The Parable of the Perfect Pot
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2018
- SHE'S WILD!!! I can't decide whether this is a good title or a reaaaaaly terrible one. Which is also roughly how I feel about this video.
The Perfect Pot Allegory as I found it: betterlifecoachingblog.com/20...
Also, come see John and me on tour! www.hankgreen.com Every ticket comes with a free book!
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Hank didn't say this so I will. COME SEE US ON TOUR! New York! Kansas City! Canton, Ohio! Chicago! Indianapolis! Other Places! Every ticket comes with a SIGNED COPY OF AN ABSOLUTELY REMARKABLE THING! Tickets at hankgreen.com -John
vlogbrothers I'll be there in Indianapolis ❤️
Lol
Hank, I think your first book will be so good! It must a really unique book for a first timer!
come to germany gosh darn it
Only one of those needed the state mentioned...If I didn’t have things to do the next morning and the venue weren’t nearly an hour away, maybe I would have gone.
Okay, point of order: you can ABSOLUTELY write 99 books and throw them away before you decide “Yep, this is the one.” I have thrown away so many books. SO MANY BOOKS, HANK.
Garrett Robinson ❤️
Garrett Robinson 😂
Truth! I pretty much have to write the first draft before I can even decide if I like the idea or not. There have been a lot of first drafts. A Lot.
Garrett Robinson I, as well, friend.
The SF writer Larry Niven says that every writer has at least 1,000,000 words of crap in them, and they float to the top. Writing them purges them from your system. Only when you've gotten them down on paper -- O.K., in a file nowadays -- do you have any chance of getting to good ones. (If you have more than 1,000,000 words of crap, or if you're all crap, you're still in trouble.) He said that the main advantage he had in growing up well-to-do is that he didn't have a day job to slow down the process of him getting his 1,000,000 words of crap out of his system.
I understand that authors can have "trunk novels": novels that they write, in whole or part, and end up sticking in a trunk because they're just not worth it.
ALLEGORY OR PARABLE WHICH IS IT HANK?
Couldn't resist the alliteration huh
PARAGORY
@@MidtownSkyport and so the birth of the Paragory begins. . .
IT'S BOTH! HE'S W I L D!
(For anyone who missed it the title of the vid was "The Allegory of the Perfect Pot" originally.)
"I hope you like my pot." Yeah, this is definitely gonna get demonetized.
sounds like something from some sort of old anti drug PSA.
I like pots. All sorts. Good for storage.
Good thing he didn't ask for any kind of appraisal for his can
(though, one imagines most of you are too young to get the reference.)
as long as your name isn't Link!
FutureNow +
Okay BUT, SOME WRITERS AREN'T LIKE THIS. Some writers have to write pot after pot after pot, writing and learning and growing as a writer. MOST WRITERS DON'T PUBLISH THE FIRST BOOK THEY WRITE. So aspiring authors out there, it's okay to make a bunch of crappy books first. It's your choice when and where you decide to move on from a lopsided pot to write a new book, or when to take a book and re-write and edit it onto a beautiful pot. Writers aren't homogenous, and that's a beautiful thing.
Hank, can't wait to read your pot.
I have made 1118 "pots" so far, of which UA-cam has made me smash over 200 of them.
Proof that brute force works! I like a lot of your videos :D
Talking about verboten pots angers big ceramics
Funny thing is, if you were to made pots I doubt they'd be made out of clay ;)
I like how a video with this title got uploaded at 4:20 in my time zone.
+@Gavin I mean, it's technically BST right now because Daylight Savings and all that.
Well played.
+
Niiiiiiiice
The perfect final line.
we’re all just out here trying to make the best pots we can
+
+
Exactly
…But should we be trying to make as _many_ pots as we can?
I think in some ways it’s easier to make a lot of content because the expectations are lower. If I tell my friends “I spent a year working on this video” and it’s not good that’s more crushing than a video I spent a week on. That’s sort of the philosophy I’ve gone at this channel with, trying to make things every couple of weeks to ease up on the big projects. I also find that while making content more regularly can be stressful, it’s a lot of fun. I’m super excited for your book Hank, see you on tour in Boston!!
Nate and Noah Try Life then again, some people might argue quality versus quantity...
