I heard a baseball player talk about how to make it in the big leagues. He said that the most important thing was being able to manage failure. Because baseball is a game of failure.
I don’t understand why baseball gets called a game of failure, every game is a game of failure. You’re probably going to lose a bunch, most of your shots don’t go in, and most of your work is usually for naught.
The same is true for creative work. 70% of your art is not that good. It simply isn’t. 20% of your art is pretty good. 10% of it is amazing.
So how do we, as artists, designers, and photographers manage our failure to ensure we keep moving forward and doing good work? We had better be prepared for 70% of our stuff to fail because if we give up when half of our work is failing, we’re going to miss out on the really amazing work that we’re capable of.
Manage expectations, manage failure, and embed yourself in the process.