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I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "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."

ckolkey 3y ago
Thats great, thank you for sharing it.
AlwaysRock 3y ago
Made into a nice little video here: https://vimeo.com/85040589 https://vimeo.com/85040589 Hugely useful if you are starting to get into something new or are young and frustrated that your X isnt as good as you think it should be.
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  That was great, thanks for sharing! I'll have to file that away on my Notion page for the quote so I can watch it again.
eslaught 3y ago
I basically quit writing when I was 12 because of this. I really wish I hadn't, it took another 10 years to get the ball rolling on that again (and from there about 10 years to actually get good enough to like what I was writing). I could have been writing good stuff in my 20s instead of my 30s if I'd stuck with it.
- digging 3y ago
  I really wish I had learned this as a kid, too. I gave up on so many interests over my teens and 20s, because I didn't just get good at them the way I did with games. I'm not blaming games, they're doing what they're supposed to. I just wish people around me had taught me to put in effort, rather than praise me for what I could accomplish without effort (spoiler: it ended up being nothing).
jfarmer 3y ago
The original video is neat. Right after this quote he plays + critiques one of his old broadcasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE
- spondylosaurus 3y ago
  I love when he plays the old crappy broadcast. Ira's current (casual, conversational) radio voice is so distinct that you'd almost think he just knew how to do that from day one. But even people who have a signature style need time to cultivate it.
deleted 3y ago
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dotnet00 3y ago
Saved. This idea has been my ethos since my early teenage years and was how I motivated myself to self-learn to code despite being laughed at by my peers because the results weren't as fancy as software made by professionals. From this philosophy, I gained a lot of confidence in just diving into anything I was interested in, regardless of how embarrassing my early attempts ended up being.
dimgl 3y ago
I love this, thanks for sharing. When I was younger I used to make a lot of music. A majority of it sucked, but some of it was legitimately good. So much so that some of my friends would go out of their way to listen to it even if they had other options. Funnily enough they'd still listen even if the tracks were always super low quality (I was young and didn't know how to mix it and I didn't have any kind of equipment or resources to master it.) My parents were the "artistry isn't a real profession" kind, and even seeing me persevering with all of these crazy constraints (like having to make music with an Intel Pentium II with no sound card) wasn't enough to convince them. After about four years I stopped making music altogether and I regret it so much. I always wonder what would have happened had I waited for the era that we're in today. Granted, my life trajectory still went in a great direction, but I miss making music.
- soperj 3y ago
  It's not too late. You can still make music!
- mtalantikite 3y ago
  I have a similar story, as I'm sure many people with musical or other artistic talents, but who don't come from families that have artists in them do. I finally decided to get back to studying music with a private teacher after nearly 20 years away from it and it's great. Try out some teachers near you and just commit to spending 30-60 minutes a day practicing. You'll spend a bunch of time in that in between phase the quote from Ira Glass mentions, but it's worth it to do that for yourself if you can!
  - epiccoleman 3y ago
    It's impossible to overstate how amazingly effective having a teacher can be. I recently started taking guitar lessons again after over a decade of noodling (I took lessons in high school, and kept playing, but never sought instruction after leaving home for college). It is crazy how quickly I've improved in the last few months. Some of it is mechanical stuff, some of it is knowledge stuff, but I think the biggest thing is just knowing that every two weeks I'm going to chat with my teacher, which keeps me motivated to keep working on things and also just gives me a reason to play.
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aigoochamna 3y ago
This brought another quote to mind for me, > "You know, the whole thing about perfectionism.. perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in— it's actually kind of tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is." -- David Foster Wallace
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  I like this quote a lot. There's something about actually instantiating what's in our head into the world that always seems to result in some kind of fundamental loss of fidelity. But at the same time, that's kind of what makes things beautiful, in a wabi-sabi "there is a crack in everything" kind of way.
deleted 3y ago
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artimaeis 3y ago
Zen Pencils covered this quote, it's remained one of my favorites: https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beginners/ https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beg...
Animats 3y ago
> "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners". Then they went to a bad school. Chuck Jones, the animator, wrote in his biography that when he went to art school, he was told "Everyone has ten thousand bad drawings in them. Our job is to get them out of you as fast as possible."
- therealdrag0 3y ago
  I also found a thousand variations of this online in the early 2000s when I was interested in writing. This isn’t hard wisdom to find. Anyone trying to learn a craft should come across it before king.
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  I've heard this expressed something like "you'll write 50 bad songs before you write a good one, so get started!"
whoami_nr 3y ago
Great quote. Checked Ira Glass out and he seems interesting. I totally agree with what he has to say. I used to be super apprehensive when writing my blog posts but I don't care as much these day. I don't care if people think I am a noob in some topic. At the end of the day, we are all trying to improve in our craft and being a beginner is the most excusable thing there is in this aspect. I write these days because, writing makes me a better thinker and I learn more about the topic when researching a blog post.

ckolkey 3y ago

Thats great, thank you for sharing it.

