I've been in a frustrating place lately. I'm sure you've been here too.
I'm trying to up my game across a few areas of business, creativity, and executing on projects.
Here's the thing -- my new work isn't measuring up to my minimum standards. It's not good enough to release.
This means I'm sinking a lot of time into work that's not turning into production. It's frustrating. I won't call it "soul crushing" -- that'd be too melodramatic -- but there is some sort of soul crushing aspect of grinding away on work that turns out to not be good enough.
And --
The temptation to stop doing bad quality work and start screwing off is immense. It's painful to do poor quality work, to pour your heart and energy into something, and get nothing back.
But --
That's what determines success or failure. You gotta get the reps in to improve. If you're making sales calls and fumbling through your words and getting blown off, you're not going to improve by going to surf the web instead.
If you're doing writing that doesn't measure up, you're not going to become a better writer by refusing to put the pen to the paper.
You get the reps in, you improve. I'd even go as far as to say you should celebrate the failures and stuff going on the scrap heap. That makes me a hypocrite, because I don't celebrate those falling-shorts -- but things would probably go easier and faster if I did.
Ok. Back to work. Got reps to put in.