The Art of Imperfection

By Damodar Roe

Necessary and Practical

Contrary to popular opinion, creativity has a lot of practical value. Diplomats use creativity in a collaborative dialogue to resolve international conflicts. Engineers design structures that are both architecturally sound and beautiful to the eye. Business owners come up with creative products that solve customers’ problems. Parents find novel ways to take care of their own needs while entertaining the kids. While we tend to associate creativity mainly with artistic self-expression, its true power extends to any endeavor that involves problem-solving—a skill that’s essential to everyday life.

You might say you’re not a creative person. But what if in your own way, you actually can be? What if your creative abilities have just been stifled by certain past experiences in your life? You might have been the kid who was punished in school for drawing, or made fun of for your unique interests. Because of this kind of influence, many people suppress their creative spark just to fit in and survive. And even if you didn’t have experiences like this, we’re not generally taught that creativity is very important. Whatever it might be, without some interference to discourage you, creativity is a natural part of being human. You can be a creative person.

The biggest impediment to creativity is being insecurity about your imperfections. You start with inspiring, big ideas. But at some point, you face the reality that you don’t have the ideal setup, you might make mistakes along the way, and you don’t know if the project will actually work out in the end. You stare at a new page trying to write one profound sentence after another, but then you erase the whole thing when it’s not perfect. The project remains simply an idea in your head that you hope to complete one day, when you’re sure it will come out the way you expect to impress other people.

We’ve been trained for decades that every problem has only one “right answer”, which we have to learn from an authority. This instinct makes us more afraid of being wrong than curious to learn. Even as adults, the fear of being “wrong” can make us overly dependent on rigid authority systems, as well as the wish avoid facing the complexities of life directly. It stifles the creative process, like a fire without oxygen. But even when you follow an authority, you still have to choose which one. Therefore, you can’t escape the responsibility of making your own choices. And since you need creativity to make wise choices and navigate the world successfully, creativity is a necessary and practical part of life.

The Mistakes of Masters

We can learn how to be creative from the examples of great masters. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, had a place for both rough experimentation in his notebooks and refined excellence in his finished paintings. He wasn’t afraid of being different or risking failure while pursuing innovative ideas. Although many of his attempts failed, like his dream of creating the first flying machine, his investigations into the unknown set the foundations for many discoveries that were centuries ahead of his time.

We can also learn from the mistakes of masters. Leonardo often struggled to finish projects because his ambitions were so high. He was a huge perfectionist sometimes. What appears to us as a simple portrait—the Mona Lisa—was, to Leonardo, a convergence of disciplines. It was a study in anatomy, optics, and even hydraulics. Every shadow, every curve, every background detail reflects his obsession with understanding how the world works and then expressing this understanding through art. The curls in her hair were inspired by the swirling motions of running water, her subtle smile shows an intimate understanding of the muscles in the human face, and his masterful depiction of lighting and shadow creates a lifelike softness without harsh outlines. It was this incredible depth and detail that makes his work outstanding even today. But the same devotion was also a weakness when his ambitions were greater than his ability or discipline to execute them, leading him to abandon projects that would have been better finished even imperfectly. While we have over 7,000 pages of his rough sketches—many iconic in themselves—we barely have 15 to 20 of his paintings that are considered finished.

We can hardly presume to fill the shoes of Leonardo da Vinci. But you can still have a creative renaissance in your own life by learning from his example, and even his mistakes. And since creativity is a necessary and practical part of problem-solving, this will unlock new possibilities in all areas of your life. Despite what your inner critic might say, maybe you can also sing, draw, sculpt, paint, and write—or at least learn how. You don’t have to be perfect to start (or to finish).

