Have you ever almost started a project. 

 

About to start something big, HUGE, but never end up doing it. In his talk “The joy of small projects” Moiz Syed highlights how powerful it is to commit to smaller activities rather larger scale operations. 

 

But why?

 

Well his first and I find most crucial point is that “small projects allow you to make mistakes”. One of the largest problems people wave with producing what they want is fear. Fear of being judged, fear of getting something wrong, fear of starting.

 

Paralysis by overanalysis. While perfection is everything anyone wants, the road to it never is. 

 

On stage at Ted x Co Barry hailed a different but similar message. Telling the story of her fondness for school, the teachers pet and the person always doing the homework she came up with another point. Finishing high school she was lost and soon realized that “I just spent the last 16 years trying to get the right answer”. 16 years of trying to get something right, like most students begging for that 100% on the math test.

 

Despite the attraction to perfection Co Barry realized that for creativity, design thinking and even starting tasks you need to be prepared to fail, prepared to be laughed at, for that's the only way to grow. 

 

In his third point about small projects Moiz Syed said that they “free you from restrictions”, they allow creativity to flow without the burden exception. When a movie is given a large budget, when an election is called and people have commited plenty there is an expectation for success, no failure allowed. 

 

The concept of design thinking and more broadly creativity is centred around being yourself without the external factors. Letting failure take its course, growing from it and achieving not necessarily perfection, but the best.