To get better at something, you need experience. That sounds so obvious it hardly deserves a separate note. The difficult part of the formula is that experience requires doing something, preferably before you are certain it will work.
Other people’s experience is useful. You can read about mistakes, ask for advice and save yourself time. But a gap remains between “I understand how it works” and “I have tried it myself”. Sometimes a rather large gap.
What a small attempt gives me
- It shows which part of the idea actually works.
- It turns vague doubts into specific questions.
- It lets you stop or change direction while the cost of a mistake is still low.
That is why I like prototypes in my own projects. One working episode of a game, one completed scenario or one honest test of a hypothesis often tells me more than another week polishing a plan. Planning is useful, but it cannot answer on behalf of the real person who will try the product.
An imperfect start is still a start
Practice does not guarantee success, and it need not look impressive. Sometimes the result is finding out that the original idea is not very good. I think that is valuable: the next step no longer has to rest on a guess.
The perfect moment to begin rarely announces its arrival. A small attempt, on the other hand, tends to tell you quite quickly what to do next.