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Done is better than perfect. How to improve at anything.

Alexander Nguyen
3 min readDec 15, 2021

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For many of us there’s a project that we’re all pushing off. It can be a passion project or new hobby or achievement we’re working on accomplishing. But for whatever reason we’re holding ourselves back from even starting. Let me help you get started.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

One photo vs 100 Photos

In Adam Grant’s “Originals”, he shares an assignment made between two classes. For one class it’s to take and submit the single best photo they can take. Another class had the assignment to take 100 photos and submit all of them. The question now was is the one photo from the first group better than the best photo from the 100 photos?

People critiquing the photos agreed that the best photo from the 100 photos was usually better quality than the single best photo from the other group. Why was this? Well, it has to do with iteration.

When taking 100 photos, it gives students the chance to review the photo, determine what went well and what needed improvement. Whether it was lighting, angles, or effects, taking more photos gave this group the opportunity to iterate over and over again. For the group taking the single best photo, there was a lot of analysis paralysis thinking about how to take the best photo possible.

But I’m not a photographer

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Alexander Nguyen
Alexander Nguyen

Written by Alexander Nguyen

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