Pottery lessons for developers

What’s the “thing” you cannot stop thinking about that you are passionately hoping to achieve someday?

As a recovering perfectionist, I know the urge to carefully plan everything. But after many years I realized the perfect time is never coming.

Today I am close to shipping my first iOS app, publishing YouTube videos, and writing a newsletter. All things I never felt ready to do.

Wanting to launch the most basic version of my app for the Shipaton reminded me of the pottery parable which first appeared in the Art & Fear book.

The Pottery Parable

A pottery teacher split his class into two groups.

For 30 days, Group A had to make one pot every day, 30 in total.

Group B had to spend all 30 days working on one perfect pot.

30 days went by, and the pottery teacher judged the quality of the pots.

The 10 best pots came from Group A.

By practicing daily, Group A learned and improved, while Group B kept polishing without real progress.

Quality comes from quantity.

Fear and imperfection

We need to accept that our first attempts won’t be good enough.

Once I gave myself permission to ship imperfect work, I started learning a lot and the fear vanished.

The key is to build a system that makes shipping sustainable and stick to it.

Software as pottery

We think that our first app needs to be something big and unique. The one perfect pot we might never ship.

But the more specific and simple your app, the better! The quality will come from how many times you iterate after shipping the simplest version.

After all, true simplicity is empowered by the right amount of complexity behind it.