Super Secret Service | Austin Ivansmith

The origins of SSS began in April of 2014 as I began to embark on making a “game a week.” Rami Ismail of Vlambeer had recently written about the topic so it was fresh in my mind. I too am a proponent of it creating a breadth of work because only through practice can you become better at anything, and that can be hard for a lot of creative people who have a fear of failure (which I am prone to), and I have been recommending everyone read Art and Fear which is the most uplifting thing you can read to help you get out of your creative funk. In the book (amongst other amazing insights, for crying out loud read it!) they highlight a common allegory of the Pottery Class (as even Rami tried to remember in his talk). Here is a version of it:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot”albeit a perfect one”to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work”and learning from their mistakes”the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Source: Super Secret Service | Austin Ivansmith

Fail and fail often.