In Conversation: Steven Soderbergh -- Vulture

I was watching one of those iconoclast shows on the Sundance Channel. Jamie Oliver said Paul Smith had told him something he hadn’t understood until very recently: “I’d rather be No. 2 forever than No. 1 for a while.” Just make stuff and don’t agonize over it. Stop worrying about being No. 1. I see a lot of people getting paralyzed by the response to their work, the imagined result. It’s like playing a Jedi mind trick on yourself, and Smith is right. That’s the way I’ve always approached films, the way I approach everything. Just make ’em.

A while ago, over the course of a couple of days, I came across two slogans that have stuck with me and have had a profound impact on my approach to my creative projects. First is from Facebook’s Analog Research Lab’s who have a poster saying “Done is Better Than Perfect”. The other is Brendan Dawes’ “Talk - Action = Shit”. Now, rather than being paralysed by the fear of the blank page and the fear of releasing anything that is less than perfect, I’m churning stuff out. There’s a lot of misses in there, but there are a few hits too.