Jada Leung that’s a good point! The way we look at it over here is that making a video every few weeks forces us to do something... it forces us to start. Otherwise we might never start waiting for the perfect idea.
In a way, novelists do make lots of pots. They're just smaller pots that somehow add up to one big one.
Or maybe novelists play with Legos (Lego, for our European readers). They start building a thing, find out it doesn't work, tear it down and try to build it again, and after many iterations they get a pretty good thing. And the next time they build a thing, they have a better idea of the necessary underpinnings (Literally, with Lego bricks. You need the bottom of your construction to be tied together). And eventually, they can build really amazing things that spawn viral UA-cam videos or get turned into official Lego sets.
The novelists who fail are the ones who never accept the need for tearing down and building back up. Some of them just give up because it's too hard. Others refuse to see the flaws in their creations.
But doing something over and over again until you get good at it is how you get good at anything.
And also, congrats on the book, dude. I write picture books (which CAN be produced via pottery-allegory methods) and my first one came out in July. I was over the freaking moon.
David Goodner ❤️
Hank even said so himself apparently without noticing.
"And then they said 'Actually let's punch the pot' and I made this to the pot. This is how you make pots."
*That* was the iterations.
True. It sounds like Hank created 100 pots, he just needed to destroy each one to reuse the parts to build the next one better. They were LEGO pots.
+
Another problem with the pot analogy is you have to have a good feedback mechanism. If not, you might be iterating to make crappier and crappier pots. This is a problem Silicon Valley has right now.
Joshua Hillerup I agree. Another problem is that one can get good feedback, and do nothing with that feedback. I would know this because I am still in school and there are many people who get feedback for a failed essay and they think “well I failed”, and they would throw their essay feedback in the bin. Thus, the process repeats.
Could someone expand on the op's statement on silicon valleys feedback? I'm interested.
@@djoakeydoakey1076 "move fast and break things" is Facebook's moto and sums up current Silicon Valley thinking right now.
It is not about making good pots, just the process of creating as it gets faster.
I agree. Making many of something does not mean the 100th will be better than the first - you need feedback and course adjustments.
I've been looking forward to your pot for years, since I read early chapters on Patreon, and loved what I read.
Same here. Now after watching this video, I'm wondering how much those early chapters have changed after being punched a few times :)
Sameeeeee
This reminded me of how much pressure I'm putting on myself to make the perfect pot. Looking at it from the outside in, I think... "But hank, it doesn't have to be the perfect pot. It just has to be your best pot that you can make right now. Some people will love it and maybe some won't. That's ok too. If someone (unlikely) hates your book...that doesn't even say anything about you. It doesn't mean you're a bad author or creator, and it DOESN'T mean you wasted your time. You'll keep making more pots and more cups and bowls and all sorts of things. And you'll get better. And then you'll die. And you won't be able to care then, because you'll be dead. But the people who are still alive will get to say "hmm. What a lovely pot."
Hank. I needed a reminder today to just fuckin breath.
Momento mori
THIS! Thank you! I needed both of you today!
+++
Wow that "good morning John" was very growly
Thank you for pointing that out so I could play it over 20 times. I don't know why I find it so funny.
Reminded me of the "here's Johnny" from The Shining 😂
I can't stop playing with it, keep rewinding lol
Please gif it (with audio).
+@@sexyscientist I think there's a word for that.
Okay, I 100% agree with the philosophy behind the allegory. And it's a wonderful illustration of what is a proven attitude toward creation, improvement and learning.
*However*... and this is where Bo Burnham's work and words really get to me... there is much to be said for "going away for a long time and creating something special". Like, spending years on one thing.
In our current 'media ecosystem' (or whatever combination of words you want to use to call it), it seems that a continuous stream of content is more heavily favoured over the long laborious projects, even though the long laborious projects almost always see way greater success, impact, and durability.
This isn't a rebuttal of what you said at all, Hank. John and you both are excellent models of balancing the two. And thank you for sharing your personal experience of growth and discomfort with us.
I like the idea of it, but I think you're also right about balance. You can do smaller projects while working on the big awesome one on the side.
I think different strategies work for different people. In some ways you can combine them also, like you can make a lot of pots and just throw away the bad ones without showing them to anyone else. I'd say it's pretty rare to be able to make something good without having started on a lot of bad projects and throwing them away. Once you're pretty good it's easier to just sit and tweak something though.
