Exactly how long does one have to be doing something to start feeling confident and competent at it?Â
Forgive me if Iâm getting all âwhat is lifeâ on yâall, but I recently had a big milestone birthday, and as the old Steve Miller Band lyrics say, âTime keeps on slipping ⌠into the future.â The past few months have me taking inventory. What are the things Iâve accomplished? Which life goals need to be pushed to the front of the line? Which goals are probably going to fall by the wayside? Who am I, besides a daughter, wife, and mother?Â
With age, comes a new type of confidence that I didnât feel as a younger woman. Iâm more likely to speak up now, even if I have a differing opinion. My people-pleasing tendencies are fading away, replaced with a straight-spined, shoulders back attitude that makes me unapologetic for taking up space in the world.
But if age comes with confidence, itâs weathered by an equal dose of humility. I donât mean the good kind of humility, either. Itâs the humble-pie variety that makes you realize how very little you know about so many things. So many books I havenât read, or places I havenât traveled. So many languages Iâll never speak, or people Iâll never meet. Itâs dizzying, listening to confidence and humility whispering into my ears from opposite shoulders, trying to sort out the bravery from the perfectionism.
To do anything takes a certain amount of bravado, doesnât it? Especially for artists or musicians or other types of performers: putting yourself out there so publicly requires a lot of blind faith. What kind of world would this be if Mozart had left all his manuscripts in the bottom of a drawer? What if all the comedians on Saturday Night Live got terrible stage fright and refused to go out in front of the cameras?
In order to succeed, we must also face the reality that we could just as easily fail, and for most of us, failure is bad enough â public failure is terrifying. Our perfectionism gets in the way at every turn.
The 70% Rule
I read something this week that really resonated with me: Oliver Burkeman, a British author and journalist, writes about the 70% Rule. In his newsletter about productivity, The Imperfectionist, he asserts that if youâre roughly 70% happy with a piece of writing youâve produced, you should publish it. If youâre 70% satisfied with a product youâve created, launch it. If youâre 70% sure a decision is the right one, implement it. And if youâre 70% confident youâve got what it takes to do something that might make a positive difference, definitely do that thing.
Seventy-percent, by grading standards, is a C- or C at best. Earning a C grade is not great, but itâs also not failing, and it signifies that something is happening, but with lots of room for improvement. Operating at C level work in your creative life doesnât sound very impactful unless you think of the alternative: Mozart symphonies yellowing in the bottom of a drawer, or Picassoâs artwork gathering dust in a musty basement. In fact, there are artists like Vincent Van Gogh, who only sold one painting in his entire lifetime; or Vivian Maier, whose prolific stash of street photography was accidentally discovered by photographer and filmmaker John Maloof when he bought a box of her negatives for $400 in 2007. By pure luck, he uncovered Maierâs life work, a collection of around 100,000 negatives and slides. The world was so close to never seeing any of it. Lucky for us, her photography is the subject of a documentary and appears in museums and art houses all over the world.
American author Ernest Hemingway gave good advice in a 1959 essay entitled, âThe Art of the Short Story.â In it, he acknowledges the role confidence plays in creative work. He says, âBe humble after but not during the action.â If anything is to be done, we must relegate humility to the corner, at least for a little bit. Gather up 70% of your confidence and do the thing. Press send. Mail out the manuscript. Add your personal touch to the vast space time continuum. You, and the world, will be better for it.
