How do you get what you want in life? Hard work, and lots of patience.

Music and links from this episode

Golem by Pas Dans Le Cul Aujourd'Hui

Dub Steps by Dub Terminator

Octopussy by Juanitos

Line-by-line notes

INTRO

When Stephen HawkingStephen h began studying physics, he was rubbish at it

When Louis Hamilton first started driving, he couldn’t even start the car

When Robert De Niro started acting, he couldn’t even land a job in a commercial

By default, when you start something, you’re rubbish at it

Now, collectively, they’re world renowned physicists, multi million pound racing drivers and some of the best actors of all time

You want to know why?

Because they had patience

This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

PLAY MID SONG

I still vividly remember the first ever piece of design work I made

It was in the first few weeks of official design education

And I designed a website for William Wallace

It was terrible

I mean, absolutely terrible

It’d offend you if you saw it, seriously

In week 1 of a 2 year course, I was a terrible designer

But I had the passion and the willingness to become better at being a designer

So I put in the work

And started designing everything and anything

I made up projects

I designed fake logos for fake companies

I started projects where I designed stuff for fun

All of this on top of the work I had to do for my design course

It meant I rapidly became a better designer

I still wasn’t an amazing one, by any means

I was still a design student after all

But I knew that if I followed the process

And continued to make new design work

And continued to keep putting in the work

I’d automatically become better

I knew this because I had patience

Gary Vaynerchuk says lots of good things about patience too

I’ll let him tell it for you

PLAY GARY VEE CLIP

Because of the internet, we expect results fast

Because everything can be downloaded, purchased instantly or delivered the next day

We expect everything to be so easy to acquire

But a craft like design doesn’t work like that

It’ll never work like that, because design is a craft

A craft takes time to learn 

It takes patience to learn

You have to learn the ins and outs of it

And be able to do things backwards and forwards

The epiphany I had about this whole patience thing came a few years ago

When somebody said to me

Even Jimi Hendrix had to learn guitar once

Even he used to be rubbish at playing guitar

Everybody, no matter how talented they are

Has been where you are right now, no matter what level of your craft you’re at

If you’re just starting out, everybody has taken that first step at least once in their career

Once somebody told me that, I became enlightened

It’s something so obvious, but something you just don’t think about

We put talented people on pedestals

And attribute everything they do to natural talent

Or luck

Or something else that makes that talented person seem like they haven’t worked for it

When in truth

Any talented person has just worked hard

And they’ve worked endlessly at their craft

Of course luck comes into it

And being in the right place at the right time

But if you’re working hard at your craft non stop

The law of averages says you’re going to get a hit eventually

Unfortunately people usually stop before they get that hit

Because that one thing more people need

Is patienc

OUTRO 

This was AADA. I’m Craig Burgess.

Music featured in this episode was 

Golem by Pas Dans Le Cul Aujourd'Hui

Dub Steps by Dub Terminator

Octopussy by Juanitos 

For a line-by-line run down of this episode, go to askadesignernaything.com/ep110

I’m back tomorrow for another episode of AADA

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