Write Drunk, Edit Sober

To unlock your creative potential, you first need to learn a couple things. First, you need to delay your desire for perfection—it’s not supposed to arrive on the first attempt—and work within your current limitations. Even if you continually improve your work, it’s better to finish something than to leave it incomplete just because it can’t be “perfect.” That’s where the practice of iteration comes in handy, helping you to approach your creative projects in distinct phases, adopting corresponding attitudes and expectations. Ernest Hemmingway encapsulated this iterative approach concisely when he said, ‘Write Drunk, Edit Sober’. While it might sound ridiculous at first, he wasn’t advocating for literal drunkenness. Rather, he was acknowledging that when you’re writing, or doing anything creative, there’s a time for creating content and another for refining it. At first, you drunkenly dance with the chaos of brainstorming and experimentation, creating a wealth of inspiration and ideas. Then, in a sober and grounded state, you refine and polish those ideas into something remarkable.

Secondly, every project calls for a certain type of creativity. Some projects call for more intuitive skills, like emotional awareness, imagination, and narrative. Other projects call for more analytical skills, like careful observation, scientific testing, and logical analysis. But Renaissance leaders like Leonardo showed us that the most rich have a blend of both, like the way that he studied anatomy, geometry, and lighting to make his paintings look as realistic as possible, while also showing the inner psychology and emotions of his subjects through their body language.

Now, let’s learn how great masters like Leonardo were able to resolve the many challenges of creativity through their timeless processes, so you can solve practical problems in your own life and innovate like a master.

Defining Perfectionism over Time

There’s a difference between perfectionism and meticulousness. Meticulousness is when you do high-quality, detailed work, while keeping your ambitions within the jurisdiction of your ability. By continually doing your best, your abilities will grow organically, and you’re be able to better and better work in time. But perfectionism is the pursuit of unrealistic levels flawlessness from start to finish, and is usually motivated by feelings of insecurity about what other people think about you. You want to show perfection in order to avoid judgment or rejection. While meticulousness shows that you care about the work itself, perfectionism shows that you care about looking good according to the perceived standards of others. One is authentic while the other is imitative.

Throughout history, society’s ideas of success have changed, and therefore, the particular ways that people try to be perfect have changed, too. But the core psychology has always remained the same. Whatever people are trying to be—whether it’s noble, innovative, or influential—you feel compelled to show these same qualities perfectly, fearing that any flaw will prove your inadequacy. Perfectionism, then, is wearing a mask that is shaped according to the perceived ideals of society. Even though it might not fit you, the hard contours of this mask are held in place by the pressure to be the best. The inner hope is to keep your vulnerabilities safe from view.

Let’s look at what perfectionism looked like during the Medieval period, the Renaissance, and today.

During the Medieval period, a time marked by poverty, disease, and warfare, people were hungry for safety and stability. They looked to the Church to provide hard answers to life’s biggest existential questions. The social hierarchy of clergy, royals, merchants, and peasants made everyone’s position clear and fixed. Perfectionists during this time strived to be dutiful and pure, often through self-denial and hard work. This offered some certainty in an unstable world, but it also led to a certain inflexibility. Art and science were primarily seen as tools to reinforce religious and societal norms. Those who questioned the establishment risked being branded as heretics, jeopardizing their reputations, and even their lives.

Then came the Renaissance—a period of intellectual and artistic transformation. Thinkers like Copernicus and Galileo overturned official beliefs about the universe. Artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo blended art and science, opening up possibilities for new kinds of expression. As people began to assume greater creative freedom, they followed their own inspirations and sought truth not just through popular opinion, but also through the study of nature and the great works of previous masters. This wasn’t a blind rejection of the past, but rather, a re-imagining of the human story with a more inclusive spirit of inquiry.

But even in this revolutionary era of the Renaissance, perfectionism didn’t die. While artists of the past were anonymous crafters of traditional images, the Renaissance brought a new culture where artists could make a name for themselves through their originality and skill. This fueled intense competition for prestige and patronage. At one point, when Leonardo da Vinci was turning 30, he felt depressed that he hadn’t become famous yet. Perfectionism and a lack of discipline had kept him from finishing his projects, even ones that were commissioned. Despite overturning the centuries-long belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, people were still motivated by the same insecurities as Medieval times, like the need for acceptance.

