Once you start to appreciate that nothing is ever finished, you'll live a little easier.

 

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Music and links from this episode

Mayr Hayastan/Dilijan feat. Flower Gear (VDCJ Mix part 1) by Diezel Tea

I hate mashed potatoes by Pousse Mousse

Drift Away (instrumental) by Pachyderm

Line-by-line notes

As designers

We have a habit of being hyper critical

It’s natural to look back at a thing you’ve made

And think

Well, that could have been better

And maybe I could have tweaked that a bit

It’s normal to think like this

And once you accept one thing, it’s easier to deal with it too.

Everything is a work in progress.

Fast food

This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

I’ve got something to admit to

I’m the worst finisher in the world

Now before you start giggling

I mean I’m rubbish at finishing anything

I’m an ideas person through and through

I think of an idea, and I can see it all the way through to completion

…

In my mind

I’m an amazing thinker

And I’m amazing at getting excited about new ideas too

And then I’m amazing at staying up until 3am to get started on it

Because of the way I think, I always start with the names

Then the branding

In fact, I was doing this only last night until about 12.30am

Way past my bed time on a school night

Being able to start a million projects and finish none of them used to really annoy me

I used to inwardly shout at myself

Why can’t you finish anything?

In fact, the only thing I’m good at finishing is 365 days challenges

And some of them I’ve failed at too

I used to think like this a lot, and it started to get me down

I decided the only way to get out of it, was to take a break from producing so much stuff

So a couple of years ago, I took a while off

As you can probably guess, it didn’t work

I was approaching this all wrong

And then it clicked what was so wrong

I never realised, everything is a work in progress

And you should be looking at doing lots of little things, often

I was looking at all the things I wanted to do

All the ideas I had

All the projects I wanted to complete

I want to learn guitar

I want to lift this much weight

Run this far

Do this thing or that

I was always looking at the end goal

And when you’re trying to do so much

And when that end goal is so far away

That kind of thinking just doesn’t work

You have to learn to love the process

If your desire is to learn the guitar

Your goal shouldn’t be to learn the guitar

It should be to turn up, 3 times a week, and play some guitar

The goal isn’t the end goal, the goal IS the process

Because by following the process, you automatically get the goal without even realising

This kind of thinking isn’t revolutionary

Learning to love the process is something that lots of people have known for years

But just appreciating it in your life a little more

And knowing everything is a work in progress

Lets you live a little easier every day

And you turn up, enjoying every single day

And who doesn’t want that?

MUSIC

This was AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

Music featured in this episode was:

Mayr Hayastan/Dilijan feat. Flower Gear (VDCJ Mix part 1) by Diezel Tea

I hate mashed potatoes by Pousse Mousse

Drift Away (instrumental) by Pachyderm

For a line by line rundown of this episode go over to https://www.askadesigneranything.com/ep149

Find me on Twitter at @craigburgess

I’m back tomorrow

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