We do ourselves and the world a great disservice when we give up on something after one or two tries, chalking it up to our lack of talent. Taking many many shots is the secret of geniuses and experts—they know it’s a game of hours in and they produce lots of mediocre work on the way to creating their masterpieces.

 

If you are curious about something, we encourage trying purposefully and almost obsessively, like National Geographic photographers who, even in the pre-digital days of expensive film, would take up to 60,000 shots to keep just a handful. Why not? Actors might try for one hundred roles in order to land one, and failed entrepreneurs are often more correctly labeled as “serial entrepreneurs.”