I often give perfectly good demos of whatever it is I’ve been working on. Afterward, I feel good, the audience feels good, we all feel good.<\/p>\n
But every once in a while I give a demo that doesn’t go so well. And sometimes it’s just a total disaster. Everything goes wrong, the entire thing crashes and burns, and my poor broken ego is left to pick up the pieces, both my self-confidence and my faith in the Universe badly shaken.<\/p>\n
I’ve learned over time that these failed demos, as stressful as they inevitably are, are the best fuel to fire creativity. When I’m feeling fat and comfortable, I tend to become lazy. “Hey,” I tell myself, “everything is great!” And that’s when things tend to stagnate.<\/p>\n
But after a true failure, my survival instincts come roaring up from wherever they usually hide. In those few days after a disappointing talk, or a demo that has gone horribly wrong, I’ve generally done my best work. Suddenly the cobwebs clear away, my mind is focused and sharp, and creativity begins to flow.<\/p>\n
Apparently, nothing succeeds like a good failure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I often give perfectly good demos of whatever it is I’ve been working on. Afterward, I feel good, the audience feels good, we all feel good. But every once in a while I give a demo that doesn’t go so well. And sometimes it’s just a total disaster. Everything goes wrong, the entire thing crashes … Continue reading “The value of a bad demo”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11534"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11534"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11546,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11534\/revisions\/11546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}