I wonder if this was really Hank's first book idea or if he had started with others that just never went anywhere.
This kinda reminds me of when I was learning to drive a car. I'm a very trial by error learner... and that is NOT how one should drive a car. So learning how to drive felt extra terrifying and confusing.
Fun fact: My bookstore doesn't seem to care when the book is SUPPOSED to come out. They let me order it and gave it to me yesterday!!!
I was hooked from the first page. Your writing style is engaging and fun. I'm loving it so far. Having said that, my life is incredibly busy right now (moving houses, approaching big project deadlines for work), and I fear that I won't be able to finish the book before the obsessed masses who get it on time but can read it in a day.
Congratulations on your wonderful pot!!!
There is a quote I love so much, which relates to your story. It goes as thus:
"I can fix a bad page or story, but I can't fix a blank one." Congratulations on your book, Hank.
Pot twist, the plot of the pot story is that a plot to create the perfect pot creates a perfect pot not.
This is a work of art.
Was this comment the metaphorical 100th pot?
Ryan Bananahands pot twist 😂👌
It was not the perfect plan that created the perfect pot, but the imperfect plan that perfected the process.
Plainly, pretty parables prove persistence provides prime products.
@@untappedinkwell Tell Hank, I think his wife curates that. Maybe I can get a gig ;-)
what a great video! super excited for your pot XD
The faces Hank makes 🤣
Art student here, I was definitely in the perfect pot group for most of my life. But I'm really trying to be in the crazy pots group now. You can make a pretty good pot if you try hard enough at it but the truly great pots happen by experimenting and playing around with ideas. You learn so much more when you're having fun. Plus your first idea is never your best idea.
This really resonated with me..I've been making content for 9 years, nearly 10. Between two channels I have over 1100 videos.. many iterations..many different variations. My 'pots' tell the story of my life. Thank you for this Hank, it reminded me why I've done UA-cam in the first place. I've watched you and John for 8? years now and I'm thankful for your pots.
Hank I believe your first pot is going to be amazing, and your next pot will be just as good
This is still several infuriated screams away from fully capturing the Novel-Writing Experience™.
The best thing about there being so many vlogbrothers videos is that I forget some of these videos and I get to watch them like it’s the first time.
Hank I would say your book is definitely not the same as making one Perfect Pot. You've spent so many years creating interesting stories and dialogue in your community, you write music etc. Now, these aren't the same as making a book, but they have helped prepare you to write this book. You aren't making One Perfect Pot, you are making one very big, intricate pot using the knowledge of all the smaller pots you have made over the years! This is just the next evolution of your potmaking skills!
So I have a confession. I've never read your brothers books, and I've not seen the movie based on one of the books. I actually discovered you two thru UA-cam. I had no idea your brother wrote books until it was mentioned in a video I was watching. I've only read descriptions of his books, and I have to say, I'm more excited to read your book than his. But that's because I'm an amateur science fiction writer, I've only ever published anonymously on apps. So seeing you go thru and experience your first real publication... It's inspiring. It's inspiring because I get to see someone who has the same anxieties about their work and the hope that it will connect with people. Even though it hasn't come out yet, I know it is awesome. Just by seeing how passionate you are about it. Thank you for letting us amateurs see one of us ascend to the Best-Seller heaven.. Just don't forget about us little people! ;)
Another useful lesson I learned while taking a pottery class was to not get attached to your work. In beginners classes everyone thinks everything they make is so precious and they really want something to show for their time. So they all stop when it is just a barely formed bowl for fear of wrecking it. I really didn't care about having pottery, I just found the process of making it relaxing and challenging. So I would go in with the goal of trying to push myself on every pot to the point of wrecking it. This completely removes the fear element of the process and also teaches you the limits of your skill, the materials and the craft in general. With this mindset I was able to progress very rapidly.
