The art of putting your project out to the world before it feels ready
When is a 'project' - whatever that may be, a personal one, a career one, a social one, considered 'good enough' to be shown to the world? Whose expectations should it reach? Your own? Your friends'? Strangers that have a reason to care about it? Strangers that have no interest or relation to it?
For the longest time I thought that there was an answer to this question. That I should be aiming to reach someone's expectations or my own. A quantifiable one. The truth is: a project will never ever 'feel' good enough, to me, or to the world, to put out there. Everyone is so different. Everyone will have different expectations. Everyone will like different aspects of it, or dislike other aspects of it.
In fact, the more I research, refine, draft, ask for advice, the more 'imperfection' or 'room for improvement' i find.
I think this is the answer... You start somewhere. You expose your idea, the best version it can reach at present, at least, and you get to work. You build on top of that.
For the longest time I truly believed that there is such thing as "finished" work.
I now came to realise:
A project actually starts the moment you share it to the world. Only then it becomes real. Only then you can start improving it. Before that it was just an idea. Hundreds of ideas can pass through your head in a single day. Thousands, even. If you don't take action, no matter how feasible, glorious, exciting, unique, extraordinary it might feel, it is still nothing more than an idea. It is about as real as your dream of traveling to the moon.
So although there is no possible way to find an accurate enough answer to my above questions this is as close as it can get:
A project will never feel finished or ready if you don't share it with the world.
A 'crappy' idea that has been put out there, is a hundred times more official than an idea that has been in your head for the past year.
So, my advice to you is, minimise the time between "thought" and "action" and watch your projects come to life, and become extraordinary.