Don’t confuse consumption with creation. Scrolling through people’s “perfect”, finished work might feel productive, but it only feeds your self-comparison. Inspiration has a half-life that decays the longer you just sit on it. Use it fast or it turns into envy.

If you can’t finish a bad piece, you’ll never be able to make a good one. Completion builds pattern recognition, it teaches you what went wrong and what you should do differently next time.

You’re not exactly wrong when you think your work isn’t good enough—you’re just taking that self-awareness too personally. Good taste develops before good execution, and that’s how it’s supposed to work. Your ability to notice what’s off is the skill that’s teaching you how to fix it.

Keep your drafts offline, don’t post your work-in-progress, make things no one will ever see. That’s where the real progress happens.

Being bad at something doesn’t mean you’re not meant to do it, it’s proof that you’re still learning. The only people who never make bad work are the ones who’ve stopped making anything at all.

So how can you comfortably stay in this gap between knowing and doing until you’re ready to become more?—

Make choices that reinforce your future self, even when they feel premature. You won’t become that version of yourself by waiting to feel ready. Read what “they” would read. Dress how “they” would dress. Work like “they” would on a good day.... See more

If your taste never outgrew your skill, you would stop improving.

Maybe our taste develops first so that we don’t settle too soon. Maybe the gap between who you are and who you want to be is supposed to be frustrating. You can’t imitate your way out of it, and there’s no way to rush through it. You just have to stay there for a while, stuck between admiration and ability.

Now, every unfinished attempt exists next to someone else’s polished portfolio. We scroll through a feed of fully formed work and mistake it for the natural state of creation. Everyone else seems complete, while you’re the only one still becoming .