If You're Starting a Creative Project, Remember This Law

02 Jan 2025 #misc

90% of everything is crap.

And I’m not making that up. It’s Sturgeon’s Law.

That’s not discouraging. It’s relieving, at least for me.

It lowers our expectations when starting any creative project, like writing or painting, for the first time.

Our first posts, paintings, or pictures will be in that 90%

My first post was in the 90% of crap.

I wrote my first blog post back in 2018. And “post” is a strong word. It was a word vomit. I dumped a bunch of words into a document and published it online. I still keep that post unedited to remind me how I started.

My first LinkedIn post was in the 90% of crap too.

I made all LinkedIn sins possible in a single post:

• Only an external link.
• Hashtags and emojis.
• No whitespace for readability.
• Zero formatting for mobile devices.

The way out of that 90%?

Keep showing up and keep improving.

Think of every repetition, post or painting, like a small experiment. Small experiments give you room to explore, to break the rules, to see what happens. If an experiment failed, you’ll always have a new experiment the next day.

How do I know I’m improving?

If you find your first repetitions cringe-worthy, you’re improving.

If, after months of repetitions, you don’t cringe when going back to your first posts or paintings, you haven’t improved much. You need to do more experiments.

90% of everything is crap. That’s encouraging. We only need a bit of effort to get ahead of that 90%.