HackMake

Aaron Mahnke, a designer, creator, and general shipper of things, says this about the difference between the two sides of the craft:

Making ideas is emotional at its core, and thwarted by practicality.

Shipping ideas is practical at its core, and thwarted by emotions.

Being good at the practical element of making doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be good at the emotional experience of shipping. Shipping is hard work and a very different type of work than making. It only gets easier if you’re stagnant and don’t push harder and go further with what you create.

Fear will find its way in front of you delivering what you made into the world. It’s easy to let this fear manifest itself in things that sound practical. “It’s buggy.” “It’s not pixel perfect.” “It’s just not good enough.”

But if you believe what you’re making is art (and you should), than you will recognize your art is fundamentally flawed because it is a representation of the artist. And just between you and me, neither of us are perfect. What we need is more practice at both sides of our craft–the making and the shipping. The only way that we get practice shipping is by shipping something that isn’t perfect.