Dear Hank,
I just started my first year of teaching (middle school Latin!) and I came home today feeling a bit down on myself about how my lessons aren’t always awesome yet and how I still haven’t figured a lot of stuff out. I hear all the time about how the first year of teaching just sucks, but I hoped I would be the exception. This video helped me realize that it’s ~okay~ that sometimes the lesson plans and activities I make (my metaphorical “pots”) suck because I can use them to learn how to make better ones. It’ll all come with time. You helped me feel just a little bit better on an exhausting day, so thank you for that. I just wanted to share because I know when people (students) share stuff like this with me I feel good about it.
Thank you always, Hank, and DFTBA!
First of all, This feels like a very Hanks channel video. Second of all, I was going to write this really well thought out comment going with the pot allegory but instead I’m just going to say that; Hank I’m sure your book is going to be great and what cool and what makes me excited about reading your book is not the story but the amount of effort you put into and how much you care for the work you’ve done. Congrats on having an idea and following through with finishing that idea.
honestly the best part about it is that it couldn't have been written by anyone else but Hank Green
This is the exact reason I have never finished writing a story; my brain is just so fixated on creating the perfect “pot”, that I always get disheartened when it isn’t and I lose all motivation.
The weird thing is I know it’s all practice, so I just have to learn to let myself be rubbish.
I’m very excited for your book, and a huge congratulations on its release.
Right at the end there was such a gut punch. You seemed so suddenly vulnerable. Beautiful delivery. Almost made me cry at the last line. Have a wonderful tour, Hank.
I somehow assumed you knew the parable of the pot, because of your 80% perfection rule! I also like Ira Glass's take on how frustrating creating can be when you aren't good at it, but you have really good taste, and you know what you want your creative thing to be. It's the willingness to jump in and try, combined with the persistence to keep working at the creative outlet that gets that pot closer to perfect each time, and which allows you to take your lump-of-clay idea and rework it again and again until you have a pretty good pot. Congratulations on your pot, Hank. Can't wait to read it.
You can really tell when a youtuber book is ghost-written, because one day they just get on their vlog like "btw i wrote a book, preorder it here." And you're like, I've been watching all of your vlogs. You've just been drinking starbucks and hanging out with your dogs.
But this, this is some real ass shit.
Mad respect for taking the time and the work necessary to craft a narrative.
People underestimate the work that goes into writing a story. It's not just sitting down and typing, there's so much work beyond base concept and characters and conflict. I've been writing for like 10+ years and i'm only now starting to feel capable of making something even halfway competent, from start to finish.
As a ceramic artist I can confirm this is how you make the ‘perfect’ pot and not everyone will think it’s great and maybe not even you, but the more you make the better you do get. And I have a feeling I heard this story when I was in school. It’s funny cuz as you were saying it my head went ‘ok well to make the perfect pot those kids are gonna have to take all semester making lots of pots to get better and make their best one’ but ya, guess I already learned that lesson.
Hank, slow down. Take a breath. You're doing great. We're all extremely excited for your pot, and you're blessed with very understanding fans. You worked hard on this. We see and appreciate your hard work. We're so happy for this accomplishment, and look forward to all your pots to come. You got this.
This is so relatable. When I would write stuff for my college magazine, I was very much in the multiple pot group. I would just write as many poems and short stories as I could, submit whatever seemed to work, got a lot of helpful feedback and continue to do this till I accidentally made the perfect pot. And eventually I got better at making pots. And now I have a better sense of what the perfect pot is. So yeah I can relate to this Hank.
The idea of working hard AND smart perfectly encapsulated in 4 mins.
I’m a high school teacher in the UK, just starting lots of new courses. Every time I set a new class their first essay, I’m going to show them this vid.
I love all of this so much! I teach arts and crafts (knitting, watercolor etc) and I tell all my students that their first projects will look like a beginner did it. It's such an obvious fact, and yet all of my students expect to turn out perfect results the first time around. You gotta make a lot of pots before you get a pot that even looks like a pot. This is also a reminder of why I'll never publish a book.
I was feeling kinda stressed today so I went on youtube and when I saw this title in my subscription box I was like 'yes this is exactly what I need right now. A parable about the perfect pot told by Hank Green. YES'. And it was all I wished for and more! Also I'm sure everyone is gonna love your pot! x
Okay. I rarely comment. But here is what I have to say: Listening to you frantically share the story of your pot and then seeing the stunned and confounded shock at the end left me with the desire to give you a hug, tell you I'm proud of you, and wish you safe travels on your tour. Catch you in Bellingham with my daughter. Enjoy the chaos, Hank!
