A professor of ceramics divided his class into two groups on the first day of the semester.
To the first group, he gave a simple task: Make one perfect pot. They had the entire month to craft a single, flawless piece of pottery. Their work would be graded solely on the quality of that one pot.
To the second group, he gave a different challenge: Make a new pot every day. By the end of the month, they would be graded not on the quality of a single pot, but on the total number of pots they had produced.
As the weeks passed, the first group obsessed over perfection. They spent days theorizing, sketching, and discussing techniques, hesitating to even touch the clay. They meticulously shaped and reshaped their one pot, fearing every imperfection.
Meanwhile, the second group simply created. Each day, they threw clay on the wheel, experimented, made mistakes, and learned from them. Their first few pots were clumsy and misshapen, but over time, their hands grew steadier, their techniques refined, and their confidence soared.
At the end of the month, something remarkable happened.
The best pots—the ones that were the most beautiful, symmetrical, and well-crafted—did not come from the first group that had spent all their time trying to make one perfect pot. Instead, they came from the second group—the ones who had embraced imperfection, practiced daily, and learned from their mistakes.
Never wait to get started on a skill. Just start and do it as often as you can.