AlwaysRock 3y ago

Made into a nice little video here: https://vimeo.com/85040589 https://vimeo.com/85040589 Hugely useful if you are starting to get into something new or are young and frustrated that your X isnt as good as you think it should be.

epiccoleman 3y ago
That was great, thanks for sharing! I'll have to file that away on my Notion page for the quote so I can watch it again.

eslaught 3y ago

I basically quit writing when I was 12 because of this. I really wish I hadn't, it took another 10 years to get the ball rolling on that again (and from there about 10 years to actually get good enough to like what I was writing). I could have been writing good stuff in my 20s instead of my 30s if I'd stuck with it.

digging 3y ago
I really wish I had learned this as a kid, too. I gave up on so many interests over my teens and 20s, because I didn't just get good at them the way I did with games. I'm not blaming games, they're doing what they're supposed to. I just wish people around me had taught me to put in effort, rather than praise me for what I could accomplish without effort (spoiler: it ended up being nothing).

jfarmer 3y ago

The original video is neat. Right after this quote he plays + critiques one of his old broadcasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE

spondylosaurus 3y ago
I love when he plays the old crappy broadcast. Ira's current (casual, conversational) radio voice is so distinct that you'd almost think he just knew how to do that from day one. But even people who have a signature style need time to cultivate it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dotnet00 3y ago

Saved. This idea has been my ethos since my early teenage years and was how I motivated myself to self-learn to code despite being laughed at by my peers because the results weren't as fancy as software made by professionals. From this philosophy, I gained a lot of confidence in just diving into anything I was interested in, regardless of how embarrassing my early attempts ended up being.

dimgl 3y ago

I love this, thanks for sharing. When I was younger I used to make a lot of music. A majority of it sucked, but some of it was legitimately good. So much so that some of my friends would go out of their way to listen to it even if they had other options. Funnily enough they'd still listen even if the tracks were always super low quality (I was young and didn't know how to mix it and I didn't have any kind of equipment or resources to master it.) My parents were the "artistry isn't a real profession" kind, and even seeing me persevering with all of these crazy constraints (like having to make music with an Intel Pentium II with no sound card) wasn't enough to convince them. After about four years I stopped making music altogether and I regret it so much. I always wonder what would have happened had I waited for the era that we're in today. Granted, my life trajectory still went in a great direction, but I miss making music.

soperj 3y ago
It's not too late. You can still make music!
mtalantikite 3y ago
I have a similar story, as I'm sure many people with musical or other artistic talents, but who don't come from families that have artists in them do. I finally decided to get back to studying music with a private teacher after nearly 20 years away from it and it's great. Try out some teachers near you and just commit to spending 30-60 minutes a day practicing. You'll spend a bunch of time in that in between phase the quote from Ira Glass mentions, but it's worth it to do that for yourself if you can!
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  It's impossible to overstate how amazingly effective having a teacher can be. I recently started taking guitar lessons again after over a decade of noodling (I took lessons in high school, and kept playing, but never sought instruction after leaving home for college). It is crazy how quickly I've improved in the last few months. Some of it is mechanical stuff, some of it is knowledge stuff, but I think the biggest thing is just knowing that every two weeks I'm going to chat with my teacher, which keeps me motivated to keep working on things and also just gives me a reason to play.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

aigoochamna 3y ago

This brought another quote to mind for me, > "You know, the whole thing about perfectionism.. perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in— it's actually kind of tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is." -- David Foster Wallace

epiccoleman 3y ago
I like this quote a lot. There's something about actually instantiating what's in our head into the world that always seems to result in some kind of fundamental loss of fidelity. But at the same time, that's kind of what makes things beautiful, in a wabi-sabi "there is a crack in everything" kind of way.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

artimaeis 3y ago

Zen Pencils covered this quote, it's remained one of my favorites: https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beginners/ https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beg...

Animats 3y ago

> "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners". Then they went to a bad school. Chuck Jones, the animator, wrote in his biography that when he went to art school, he was told "Everyone has ten thousand bad drawings in them. Our job is to get them out of you as fast as possible."

therealdrag0 3y ago
I also found a thousand variations of this online in the early 2000s when I was interested in writing. This isn’t hard wisdom to find. Anyone trying to learn a craft should come across it before king.
epiccoleman 3y ago
I've heard this expressed something like "you'll write 50 bad songs before you write a good one, so get started!"

whoami_nr 3y ago

Great quote. Checked Ira Glass out and he seems interesting. I totally agree with what he has to say. I used to be super apprehensive when writing my blog posts but I don't care as much these day. I don't care if people think I am a noob in some topic. At the end of the day, we are all trying to improve in our craft and being a beginner is the most excusable thing there is in this aspect. I write these days because, writing makes me a better thinker and I learn more about the topic when researching a blog post.