A pottery teacher divided his class into two teams. Team one was told they would be graded solely on the quantity of pots produced. The more pots they produced, the better grade they would get. Team two was told they would be graded purely on the quality of one pot. They only had to make one pot, but it had to be EXCELLENT in order to get the A.
Fast forward….Who do you think made the best pots?
If you said the “Quantity” team, then you are right. As the team produced more and more pots, they learned via trial and error and produced awesome pots.
The quality team on the other hand struggled to produce a halfway decent pot. They worried so much about producing the “perfect” pot, they let fear take over and bar them from success.
The pottery story is adapted from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.
A classic pottery video (in Spanish):
3 responses so far ↓
Practice Makes Perspective « Marketing Treads // February 17, 2009 at 1:32 am |
[...] Makes Perspective February 17, 2009 — Grady Locklear I just read this post by Ryan Drumwright on Brazen Careerist. While the title grabs attention (”Read this. It Will [...]
Donna Vetter // February 17, 2009 at 4:34 am |
The lesson of this assignment is consistent with a famous quote:
“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t as all. You can be discouraged by failure – or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success.” — Thomas J. Watson
I firmly belive that experience and mistakes do much to shape our achievements.
MIchelle McCormack // March 2, 2009 at 7:43 am |
Yes, I have found that to be true, the older I get. It’s like that old metaphor of throwing spaghetti against the wall, something eventually will stick. I believe no, with the Internet, publish, publish, publish and you’ll eventually find your voice.