Iteration Is Key

Lessons from 100 hour artist challenges

The phrase “iteration is key” came to me from at least one of Zoe York’s nonfiction books—Romance Your Brand, Romance Your Plan, Romance Your Goals—all of which I really enjoyed. I thought of that this morning when I down a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole on 100 hour challenges on the Nerdforge channel.

Martina and Hansi are a delight to watch, and the things created on this channel are often stunning. (Like that time they created a giant, special edition hardcover of the entire Wheel of Time series. It was…a very big book. Save this one for later, though.)

Don’t ask me how I got there, but my odyssey this morning started with Hansi’s learn to draw challenge. As a complete novice to drawing, how far could Hansi improve his skills in 100 hours? Martina was enthusiastic about creating a lesson plan. They started by giving Hansi unlimited time to draw four things: a mug, a book, a house, and a donut. He would draw these again at the end of the challenge, to evaluate his progress.

Even with the lack of a time limit, he only spent 20 minutes on his initial drawings. We often talk about this with writers. At the start, he didn’t know what he didn’t know. Without knowledge of techniques and skills to execute them, he didn’t have anything to spend time on to improve those drawings. (Plus, patience is a skill we can get better at, and it’s probably also a skill that is, at least on some level, variable by task. So we can assume that the challenge not only helped his patience overall, but also his patience with drawing in particular.)

Did you watch the video? It’s a great example of the early part the learning curve. We see big improvement of skills in our first 100 hours of learning something new. Part of what I enjoyed about this video was the way he talked about what was boring, what was difficult to push through, and how things got easier as time went on. We got to see some plateauing of that learning curve in timelapse. We can also see where the boundaries provided by the challenges helped with is motivation to push through the boring and difficult parts. The work may have felt endless at times, but it helped to know, intellectually, that there was an end, and it also helped to have a commitment to something and someone external. There’s a lot to this that demonstrates how SMART goals can be helpful (though you know I personally dislike them and it pains me to admit it).

One of the many things we learn from video games is this: the higher your level, the more experience is required to make it to the next level. If Hansi experienced these plateaus in his first 100 hours, how many plateaus can you expect on your way to 10,000 hours? It’s going to happen. Accept it and keep going.

In the next one I watched, Martina decided to draw the same painting three times: in one hour, in ten hours, and over the course of 100 hours. This video made me think about the different kinds of books and storytellers I read and work with, because that 100 hour painting was so much more layered, detailed, and nuanced than the other two. Not everyone wants to engage at that level, as writer or reader. What’s correct and “best” is the match between the writer and reader who both want something specific from the experience, and then to move on to the next, and the match between the writer and reader who want to sink into layered, detailed, nuanced experiences. Binary thinking—all-or-nothing, right-wrong, black-white—often leads us astray here, and judgment continues to be the most damaging thing I see us doing to ourselves and others. The complex book represented by the 100 hour painting in this analogy was beautiful, but in terms of return on investment, it’s overkill for readers who are looking for a different kind of experience. Perhaps a better analogy would be cooking an expensive, multi-course meal for lunch patrons who have neither the budget for it, nor the time to eat and savor it. If you love to write shorter, if you love to focus on a certain aspect of the story and don’t really care about the rest, and you’re finding readers who are here for it, stop worrying that someone thinks it’s not great literature. But if writing that amazing, nuanced book is what you love, of course that’s worth creating. Just stop trying to serve it the customers at the luncheonette.

Finally, I watched “I hate perspective painting, so I did it for 100 hours”. Martina decides to engage in self-torture dedicated skill-building and deliberate practice on an area of weakness in her art. She basically goes through a some tutorials and dedicated practice, and then embarks on a large project to apply what she learned. This video made me think of writers I’ve worked with who have consciously picked an area of their writing skill to focus on—whether they do it for a book, series, quarter, or year. Right away, what stands out to me is the acknowledgement of an area that could be improved, and the decision to move forward with specific focus and dedicated practice. What this is not: “I’m not perfect at this yet, so I’m going to stop working on the book and find a class to tell me how to do it right.”

That sounds harsh. And I shouldn’t be harsh, because I get it. But also…we all need to stop doing that. It just reeks of unhealthy perfectionism. In fact, I’d say Martina’s project is a good example of healthy perfectionism. I mean, it’s so healthy we wouldn’t even call it perfectionism, but she is determining how she can come closer to perfection in her skill. It’s not about reaching it (because perfection is infinite, and reaching it is a damned lie), it’s about moving toward it.

It’s about moving toward it.

That’s all the lessons I have today. If you stuck with me for that, you deserve to see Martina’s coffee table with a miniature library inside.