“Is it good enough?” is usually the question I ask myself before releasing something I make into the world… which has often been a rare and procrastinated event. But I’ve been asking myself, “what do I mean when I ask, ‘is it good enough?’” And, I think what I’ve meant is:
Is it beyond reproach? Will everyone that encounters this have nothing to critique about it?
Yet, everything I release has never been beyond reproach because it has never satisfied everyone… which is actually probably not even what I’m looking for when I ship work.
So, I’m looking for new parameters that can better guide my decisions on what and how to publish the things that I make. Here are a couple of questions I’m going to experiment with and see if they create better feelings of satisfaction when I ship the work:
Is it generous enough? Does it scare me enough? Is it interesting enough? Is it accessible enough?
Here’s a few people and ideas I was thinking about when I wrote this:
First, Seth Godin’s book, “The Practice.”
Second, Laurie Anderson’s guide to releasing work.