Fast forward to Today, and we live in a much different society than any time in the past. Rigid social hierarchies have mostly given way to individualism, where people can define their own identities and paths in life. Knowledge is more accessible than ever, but so are distractions. And while cultural ideals have shifted to new platforms, perfectionism remains deeply rooted in the same psychological domain. We’re still afraid of what might happen if people don’t like us.

The way you do one thing

What’s your process of problem-solving? Whether you’re planning your day or designing a building, you might notice a pattern in how you approach all sorts of endeavors. For example, your automatic instinct might be to plan everything out ahead of time and then delay action until the plan is perfect. The overarching pattern in how you face problems in your life is called your meta process. It’s an automatic instinct that you manifest over and over again. For this reason, the way you do one thing is often the way you do everything.

Great innovators like Leonardo da Vinci also had their own meta process. Whether he was inventing a semi-automatic crossbow or trying to discern the laws of friction, Leonardo tackled the every project in a strategic order. He knew that there’s a time to learn traditional knowledge and a time to innovate, as well as a time to experiment and a time to refine your work. In order to do any project well, you need to suspend your automatic instincts and consciously choose a meta process that fits the project at hand. This way, you will avoid the many pitfalls of a one-sided or blind approach to problem-solving. You won’t act like a planner when action is needed. You won’t try to reinvent the wheel when research would be better. Rather, you will employ your strategies masterfully and do great work.

The phrase, “Write drunk, edit sober” is concise formula for a creative metaprocess. Just like drunkenness and sobriety are opposites, this creative process calls on you to show seemingly opposite qualities during different phases of your work.

You can apply this meta process to just about anything you want to do. The follow are some examples:

Travel the world: Dream up all the places you’d love to see, activities you’d like to try, and cultures you’d like to explore. Don’t worry about feasibility of actually going to these places yet; just allow yourself to daydream and get inspired by documentaries, travel blogs, or your friends’ recommendations. Think big-picture: what kind of experience do you want to have? Adventure? Relaxation? Cultural immersion?

Then, as you transition into the sober phase, refine these ideas into a practical plan. Look critically at your options—what fits your budget, timeline, and priorities? Cut out destinations or activities that don’t align with your goals, and map out a realistic itinerary with detailed plans about where you will stay and how you will get around. Balance planning with flexibility by leaving room for spontaneity, so you’re ready to seize unexpected opportunities along the way. This approach avoids the pitfalls of aimlessly wandering on one extreme, and rigid over-planning on the other, allowing you to experience the thrill of travel while still making the most of your time and resources. And remember: you have a whole lifetime to realize your dreams. What might not be possible today can become possible tomorrow if you prepare.

Find your beliefs: Immerse yourself in diverse traditions, ideas, and experiences—read widely, explore practices from different cultures or traditions, and ask big, open-ended questions about the purpose of your existence. Let your thoughts and feelings flow freely, suspending judgement to understand how other people experience their tradition from the inside.

Then, take a step back and spend some time alone to evaluate what resonates most deeply with you. Refine your insights, cutting away ideas or practices that feel inauthentic or illegitimate to you. Take your various inspirations and try to fit them into a coherent framework. Find people who embody some of the qualities you want to develop. This balanced approach allows you to build a philosophy that’s both dynamic and grounded—expansive enough to grow with you yet structured enough to guide your everyday life.

Take it one step at a time

Switching between creative modes can be mentally taxing, because you’re trying to opposite tasks at the same time. Trying to brainstorm and troubleshoot at the same time, for example, is discouraging because one mental process requires expansion while the other one requires contraction. It’s like you’re trying to zoom in and out at the same time, and this makes you feel dizzy and lost. When you find yourself trying to move in opposite directions at the same time, figure out which direction is needed at the moment and focus on that before you continue to the next phase. You can always do the other processes later, provided you give each phase its own space to fully devote yourself to it. The important thing is that you cultivate the meta process of a master, and approach big projects in distinct phases with corresponding mindsets—opening up many possibilities before committing to action.

