Make Something Before You're Ready

"Your taste is why your work disappoints you. Your taste is good enough that you can tell it isn't yet what you want it to be."

— Ira Glass

Ira Glass, born in 1959 in Baltimore, is the creator and host of This American Life, the public radio program that premiered in 1995 and helped define narrative nonfiction audio. Distributed by Public Radio Exchange and heard by millions weekly, the show has won Peabody Awards and, in 2016, a Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting. Glass started as a teenage intern at National Public Radio and spent years producing work he considered mediocre before finding his voice. That history gives his advice weight: he speaks about the awkward early stretch of creative work as someone who endured it himself, publicly and at length.

CREATIVITY AND PURPOSE

PERSEVERANCE

CRAFT

Context

Glass shared this idea in a 2009 interview about storytelling, later set to video and widely circulated among creative professionals. He described a gap that beginners face: they enter creative work because they have good taste, yet what they make falls short of that taste. Most people quit during this stretch, reading the disappointment as proof they lack talent. Glass reframes it as a normal stage everyone passes through, and says the only exit is producing a large volume of work. The insight applies well beyond art. Anyone learning a new job, skill, or role feels the same discomfort, and it signals that your standards are working, not that you are failing.

Today's Mantra

I make imperfect work today, because volume is how my skill catches up.

Reflection Question

What is something you stopped making or doing because the results didn't match your standards? Was the problem a lack of ability, or was it the discomfort of being visibly unfinished?

Application Tip

Set a timer for 30 minutes today and make one finished piece of your craft: a page of writing, a sketch, a short recording, a spreadsheet model. Finish it, even if it feels mediocre. Save it in a folder labeled with today's date. Repeat daily for one week, then compare day one with day seven. Glass's point is that volume closes the gap between taste and skill, so count completed pieces, not quality. Your goal is seven finished pieces, not seven good ones.