Quote: It’s important that nobody gets mad…

It’s important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up. We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That’s why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible.

—
Lee Unkrich, director of Toy Story 3, Wired magazine

Quoted by Jamie on May 21 2010. There are 5 comments.

John Ainsworth

on 21 May 10

Interesting to see this on the 37 signals blog. I’ve been thinking a bunch about getting stuff wrong since hearing Jason’s opinion on learning from mistakes versus learning from successes – in big omaha speech and in rework.

Is this something that you’re saying is a good quote or a bad one – from your point of view. Not seen Toy Story 3, but imagine it’s probably going to be pretty good, so that would suggest that you think this is a good point he’s making.

Think this comes down to perspective to a certain extent. Are you actually aiming to screw up? Probably not. But by getting through as many ideas as possible (with the knowledge that some will work and some won’t) you get to the good ones faster.

That doesn’t mean that screwing up is good inherently, just that you don’t have to worry when it happens. At least that’s my take.

From starting a business myself – I know that I’ve made a bunch of mistakes, and that almost none of them mattered, because I also got a bunch of things right. So now that I know which was which I do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.

JD

on 21 May 10

John, Jamie here. Lee Unkrich is talking about Pixar’s creative process here. Ideas and concepts go through rigorous critiques in the beginning. Sometimes entire ideas get scrapped. Ideas that people have spent a lot of time and emotion on.

What I took away from this quote is not to feel bad about your idea getting shot down. Don’t feel bad about your work being thrown away. It’s not your fault. It’s part of the process. For a designer, that’s a pretty powerful thing. That means to embrace the fact that you’re not going to come up with the best idea in that first iteration.

The link to the article is not online (c’mon Wired). Otherwise I would have linked to it for more perspective/backstory. It is in this month’s paper magazine if you’re curious.

Also, just because I work at 37signals doesn’t mean I agree with Jason all the time. I wouldn’t be adding any value to the company if that were the case.