“That’s a loaded question.”
Author: Shawn Blanc
Overcoming the Talent Ceiling
What happens when our vision and desire to create amazing work reaches further than our ability to actually create that work? How do we handle it when we know we can be better, and we want to do better work, and we know how it should look in the end, but we don’t yet have the skills to meet our goals?
I think most artists and makers live in this state perpetually.
And if we’re fortunate, we’ll stay there. Ideally our talent will never surpass our drive to make things, because if we wake up one day with more skill than drive, we’re probably burnt out.
Though the feeling of lack sucks, it’s also proof that we’re hungry to do better and go farther in our work.
And I think the pain and frustration we feel when we’re confronted with our lack of talent and skill is also the path to overcoming our talent ceiling. The pain an athlete feels when exercising is the proof that they are getting stronger.
Which is why I think the most important character trait of a successful maker is perseverance.
* * *
Last week I asked if anyone wanted to share their story of how they’ve overcome their own talent ceilings. The emails I’ve received so far have been much more encouraging and personal than I could have imagined. I’m still trying to read through them all and I’m realizing this is such an important and personal topic.
Here are a few excerpts from some of the emails I’ve read so far:
- Chase McCoy: Talent ceilings are a burden and a blessing. They restrict our work, but they force us to think around a problem and find our own way to the solution. Sometimes that journey is more important than the end goal.
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Michael Schechter: I’m banging my head against that ceiling daily. Seems to be the only way I’ve found to raise it.
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Guido O.: I guess that overcoming your own talent ceiling just requires you to trust yourself, to give yourself space and time to grow. Talent may grow indefinitely, but it is not an immediate process.
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Larry D.: I got around my talent glass ceiling by enlisting the help of others who do have the talent and exciting others in the company about the benefits. What I’ve learned professionally is that we need to dream big, dream beyond our own capabilities. We can enlist others to help us on our journey because we can’t all be good at everything. The talent ceiling may exist for an individual, but not for a team of the right people. I’ve found people want to help if you have a big, great idea.
As Larry mentions just above, I think the second most important character trait of a successful maker is relationship and community. In fact, community and perseverance go hand in hand, like two sides of the same coin. Have a community to go to and work with and get feedback from gives us continued energy to persevere.
* * *
Right now I am working on a project for people who make things. And in it, I go into more detail about this topic as well as many others related to the making of things. If you want to get an email when it’s ready, I’ve made a little signup form.
Style vs. Substance in Mobile Software →
Michael Mace:
The most beautiful app is not the one that looks most striking; it’s the one people can actually use. You should design your app to be usable first, and then make it as pretty as you can. The highest form of beauty is functionality.
This pretty much goes for all design, but it’s especially true of mobile design where (a) the usage contexts are so extremely varied, (b) the devices are relatively small, and (c) standard UI and UX practices are still being learned and developed, and perhaps just now are maturing out of their infancy.
Apple TV and Plex →
Bradley Chambers writes up how he uses Plex as the brains for his home media server and as a “home grown iTunes Match for video” solution. When I wrote up about how I’d converted my old PowerBook into a home Mac media server, a lot of readers wrote in to say they were using Plex and loved it (one very cool feature, as Bradly points out, is that you can stream your movies from your Mac to your iPhone/iPad even if you’re on the other side of the planet.)
A Day in the Life of Ryan Sims →
Nice profile of Ryan Sims, the head of design for Rdio:
Music is magical. Discovering and consuming it should be a joy. One thing we’ve tried to do with Rdio is bring the music to the foreground by pushing everything else to the back. If Rdio is the canvas, the music is the paint. And we are trying to compose spectacular landscapes. Being a company that values design at every level and having such a design-driven product, we can take some pretty big design risks where others might be more cautious and conservative. This is one hell of an opportunity and it’s something every one of our designers has a good grasp of and takes very seriously.
Some Great iOS Apps, Currently Free →
This week will be the 5th anniversary of the iOS App Store. Though Apple hasn’t yet announced anything officially, several popular developers are offering their apps and games for free this week presumably as part of a special 5th-anniversary promotion that Apple will do. These are some great apps and, man, you can’t beat free.
