permanent note
Summary
- If we are interested in something we may have a good taste for it, but our ability may not match up to that.
Details
- THis is frustrating, but instead of giving up, work on closing the gap by improving ability until it matches up to your taste.
- Your good taste can drive you to create a good quality product.
References
Quotes
In his exposition, Glass focuses on the gap that often exists between taste and ability—especially early on in a creative career. It’s easier to learn to recognize what’s good, he notes, than to master the skills required to meet this standard. I can see brilliance in the epic three-minute tracking shot that opens Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, but I would have no idea how to film something that good on my own. There’s a fundamental frustration embedded in this reality. Your taste can guide you toward the best work you’re capable of producing at the moment, but it can also fuel a sense of disappointment in your final result. Glass argues that it’s in our desire to squelch this uneasy self-appraisal—to diminish the distance between our taste and our ability—that improvement happens. His exhortation to those just beginning their careers is to keep putting in the work, as it’s only through this deliberate effort that the gap will close.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” - Ira Glass (quoted by James Clear)