At the same time, creativity is always not a linear, step-by-step, or mechanical process. Sometimes the phases overlap, and sometimes you need to transition back and forth. Even the iterative process doesn’t have to be perfect. But at least be mindful of when you transition between modes and try not to do it unnecessarily. Instead, take a break between phases, as far as possible, or work on separate materials or in separate areas. Breaks give your mind the space and time it needs to rest and even generate intuitive ideas from connections you make on a subconscious level. You might even get your best ideas during breaks between focused work.

The Renaissance of Your Creative Process

When it comes to creativity and problem-solving, the greatest opponents are often inside your own mind and heart. Cynicism dismisses creativity as something lavish and unproductive. Self-doubt convinces you that you’re not capable being creative. Perfectionism makes you procrastinate. Together, these forces form a negative attitude which kills creativity before it ever gets to sprout. You start to think:

“Who am I kidding? Everyone can see I’m a fraud.”
“Even if people praise my work, they’re just being polite.”
“I know I won’t be the best, so why even bother?”

Thoughts like these are based on expecting the impossible from yourself, or imagining that you can predict the future or read other peoples’ minds. These kinds of thoughts are not meant to convey the truth, but to justify holding back, giving us a false sense of control. We’re projecting our fears outside ourselves, because if we had to admit that we were afraid of what people think, it would lead to us to confront our vulnerabilities head-on. Instead, these thoughts disguise fear as logic, making hesitation feel like the best choice. But in reality, insecure thoughts keep us stuck—trapped by an illusion of perfection that no one is actually demanding.

Negative thoughts are like a set of dark sunglasses. After wearing them long enough, you forget that reality isn’t actually as dark as it seems while looking through them. You take it for granted that success is truly all-or-nothing, that everyone is just waiting for you to fail, and you have to appear perfect to prevent this. But once you remove these dark beliefs, like sunglasses, the world is brighter than it seemed, and you realize that you’re actually capable of far more than you ever imagined.

Leonardo da Vinci said that “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” He recognized how self-limiting, fearful beliefs get in the way of your creative potential. The bottom line is that you can achieve more by taking chances. But it’s only possible by putting a lot of effort into a project, and at the same time, not knowing how it will turn out or what people will think. You have to accept that self-doubt, mental resistance, and discomfort are part of the journey, and something to be expected from the daily grind that will gradually lead you to success. Regardless of what you’re working on, your first ideas will never be perfectly developed, refined, and polished. Quite the opposite. The challenge is to embrace the process and turn a draft into a completed project, rather than producing a few overprocessed fragments before giving up.

The following principles will help you:

Embrace vulnerability
Stay grounded in the present moment
Just keep moving

Creativity is a vulnerable process. Once you venture outside the limitations of convention, there’s always the risk of over-committing to an idea that’s unrealistic or unpopular. Even when you’re doing the work you love, it’s not possible to succeed at a high level without the process becoming unpleasant sometimes. But to realize your highest capabilities, you have to accept the vulnerability and mental burn that come with the job. You have to work with those feelings and persevere even after the honeymoon phase wears off. You have to place yourself in over your head. You have to attack a project that is bigger than you, without knowing how you’re going to beat it. You have to show up for the moments when you can’t tell whether you’re drowning in the ocean or wrestling with a giant. You have to dive in and refuse to tap out. Instead of resisting discomfort and uncertainty, you have to see them as territory that must be covered before you can create something beautiful and put your name on it.

