“Art is never finished, only abandoned” Leonardo DaVinci

There’s a big gap between ‘not finished’ and ‘not perfect’…often the size of the Grand Canyon.

I’m very much a ‘Ready, FIRE, Aim’ kind of guy.  Gets me a trouble now and again but it also allows me to do a ton more than people who are so preoccupied with perfection that they never get a good look at the back side of completion.

I had a comment earlier today about the whole idea of ‘Analysis Paralysis’ and the idea that trying to deal with a jaded audience made it next to impossible to finish a project.  The thought isn’t uncommon.  In fact I’ve had it lots of times, it goes with the turf if what you’re trying to do is create excellence…and you ARE…I hope.

However excellent is very rarely perfect.  Now I’m not saying you should go out and create the next ‘Vista’ and release a finely polished turd that even Jerry Seinfeld couldn’t save with the backing of NATO.  No, but at some point you need to surrender your ego to the masses and just put your work out there for review.  Let people see it, read it, play it, taste it, whatever it is they’re supposed to do with it so that you can see what REALLY happens when you open your creativity to the scrutiny of the world.

…Usually it goes a lot better than you think.  And, most importantly it goes miles further than it ever will stuck inside your cranium.

Years ago I heard a singer say that the greatest voice God ever created had likely never been heard because that person never decided to sing.  That is so true it hurts… The real truth is in the word ‘Decision’.

The word decision comes from the latin root decidere which means to ‘cut off‘.  (Think IN-cision, to cut into, DE-cision to cut away from…that’s how I remember it anyway).  That’s pretty heavy when you think about it.  To decide means to cut something off and walk away from it.  Depending upon what you’re talking about that can be pretty daunting.

So it’s no wonder that we often vascillate from tweak to tweak as we attempt to release our dearest thoughts to the world.  The cutting off of something precious to us or the replacing of something else can be as near as amputation if you dwell on it long and deeply enough… and yet it’s still just a bunch of ideas at the end of the day.

I know I got some flack for my podcast serious on FEAR (check out http://philhughes.tv/podcast/video/2009/05/06/complete-coach-17-what-are-you-afraid-of/ to see the first video for yourself) but the truth is the truth.  Most people don’t ‘finish‘ because the visulaize failure before they even begin.  Get passed that and it’s amazing what you can accomplish.  As my good friend and Fear Management expert Tony Blauer likes to say, “If you didn’t fear fear, what would you do?”

Think about it…right after you get it done

So get BUSY!

Phil Hughes