Hi Hank,
Not a parable. It is actually the way some art instructors teach. I have a friend who teaches ceramics and the first 2 weeks of his class are structured exactly this way. And it works exactly as described.
You don't learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book about riding a bicycle. You learn to ride a bicycle by riding. My version, when teaching painting, is 5 small paintings in the first two weeks of class. Then a critique to talk about what worked. Carnegie Hall = practice, practice, practice.
Congrats on the Book/Pot!
I am so excited for you. As a ceramics student and a nerdfighter I love this video and cannot wait to receive your pot in the mail.
“I hope you like my pot” might possibly be the best ending to a Green Brothers video. 😂 Congratulations, Hank!!!
As a professional book coach and editor, I really appreciate the message of this video! Books flat-out don't work the way many other creative endeavors do, and not all authors realize that until/unless the "professor" (me) comes in. Thanks for this!
But also remember we didn't see you making this pot. So in our eyes this is all it ever was and I'm sure you'll find stuff you can critisize yourself about down the line but we only see this and it's awesome.
You have no idea how much I needed to hear this today. I'm an author myself and my one pot fell to the ground. Now, I must figure out how to make more pots that hopefully don't shatter into a hundred pieces. This really helped. Thank you, Hank.
“I hope you like my pot” - that face. Adorable Hank is adorable
This video resonates with me. My thesis felt like trying to make the perfect pot. With smaller pots, it feels okay if it's not perfect. But that comfort level with imperfection is negatively correlated to the amount of time and effort invested. Handing the reading draft of my pot to the committee was terrifying because I had invested so much.
"And then I did _this,_ some more times to the pot" cracked me up way more than it should have xD
Thank you sincerely Hank, this was the perfect timing to finding about about the Perfect Pot Parable, because I want to 'make it' with creating digital art... but I don't want it to suck. I'm a hardcore perfectionist, but you reminded me that making a 1000 stupid experimental sketches is better than The One Masterpiece. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna work on my next piece of shit, right after dinner.
I work at Barnes and Noble, and yesterday we got your book all stacked on our carts and ready to go! I can’t tell you how tempted I am to read it before its released, you have no idea
I had this awesome insight last night. I make my own comics and sell them at a bar once a month with the rest of my art. Since I’ve been drawing them for about 3 years - I’m significantly better than I had began...and it’s started to show with people supporting my dream financially. Cheers Hank and great vid :) looking forward to the book!
This reminds me of some advice I read recently (I don't remember who wrote it). It was in the context of software development, but it applies more generally: there is no guarantee that anything you make will be great. If you spend forever working on something, you have about the same chance of it being great as if you had just made the first thing you felt might be good. The difference is that if you just keep making the first thing you think you'd like, you can get many more creations done in the same amount of time, and so by pure luck, you're more likely to find something that other people like, too. And the more you make, the more you learn what other people like, so you have more than just pure luck on your side. So don't worry about making something great, just keep making things and eventually you'll make something great anyway.
An art teacher of mine told this parable to me as youngster. I am surprised and pleased to see it get so much attention on the internet years later.
For some reason, vlogbrothers videos ALWAYS make me feel so inspired.
This is something I have thought about a lot recently. Over the last week I've come to the conclusion that you can define people by their actions. The more they do it the better they become at it. No matter how bad you are, no matter how long it takes, you will eventually become good at it. Just start doing what you want to be that's the first step.
We learned this story on day 1 of design school except it was about scaled models. The iterative process. It's very much the fail faster process.
And now we program script to help us make even more models even faster to hopefully help us create better designs
Brandon Sanderson, from what I understand, managed to actually use the brute force method to get good at novels. He wrote something like 10 novels before he finally got published. Granted, I'm pretty sure he's a speed-writing ninja considering the dude puts out 2+ books of really consistent quality per year it seems. We can't all be Sanderson, but I've heard a ton of published authors say similar. Write a book, revise it, query it out if you feel it's good enough, and start writing another book while you wait for responses. Seems like for those of us without established connections to agents and such, the rapid-pot-creation option is still the way to go, even with novels.