By grounding yourself in the present moment, rather than worrying about the future, it’s easier to just keep taking the next step. As long as you have a rough literary for the journey, you can immerse yourself in strategic entry points of the project without getting lost or ahead of yourself. After all, creativity unravels best when you’re not too worried about the outcome. Let the process evolve like the generations of a family, where you invest yourself in the process and let the project evolve organically from one iteration to next. The most important thing is to keep the ball rolling, and don’t stop for quality control until you’ve finished a complete draft. If you can’t think of the specific lyrics for your song, just hum the melody for now, and write the lyrics later. If you’re stuck on one part, focus on another part. Trust the process, and don’t assume that your anxiety means something is wrong. You might just be moving outside of your comfort zone.

Explore The Possibilities

The initial phase of creativity is when you open up as many options as possible for bringing your vision or purpose to life. Whether it’s an idea, perspective, or emotion you want to express, there are so many different avenues of expression to explore — from writing, to visuals, to demonstration, and so on. Even after you narrow your project down to one or two mediums, there are still so many styles and approaches in each one. The trick is to focus on your purpose, and then come up with an abundance of potential pathways to fulfill that vision without worrying too much about immediate perfection, or how you might be perceived. It’s about letting go of rigid expectations and allowing yourself to fully engage with the project in the present moment.

Leonardo was passionate about brainstorming and experimentation. We’re all familiar with his masterpieces like the Vitruvian Man and Mona Lisa. But have you seen his messy notebooks? This is where he explored the initial phase of his creative process, which he called componimento inculto, or ‘rough draft.’ This is where he explored all sorts of ideas, filling page after page with sketches and notes. He called this phase inculto or uncultivated because he didn’t pressure himself for perfection. Instead, he played around with different creative visions and just expressed the gist of his ideas, often blending writings, drawings, and making parallels between different subjects.

Ultimately, Leonardo da Vinci proved himself to have the character of an obsessive genius who pursued knowledge for its own sake. Although he applied this knowledge to various creative projects, many of them fell by the wayside as soon as his curiosity lured him toward new horizons. For this reason, he isn’t always a fitting role model for a disciplined craftsman or practical problem-solver. Those of us with difficulty focusing or completing projects should be careful to not to in directions that don’t ultimately relate to project at hand. But we can still learn a great deal from Leonardo’s personal example during the times when his inquiries directly served the creation of a specific project. He might be obsessively drawing the motion of birds, diagramming the behavior of light and shadows in perspective, or writing about how layers of sediment develop in a rocky bank. But it was all meant to enrich the details of a painting he was working on, so that it would be as true-to-nature as possible. In this way, he constantly occupied his mind with all sorts of perceptive and engineering questions that encapsulated the essential purpose of the project he was working on. The following are some examples of questions he occupied himself with.

“Even though I can’t actually look down on it from the sky, how can I draw a city as if seen from directly above at every point on the map?”
(Leonardo created his own odometer on a wooden chariot, and used it in conjunction with a compass to measure distances and then chart them on remarkably accurate bird’s-eye view maps, such as his famous map of Imola, centuries before satellites were invented.)
How does the heart pump blood?
(Leonardo dissected dozens of human and animal bodies, carefully illustrating the chambers, valves, and muscle fibers of the heart. Drawing on his deep observations of rivers, currents, and eddies, he intuited that blood moved in spiraling vortices. This led him to become the first to correctly describe the heart’s twisting motion and the function of the aortic valve’s spiral flow—discoveries that would not be confirmed until the 20th century.)
How did the fossils of marine animals end up in the Apennine mountains, so high above the ocean?
(Rejecting the popular notion that they had been swept there by the Biblical flood, he proposed instead that the mountains had once been seabeds, gradually lifted by the earth over vast periods of time. This speculation anticipated the science of plate tectonics and geological uplift—ideas that wouldn’t be fully proven until hundreds of years later.)
What is the gravitational center of a triangular pyramid?
(Leonardo explored the concept of centers of gravity in non-symmetrical shapes long before Newton’s laws. Through geometric reasoning and experimentation, he identified that a triangular pyramid has a gravitational center at the intersection point of lines drawn from each corner to the center of the opposite face. His notebooks show a surprisingly advanced grasp of physical equilibrium and mass distribution for a time when the formal field of physics didn’t yet exist. He was the first person in history to answer this question.)
What’s the ideal shape for the walls of a fortress in order to resist the siege of cannon fire?
(Leonardo proposed that fortress walls should be curved, not straight, to redirect the force of the impact.)
How I can I create a machine that’s capable of perpetual motion?
How can any given shape be transformed into another shape of the exact same area?
(Leonardo found the answer in water, which transforms in infinite ways while always maintaining the same volume.)
Why is the sky blue?
How can the Arno River be diverted away from the city of Pisa?
What are the anatomical mechanics of a smile, and how can I recreate the subtleties of these dynamics while painting on a 2D surface?
What is the ideal mix of alloys in the metal composition of ball bearings in order to minimize friction?
How can a sturdy, self-supporting bridge be built out of wooden logs alone?

