What You Don't Mean to Build May Be the Best Thing You Can Build

You can't often predict what your biggest hits will be

Jonathan Fields asked a great question on Facebook, and it elicited a response that caught my eye.

“Just curious, if you were just starting tomorrow, would you still seek to build what you're building now?”

The response that caught my eye was: “THIS is what prevents me starting, the fear of building something I didn't mean to...”

A lot of Creative Giants have that fear. Either it's perfectionism (or a near cousin of it) at play, OR it rests upon the belief that there is some future out there that we're supposed to bring about. As I've written recently, we have a tendency toward perfectionism because we want to be safe, but perfectionism actually keeps us from being safe.  I've also written about there not being some future out there waiting for us — we become who we are and what we are by walking.

But what I'd like to remind us all of today is that sometimes the things we didn't mean to build are the best things we could've built. We won't see our big hits ahead of time, but the very best thing we can do is keep the music flowing.

So, rather than being afraid of building something you didn't mean to, work off the idea that you might surprise yourself with, and build something great that you had no idea you could build.