He talks about it several times on the podcast Writing Excuses. Either he or Dan Wells mentions the trap of the "Golden Idea" book. However much you love the first perfect idea that inspires you to write, odds are it won't come out very well. So you need to learn to move on and pick up new favorite ideas for new books, and once you've learned you can go back to that original idea if you like.
If you keep reworking that one idea without producing new books, it's much harder to improve.
My wife is a potter and we've been talking about perfect pot syndrome for years. The allegory is so great for so many things.
this is top notch vlogbrothers content: weird, a little bit silly, but also profound and extremely relatable...
It's so interesting to have seen John go through this wonderful terrifying moment of having a book about to come out several times over the years and now, finally, it's Hank's turn. I'm so excited for him.
Glad you showed this video ❤❤ cant wait till your book comes out!!!!
For every brother who did not get there, you were what we needed!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for always sharing your insights Hank! I am so hyped for this book right now
If anyone is interested in learning more about the methodology expressed in this video, look up "Agile Project Management". I have mostly seen it used in software development or R/D, but I believe it can be applied to a lot of things things. Basic idea is that customers never really know what they want/how to express it. Because of this, it is best to do many small iterations of something and present it to the customer for continuous feedback. Otherwise, you get to the end of the project and the customer decides they don't like the end product and want to change everything.
this is oddly very reassuring. i have a story ive been working on for some years (not a decade, but some) and ive scrapped it and rewritten it and completely redesigned it and erased it multiple times. i recently thought i had struck gold when i finally came in to what i thought was "the classic writer's process" where i started detailing the bigger picture and the character developments and themes etc instead of just writing a bunch of scenes that were loosely connected. but i lost that streak and buried the documents, like ive done so much before. it was not a fatal blow, but it still hurt. but you talking about having gone through a similar process of erasing and remaking over and over again, you, who actually have made a book, is comforting, and reassuring me that it is a completely fine process to go through, there is nothing to be ashamd of or to lose hope over. and that youve actually gone through that process for much longer than i have (a time period ive previously been ashamed took so long). so i thank you for making this video. it helps others. even if it is just reassurance, because that matters as well. sometimes it saves. cant wait to read your book when i scrap the money together
Hank don't worry, we will most likely love your pot, because you have worked hard on it. From the bottom of my heart, congratulations Hank! i hope you enjoy your time on book tour, I will most certainly enjoy my time reading the book☺️ I really,really wanted to come to the tour but I live in northern Europe so that should say something... 😭😭😭
Hank, my fiancé and I are going to the show on Tuesday! This is his first nerdfighter event, so I’m excited to share this with him. I hope everyone has a great time and I’m looking forward to reading your book.
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU GUYS DO!! YOU'RE AMAZING!!
I'm so excited to see your pot hank. When I heard you were writing a book I immediately knew I was going to preorder it and have it signed and everything, because I care about you both so much. I own all of Johns books, so why wouldn't I support you as well? I bet I'll love your pot. Your creativity overfloweth.
The "I hope you like my pot" at the very end is the funniest thing
4 days to go!! :D so exciting. Hope the tour is amazing!
Much love Hank, we are all excited for you ❤
So excited for your book!!!
Librarian here who luckily got an ARC copy... I love your pot!!! Congrats and good luck on the tour.
This is what I've been talking to my students about so far this year and I will definitely be showing them this video on Tuesday in our design and tech class. Thanks Hank!
This is why when people ask me how to start writing I tell them to write some fanfic. If they’re really adverse to that there’s also sites like fictionpress where they can put original stories. Write them fast, post them, get immediate feedback. But I agree that you wrote countless videos, blog posts, medium posts, hell even tweets that went out to a large audience, and you had the fortune of starting your first novel having pretty much already found your voice. And I say that having read the book and loved it, but also going, “Yep, that’s Hank. Reads like Hank,” through the whole thing.
Can't wait to see you at the Town Hall this Tuesday for your Pot Tour, Hank! Really looking forward to finally seeing your pot!
so excited to see you both on Tuesday in NYC!!
