Getting Good at Being Bad

When Perfection Becomes the Problem

From the moment I was born until about four years ago, I was a huge perfectionist. From kindergarten all the way through college, I wouldn’t accept my own work until I felt like it was perfect. If I tried something and wasn’t immediately excellent at it, I would abandon it forever. That strategy worked out “just fine” for about 22 years, until I got a *insert foreboding music here* real job. 

The thing you have to understand about design work is that in order to come up with something really great, you must first come up with a lot of ideas that aren’t great. And, the thing you have to understand about me as I entered my first real job is that I was absolutely not okay with generating ideas that weren’t great.

It was around this point in my life that I realized I was, in fact, the problem. My own fear of failure was hindering my growth as a person and as a designer. So, I set out to practice the scariest thing ever: being bad at things.

Starting Small: The Great Caramel Experiment

I started with something simple: caramel sauce. I’d always wanted to know how to make caramel, but knew that I wouldn’t get it on my first try, so I’d never tried. The mission was simple and daunting: just try to make caramel sauce for as long as it would take, and hopefully not bully myself in the process. 

My quest began at King Soopers with two bags of sugar, cream, butter, and a glimmer of hope (which was quickly dashed by the chemistry of sugar). It took me six tries. I cried after my fourth failed attempt. But I persevered, and my final try ended with a mason jar full of smooth salted caramel sauce. 

Turns out victory has a taste - it tastes like Granny Smith apples dipped in homemade caramel. 

Along the way, I picked up some practical lessons (only use granulated sugar, avoid nonstick pots, brush water down the sides of the pot to prevent crystallization), but more importantly: maybe sucking at something wasn’t quite as scary as I’d made it out to be?

Doubling Down: The Turkish Delight Challenge

With a newfound confidence, I decided to try something harder than caramel sauce: Turkish delight. For those of you who don’t know, Turkish delight is a rose-flavored jelly-candy that’s made without gelatin and is, as I learned, an absolute nightmare to make from scratch.

Turkish delight is my partner’s favorite candy, so I wanted to do it justice. I’ll skip the details and just tell you that I was violently humbled. It took me twelve hours’ worth of attempts to get it right the first time, which I couldn’t recreate right away, and another fourteen hours to be able to make it right every time. 

Here’s what I took away from Turkish delight: failure doesn’t exist if you learned something. 

Going Big: A Renaissance Corset

Once I had conquered Turkish delight, I was well on my way to becoming good at being bad at things. I took the resilience I had created and moved on to something I’d been wanting to do for a long time: make my own clothes. 

I started, like any sane person would, by drafting my own pattern for a corset that I could wear to the Renaissance Festival. While I wouldn’t recommend this approach if your goal is to sew something wearable in a reasonable number of tries, I would recommend this approach if your goal is to become better at being bad at things. 

What I learned: Being bad at something new feels way better than doing nothing out of fear.

Freedom to Fail

Getting good at being bad was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. 

I started with candy and sewing, and built my confidence and resilience. Practicing on things that were “trivial” freed me from the mental traps I’d laid for myself, and I could apply what I’d learned to nontrivial things that changed my life. I was able to publish my portfolio site, which I hadn’t been able to do for three years because I never felt like it was good enough. Having my work out in the world allowed me to start freelancing, and freelancing led me to Viget. 

Because of this quest, I am constantly evolving as a person and as a designer. Practicing being bad gave me the freedom to not know, to keep trying, to fail, to learn from failure without fear or shame, and I am much better for it.

To the recovering perfectionists

If you're like I was - paralyzed by the need to be perfect, abandoning things before you even start - I hope you try sucking at something. Start small. Burn the caramel. Cry over the candy. Sew a terrible seam. Because on the other side of failure is a version of yourself you've never met: someone who creates, who tries, who embraces failure in pursuit of learning. 

The magic isn't in getting it right; it's in giving yourself space to get it wonderfully, beautifully wrong.