The importance of the throw-away version. And throwing it away.

Growing up, my first attempt at anything was pretty decent - for a kid!? But as I grew up, if my first attempt at something wasn’t great, I abandoned it, assuming I wasn’t good at it. Then, in college, I learned about Carol Dweck’s work on fixed vs growth mindset (and also got a C in linear algebra, which was a shocking first), and began a lifelong journey of embracing failure as part of learning & the creative process.?

As I’ve learned more about the creative process across disciplines, I’m finding that behind every creation is a rough, low cost version that allows the creator to iterate, learn and improve.

• Rodin & Clay/Plaster casts | When I visited the Musee de Rodin when I was in Paris, I realized that Rodin had done multiple copies of the Thinker and the Burghers of Calais in his lifetime! But I realized just how many copies he’d made when the Tate Modern did a show last year solely focused on the early plaster and clay casts he’d made that preconceived his iconic pieces.? You can read the exhibit description here.?
• Guo Pei/Haute Couture & Muslin mockups | The Legion of Honor in San Francisco is running an amazing exhibit of Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei’s collections, which you *must* see if you’re in SF. I just heard they extended it to Nov 27th (it was supposed to close Sept 5th) due to the demand! I was lucky to go with a former fashion designer for BCBG/Chanel/Dior who had really wonderful commentary on the various techniques, including this fascinating tidbit: After a designer sketches the dress, they create an mockup out of muslin, called a toile, to refine the pattern before they actually cut fabric for the real dress!
• Software & clickable prototypes | Coding a feature straight from user stories is the most expensive way to build a clickable prototype. (Not going to say at which organization I saw this…) Instead, best practice is to do the lowest cost, low-fidelity representation of what a feature/user flow could look like.? This could be as lowtech as paper printouts (in my early product days, I remember hand drawing boxes on a piece of paper!) to Powerpoint slides to modern prototyping tools like Figma that allowed you to create something that closely resembles the final product.?

Growing up, I also somehow thought geniuses were simply born geniuses (more fixed mindset!) and that each iconic piece they created, sprung forth from their head/hands fully formed.? But as I’ve visited more museums as an adult, I realize that their iconic pieces are selected from a massive body of work. And, the best artists were incredibly prolific in simply producing volume & iterating their own style.

• Van Gogh | I hadn’t appreciate the vastness of Van Gogh’s work until I went to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, where they highlight his evolution as an artist across the years.? According to Google, “Despite only working for 10 years – from the age of 27 up until his early demise at 37 – van Gogh …produced more than 900 paintings and many more drawings and sketches, which works out at nearly a new artwork every 36 hours.” What’s also incredible is seeing his style evolve from classical to post-impressionist.
• Joan Miro | Joan Miro is another artist who I’d only seen 1-2 paintings (which I didn’t like) but then, after visiting his museum in Barcelona this summer, saw his evolution as an artist too - and the incredible amount of art he produced across mediums!? Like Van Gogh, you see that his early work is straightforward classical representation and then becomes increasingly abstract, even as the subject matter remains the same.?
• Marie Curie | As a child, I mostly knew her as the scientist who discovered radium. But after seeing the Marie Curie museum in Paris, which was a working laboratory and training center, you have a sense of the vast number of experiments she ran and re-ran over her lifetime.

On a personal note, I’ve struggled with both perfectionism and loss aversion (AKA letting go).? And one of the more profound reframes I’ve experienced is to see letting go of X as a first and necessary step to make room for Y.? I experienced this when I left my first corporate job and I’m experiencing it now.? I was so anxious about sabbatical and taking time off - but it has created room in my life for more creativity, spontaneity and rest.? And letting go was a necessary pre-requisite to the creativity I’m experiencing now.

If you’re curious, I've started a newsletter on substack which is my throw-away version for writing, where I practice expressing myself. And every week, I throw it out there into the universe and start again next week! This article started as a part of the "What I'm thinking about" section of my weekly newsletter: https://tteng.substack.com/p/aug-26-2022-weekly-roundup?sd=pf

If you're interested in following along, subscribe! Also, if you have other examples of throw-away, low-cost version of early prototypes from different industries, drop them in the comments!