show in the finished product. Nobody can tell whether or not you
felt like doing it. In fact, they don’t care. They’re interested in the
results, and the results can be just as good regardless of the mental
anguish you felt forcing yourself to complete the task.
6. Lock Out the Critics
We all make mistakes. Some of us get to make ours in private,
and we can give ourselves the chance to fix them before anybody
else sees them. But when a quarterback throws an interception,
every football fan in the stadium sees him do it (and more will see
the replay or read about it), and there’s no way he can pull the ball
back and take the play over. Lots of us work that way also. There’s
no time for a redo, there’s barely enough time to get it done the
first time, and we feel the eyes of the boss or customers on us as
we work our way through a challenge.
It’s a two-step process, first the doing, and then the judgment.
Just as an NFL quarterback has to shut out the howling of the
mob and concentrate on the receiver, you have to shut out concerns
about judgment during the process of creation. If you don’t, you
won’t take a chance, try out an idea, risk a “failure” in the eyes of
the invisible judge.
7. a Job Worth Doing
If we look again at the previous two suggestions, we realize
that a job worth doing is worth doing—poorly. As difficult as this
may seem for people who were taught to be perfect, we must real-
ize at some point that our best intentions, planning, and efforts
count for nothing if the job doesn’t get done. The unwritten book
may be perfect; the product that never makes it to the shelf could
be the best and most profitable in your company’s history. No one
will ever know.
G E T S TA R T E D