Update: The 5-year celebratory page for the App Store is now on iTunes.
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* * *
My thanks to Backblaze for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. I have been using Backblaze as my offsite backup solution for years now and am very happy with their service and price. Definitely worth checking out.
‘Adrift’ →
Simon Christen spent two years filming this beautiful video that he calls a love letter to the fog of the San Francisco Bay Area:
I spent many mornings hiking in the dark to only find that the fog was too high, too low, or already gone by the time I got there. Luckily, once in a while the conditions would be perfect and I was able to capture something really special. Adrift is a collection of my favorite shots from these excursions into the ridges of the Marin Headlands.
The Sea of Strangers →
Seth Godin:
Is there anything more frightening than showing up (really showing up) in the place where you are unknown and alone?
All our warning systems are on high alert. From an evolutionary perspective, strangers represent danger. They are not only a direct threat, but carry the risk of rejection and all the insecurity that comes with it.
But the opposite can be true: Strangers can represent opportunity. The opportunity to learn, to make new connections, to build bridges that benefit everyone.
Wow. This post by Seth Godin fits hand-in-glove with the story I shared on today’s episode of Shawn Today, regarding how I overcame one of my own talent ceilings.
iOS 7 Versus the Rest: Black & White Photo Filters →
Among these comparisons I like Instagram’s Inkwell and Camera Noir best, but I will say that the photo filters in iOS 7 are done quite well. Side note: the Camera app (along with Safari) is one of my favorite new apps in iOS 7 — both in terms of its new design and its added feature set. Also, the Camera app gets bonus points for not having a poor icon.
Gestures →
Patrick Rhone:
I believe Apple should set a standard for what specific gestures should do and what results a customer can expect from them. While I don’t think these should be enforced through the approval process, I do think it should provide developers with a baseline as to what users should expect a gesture to do and that not doing so means you will be working against said expectations and intentions.
Two thoughts:
- In a way, Apple already created a baseline for how to implement gestures in 3rd-party apps: iOS 7. In the same way that the stock apps in iOS 7 give a baseline for 3rd-party devs as they design their apps, the stock gestures in iOS 7 give a baseline for how 3rd-party devs should consider adding gesture support to their apps.
Right now the main new system-wide gestures are slide left-to-right to go back and slide up from the bottom to bring up Control Center. Which is just 2 more gestures than there used to be (sliding down for Notification Center). So, in short, gestures are being added sparingly. But I bet we’ll see more gesture support in future iOS versions because…
- As I’ve been using and testing iOS 7 on my iPhone, I find myself wanting to do even more gestures that don’t even exist. Such as a 2-finger pinch to close an app and return to the Home screen.
In short, as you get used to gestures which are implemented right, they feel incredibly natural. Just as swiping a list view gives a quick and jitter-free scroll of that list makes you feel as if you’re actually manipulating the pixels underneath your finger, so too does being able to control the interface with gestures.
The Capacity of an iPod Visualized as Vinyl →
A 160GB iPod Classic holds 40,000 songs. If want to know what that would look like if you owned them on vinyl, click the link. Or, call my dad and ask if you can come over to his house. (Via Mr. Apple Spotlight.)
Facing the Talent Ceiling
I’m working on something, and it’s for people who make things. As part of this project I would love to hear your story about overcoming the ceiling of talent.
If you’re someone who makes things — a designer, developer, writer, photographer, singer, musician, painter, sculptor, entrepreneur, podcaster, et al. — then you know what I mean about hitting the limit of your skills and being in that place where your vision and desire to do amazing work is bigger than your ability to actually create that work.
What do you do when your desire to do good work is bigger than your ability to actually create that work?
I’d love to hear about your own talent ceilings and what you have done / are doing to overcome them. And then, I’d love to share some of your stories here and as a part of this thing I’m working on. (If you’re not okay with your story being shared, or if you want it to remain anonymous, just let me know.)
Send me an email: [email protected]
Thanks!
— Shawn
P.S. You may have noticed that I put this same question to Twitter and ADN yesterday. The emails I got were so inspiring and encouraging that I wanted to cast the net larger.
Reeder for iPhone now Syncs with Feed Wrangler →
Yay! Though no support for Smart Streams yet.