So good. I assigned Thinking, Fast and Slow to my undergraduate cognitive psychology class each year and I was still learning from that book 5 years into teaching it. Rest in peace Kahneman. Tversky would have balanced out his twenty year remark with more optimism, or so I like to believe.
We don’t judge a 5–year-old’s first “books” that they write. We tell them to keep writing, keep exploring. We’re all still growing up, even throughout adulthood.
Thank you, Jonathan, for a thoughtful and insightful look at how and what we create. For writers, our words become entombed on the page (or screen). But as you pointed out, nothing is irrevocable. And that fact allows us the freedom to create in the moment, without judgment.
I become attached to my books and want them to have a powerful, transformational impact on the reader. Perfectionism is my shadow, but I rely on intuition and knowing it's time to release my creation into the world.
This is awesome man. I've been dealing with something similar: I'm only 24, so I still don't have that look about something I wrote two decades ago, but I published a book two years ago and I finally took the courage to sit with it and read it. Well, it's been... challenging. Cringe is definitely the right word and I think you completely understands the embarrassment that invades us when we face "that's how I used to write? Oh my god..."
But I think you've explained it perfectly. It's how we can measure our evolution. And to me it's also some type of time traveling, a way that we can connect to our old selves, see how cringe we were, but still brave enough to write and put out the things we wrote.
Perhaps there is the work as an independent object and then relationships to the work - both ours and other people's. These could evolve in different ways.
I think of the changes in works as:
Layering - one newer piece builds on the work of an older earlier piece - like multiplication builds on counting and numbers.
Rethinking - perhaps the hardest. To unlearn past work. The world is flat...oops, maybe not.
Evolving - The work develops. It changes, subtle but continuous. Like our children growing.
Re-examining - Seeing more. Going deeper into the same work. Like curves on a fern, or the coastline.
Cyclic - It ebbs one way, then the other. I once thought self, then group, then self. Or like flared trousers - in or out of fashion?
Perhaps this is a lens framework we could use to look at older work. However, sharing early and reflecting with others is almost always a richer experience.
I love this, so brilliant and so true. I even feel the cringe looking back at essays I wrote a year ago. Such a helpful reminder that all I’m seeing is a confirmation of my growth. Thank you!
Same, same. Sometimes, even hours later lol!
Great article. I think this is one advantage of online writing (i.e. Substack) - easy to edit or delete down the track. Books seem a bit more set in concrete. I still love books though, but just saying. 🧡
Agreed, though that's even changing with indie publishing and platforms that lets you regularly revise
Totally agree.
So good. I assigned Thinking, Fast and Slow to my undergraduate cognitive psychology class each year and I was still learning from that book 5 years into teaching it. Rest in peace Kahneman. Tversky would have balanced out his twenty year remark with more optimism, or so I like to believe.
We don’t judge a 5–year-old’s first “books” that they write. We tell them to keep writing, keep exploring. We’re all still growing up, even throughout adulthood.
It is an ever-evolving journey. And what a loss to have both of them gone, now. Yet, what a gift they were here.
Can really relate to this. I through away many of my journals as they cringed me out on later re reads which I regret now
I wish I had journals to reflect back upon, but alas never was my process.
Thank you, Jonathan, for a thoughtful and insightful look at how and what we create. For writers, our words become entombed on the page (or screen). But as you pointed out, nothing is irrevocable. And that fact allows us the freedom to create in the moment, without judgment.
Especially when our work is connected to a commercial deliverable, comes a time when you just have to say it's done enough.
I become attached to my books and want them to have a powerful, transformational impact on the reader. Perfectionism is my shadow, but I rely on intuition and knowing it's time to release my creation into the world.
This is awesome man. I've been dealing with something similar: I'm only 24, so I still don't have that look about something I wrote two decades ago, but I published a book two years ago and I finally took the courage to sit with it and read it. Well, it's been... challenging. Cringe is definitely the right word and I think you completely understands the embarrassment that invades us when we face "that's how I used to write? Oh my god..."
But I think you've explained it perfectly. It's how we can measure our evolution. And to me it's also some type of time traveling, a way that we can connect to our old selves, see how cringe we were, but still brave enough to write and put out the things we wrote.
Anyway, great essay man, really dig it :)
I know that feeling well. A two year cringe is great, means you've grown that much in a relatively short window of time.
Perhaps there is the work as an independent object and then relationships to the work - both ours and other people's. These could evolve in different ways.
I think of the changes in works as:
Layering - one newer piece builds on the work of an older earlier piece - like multiplication builds on counting and numbers.
Rethinking - perhaps the hardest. To unlearn past work. The world is flat...oops, maybe not.
Evolving - The work develops. It changes, subtle but continuous. Like our children growing.
Re-examining - Seeing more. Going deeper into the same work. Like curves on a fern, or the coastline.
Cyclic - It ebbs one way, then the other. I once thought self, then group, then self. Or like flared trousers - in or out of fashion?
Perhaps this is a lens framework we could use to look at older work. However, sharing early and reflecting with others is almost always a richer experience.
Thank you as always for prompting thought.
I am in the midst of this…”perfect is the enemy of done” I have to keep telling myself