Embrace the learning curve

Fear of making mistakes is fruitless. Instilling fear of making mistakes is just silly. The ad industry is filled with people who preach perfection. They expect new-comers to walk on water from day one – be perfect little creative robots who spew brilliant ideas, write flawless copy and spit out layouts every ten seconds.

In reality, behind the bravado, there’s a junior copywriter who is still discovering the difference between an en dash and an em dash. There’s an art director who is discovering that everyone hates Arial as a font. This stuff doesn’t just come to people in their sleep. It comes from making mistakes, from being a part of the working environment and learning from people who’ve made the same mistakes.

It’s not about hanging onto your failures but about stumbling into discovery. It’s how people grow. The really progressive agencies leave room for that growth and don’t judge you for being a little green in the beginning.

So if you’re going to prove yourself, prove that you don’t make the same mistakes twice. You just make different ones every day. The day you stop making mistakes, you stop learning something new. That’s the day you realize that you need to move onto to something more exciting.

Here's to making discoveries every day.

Cheers