Mind the Gap

If you've ever been to London, the title of this article probably reminded you of the voice at every stop on the tube, alerting you to the gap between the trains and the platforms. It's a delightfully British phrase that tourists tend to love (myself included).

The intention of the warning is to make sure you’re looking out when you get off the train, so you don’t accidentally fall between the tracks.

In the last few years it's become a phrase I use to remind myself of a slightly different risk.

A few years ago, I was desperately trying to get better at photography— and my photos were not good. I had started a brunch instagram as a side project and creative outlet, but it was becoming more something than outlet.

I was trying so hard! And I was crushed that I wasn’t getting any better— there were these beautiful photos I wanted to emulate and I just could. not. do. It.

I forget where I first read this quote, but it was during this time period and it’s since become one I come back to over and over:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap.

For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

— Ira Glass (emphasis mine)

That was the gap I was falling into. I thought what I made sucked because I was comparing it to people who had so much more experience than I did.

My photos weren’t bad— I was just a beginner. Albeit one with good taste, apparently.

I realized that my photos were actually getting better, little by little, step by step, if I took a step back to look at them as a whole.

But it did help me shift how I was thinking of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ and even be a little bit kinder to myself— both things that actually helped me take better photos.

There’s three main pieces of this I come back to time and time again:

You’ll probably hate what you’re making at first— that’s normal.

It’s kind of like making the first pancake— the first one is never really that good. Unlike pancakes, the second one might not be that good, either (especially by your own standards).

Many of my photos were bad pancakes. The worst part of this phase was how quickly I’d give up thinking I just wasn’t ‘good’ at this, especially compared to what I was trying to create.

Yes, everyone starts here. But it’s not particularly helpful for me to tell myself ‘Of course so and so was a beginner once!”

It’s much more helpful to see it— so I gave myself evidence by scrolling waaaaay back through the accounts of some of my favorite artists, and was pretty surprised.

They looked like mine at the time. I was able to see the process, and that made that idea of ‘getting better’ more tangible.

Get curious instead of disappointed

I was so focused on trying to get it ‘right’ that I wasn't actually getting better or learning anything at all. I was just frustrated.

But knowing that the people I admired managed to start where I was and get better made me curious. If a photo didn’t turn out how I wanted it to, I shifted to being a detective instead of a debbie downer.

I wanted to know how they did it. So I asked, and I googled. I watched a lot of YouTube and Instagram tutorials. And I had much more fun because it became a puzzle to solve instead of a problem.

Little by little that curiosity paid off and I was actually starting to have fun with the process, which made me practice more often.

Focus on getting better, not ‘good’

It's so obviously backwards to me now, but I was stuck on this concept of taking good photos, but not becoming a better photographer.

So I stopped trying to take good photos and took more photos instead. This was actually a huge relief because I didn’t have outsized expectations each time I got behind the camera.

Creativity isn’t black and white, good or bad— it’s a process. Quality over quantity just isn’t true in creativity— you need quantity to get quality.