Being Wrong

A New Kind Of Game Show

Garth Beyer

Think of The Price Is Right. Now, imagine if a contestant guessed a price wrong, that they got to try again, perhaps with a different product, a different price, a different strategy. Those who win are those who stick around through all the wrong choices, not those who gets things right again and again.

Our society puts a lot of currency on being right, but social currency comes from being wrong and not walking off the stage, which takes audacity.

It took me awhile to realize it, but our lives aren’t like The Price Is Right. We win when we give ourselves permission to suck from time to time, when we take risks, when we shun the audience in our mind that’s booing us when we do things wrong.

 

Stay Positive & When Was The Last Time You Permitted Yourself To be Wrong?

Permission To Suck

Garth Beyer

There are a few tasks a day, I imagine, that we absolutely need to do things right. There are some projects at work where there is simply no room for being wrong, especially if the shipping deadline is EOD.

That being said, each project or obligation we have to get right, we actually think to ourselves how it must be right, it must be perfect before we send it out. It becomes a constant reminder to do things slow and safely.

Oddly, though, a project where there is room for being wrong, we often don’t acknowledge that privilege and thus don’t exercise it, thus putting us at a disadvantage to those cashing out on the privilege of being wrong.

We ought to notice when there is room for wrong or, as I consider it, permission to suck because the path toward creative righteousness is made of moments of wrong, of failure, of suck. How?

Because regularly shipping work that sucks a bit or being off about a project direction – essentially being wrong about something, goes from feeling like death to being a bit of a nuisance to being a treasured opportunity.

 

Stay Positive & Recognize The Moments You’re Permitted To Suck (and cash out on them!)

Pick Your Costume, Path, Hat…

Garth Beyer

Halloween is over but I still see people trying to find the perfect costume, path, hat…

(This post is choppy with a purpose. Bare with me.)

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Not everyone is cut for a traditional education, not everyone can look good putting on a hair-net and flipping burgers, not everyone can be the all-star jock. Simple fact is that different people are looking for different costumes.

My favorite part about Halloween is seeing people who think they are wearing the same costume as someone else. Two people can dress up as a cat, but the makeup is different, the ears are different, the tail is different. We all have something special to offer even if we wear the same costume, walk the same path or put on the same hat each morning.

There’s a reason most agencies need multiple coders, PR people with different personalities, and a variety of people answering phones.

My SO gets me to watch Cupcake Wars and while the bakers are all professional cupcake makers, their finished cupcake products are different from one another.

Starbucks can hire five people who can make a perfect brew, but they all make it their way. The speed they complete an order is different, what they write on the cup is different,  how they hand it to a customer is different.

And when it comes to designers, I have never seen two designers that design the same. Not even when one designer tries mimicking another.

Doing It Right

You’re getting a lot of variety thrown at you here and I appreciate you reading through the choppiness of it all. But there is a point to it.

No matter what you do, you get to invest yourself in it, add your style, put part of you into it. Unfortunately, so many people give up following their interests because what they create is so different.

I still remember one day a few years ago that I thought of melting crayons on a canvas to make art. I never did it because I thought people would say it was stupid, no one would like it, and it was just too different.

A few months after my decision not to do it, a classmate did it and her piece got showed in a glass case in the school. Then I was surfing the web and saw that she wasn’t even the first one to make something by melting crayons on a canvas.

Turns out what I thought people would think was just too different to like, they actually loved.

Doing It Wrong

You’re going to have a lot of people tell you that you’re doing something wrong because it’s different. Worse yet, you’re often going to tell yourself that you’re doing it wrong because you have never seen anything like it before.

The harsh truth is that you (and they) might be right. But it’s better to be wrong and learn from it than not do it at all and never know.

 

Stay Positive & Remember, It’s About How You Deliver

Garth E. Beyer

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