Wait I was actually at this talk omg! I really felt that, writing uni assignments perfect from scratch is killing me right now and so this was the motivation I needed
SO EXCITED TO SEE YOU ON TOUR AND READ THIS POT!!!!!!
this is also reminds me of prototyping and brainstorming. If your goal is primarily to get something that's perfect, it stalls
I am so very excited for your pot Hank, I just started softly screaming (is that a thing?) and punching my desk while laughing. I have been generally a little sad in these past few days and this video and your book bring me a lot of joy. Thank you 🌼
I heard a similar analogy with an artist tasked to draw a chicken. The client asks again and again over weeks and weeks when they finally can get their chicken-drawing and one day they just have enough and visit the artist. The artist draws the perfect chicken in the matter of minutes. The client is baffled: "Why didn't you do that weeks ago?" and the Artist opens a box with a thousand chicken drawings. "Because I had to do all these first."
I am struggeling a lot with this. I am on my 5th year in my not very successful webcomic. It's very niche and I have so much to learn. But I also die to tell a story - so there is no point in me to do tons of little comics. I need a big project to grow on. Which means that this project will always have so many unrefined pages. But once in a while, there is a really good page, a good layout, a good panel and the consistency of having to put out content every week as well as a handfull truly dedicated, passionate readers, keeps me plowing on. (as well as true calm and happiness while working on it)
I have to learn EVERYTHING for this - i have to draw backgrounds, characters, storyboard... I already work as an artist and all this comes in handy. I would probably learn more if i sat down and dedicated specific time to each problem area and worked to a specific goal (art is... broad. you can spent your whole life trying to master drawing the most expressive hands possible). I just don't get, how absolute masterworks like akira look as good on the first page as on the last. This consistency... its just beyond mastership (and there is no reason to improve that work visually. I for my own work would be disappointed if my private projects did not evolve. For client work, i work hard to be consistent).
I admire artist, who manage a regular output AND studies... wow.
I’m so excited for you and can’t wait to get my copy of the pot.
I keep revisiting this
This is one of my favorite videos ever
As a creator I relate to this so much! I started making videos in high school, but due to the iteration rate of video creation, I didn’t feel I was tangibly progressing enough. I switched to drawing and animation because, from the standpoint of individual drawings, I could iterate much faster. But now, from the standpoint of actually making films, it’s so much slower! So I’m making lots of pots and only one pot at the same time. Kind of.
I love this allegory! I have a bad habit of making one pot or even half a pot, deciding it's horrible and then never making that kind of pot again. So this might be a really helpful story for me to keep in mind next time that happens!! Can't wait to see you guys on tour, I've never been to any kind of nerdfighter event at all despite having been a nerdfighter since like 2011 and I'm so excited!!
(Writing this before reading any other comments)
Or, you could look at it this way: *Each* time you smushed your pot and started over, you were actually making a whole *new* pot. It doesn't matter that you were recycling the same lump of wet clay to make those pots, because a lump of clay is not a pot.
So, by that count (the real one), how many pots have you made?
That's why the first and best advice to writers is: "Don't be afraid to write crap."
Hank, I am so excited to read this book. So so excited! Happy book release day! :-)
Your actually amazing🌻
I am so looking forward to your pot, Hank. Every person who has read it and says OMG! makes me excited to get it next Tuesday. Next one though, you should really lobby hard for Monday or even Saturday! People hang out at bookstores on Saturdays. I wonder how many books you have to have published before you have that kind of leverage to just upend the TUESDAY RULE.
In any case, I can't wait to get it. Enjoy the tour!
Hey, this sums up what Tom Scott was talking about with making content on the internet the other day!
I'm excited to read your book Hank. It sounds great!
this motivated me so much to continue writing on this one paper for uni i've been procrastinating on for weeks now
Getting my dissertation proposal done over the next month--I offer my commiseration to you as much as I take solace in seeing that I too am not alone in the pot-punching process. Thank you for this video.
I'm so excited to read your book I can't wait for it to get hereeeeee!!! My pre-order could come a day early and I wouldn't complain
One "solution" I've heard to the parable is that both groups should just make as many pots as possible and the "quantity" group gives their best pots to the "quality" group, and they give all their not-best pots in return. But in doing that you take the parable more literally than it is intended to be and kind of short circuit the control-grouped lesson about learning. But it does mean both groups learn about the value of teamwork and produce more pots and better pots overall, which I guess is a secondary lesson. Maybe next year's pottery class hear the tale of the pots and come up with that solution.