Begin your project by writing down as many open-ended questions as you can think of that are related to the vision or purpose you have in mind. The goal of these questions is not necessarily to answer them all, but to activate your mind to the contemplation of the task at hand. When your mind is engaged with interesting questions, it will engage your attention and produce a flow of creative ideas. For example, even when Leonardo wrote to-do lists for himself, he also include questions to ask various local experts, and things to observe while he was out. The point was that he knew how to keep his mind engaged in the creative process even while he was doing others things, and he carried notebooks with him everywhere to capture ideas for later. Similarly, keep a journal or sketchbook to capture all your own ideas. Let your curiosity and imagination flow freely, as you channel your thoughts through the flow of curiosity. Inspiration might strike you anywhere, so you need a place to write these ideas down before you forget them.

Next, research how other people have approached these same questions, and the various perspectives, methodologies, and solutions they have developed. We live in a time where the totality of human knowledge far exceeds what we individually understand. For example, we know collectively that the Earth is a sphere, but it still debated because not every individual understands how we know this. We tend to take many things for granted, when we don’t actually understand how they work, like airplanes or escalators. But by learning how people before us answered the same questions we might ask, it opens a lot of opportunities to learn. Leonardo himself used to consult various books and experts he knew, and then rewrite valuable information he gleaned in his notebooks, sometimes following up with experiments to test their hypotheses. This can provide valuable insights and inspire new perspectives that you might not have considered. When you study the work of masters like Leonardo da Vinci, or the writings of authors like Friedrich Nietzche (more about him later), you will start to notice elements and qualities of their work that inspire you. It might be da Vinci’s curiosity or Nietzche’s intellectual boldness, but as you engage with a wide range of influences, you’ll fuse aspects from different sources, blending them in ways that suit your own taste and mission. This fusion is where true originality emerges—not from inventing something entirely new, but from recombining existing ideas in fresh, new ways.

More importantly, you can find inspiration in nature directly. Leonardo used to believe that there are patterns that repeat in nature, both in a macrocosmic level and a microcosmical level. The way that a tree trunk branches out into a greater number of smaller parts, and a river into rivulets, is not just a coincidence. It’s two difference instances of a universal pattern that’s found in nature, one that we also see in the heart, arteries, and veins of our bodies. A big part of the genius of Leonardo was that he whatever topic he investigated was informed by corresponding patterns in other phenomenon. We can call this way of thinking ‘awareness of universal correspondence.’ It’s an observance of analogies that aren’t just similar in certain qualities, but participating together in a greater rhythm of the world. The best way to find inspiration from nature for any project you’re working on is to adapt this awareness of universal correspondence. Find a pattern in your project and connect it to something bigger that occurs in more than one place.

Ask yourself:

Who are some past or present masters who can inspire or inform the work I do? How did they approach this question and why?
What is a pattern in nature that can be found in the particular topic or thing I’m learning about or working with? How can I use this awareness of universal correspondence to better inform my work?

As you progress with your investigation, start making unorganized notes. Just like a fiction writer creates a whole world before choosing specific characters, events, and places to make a story, make a collection of ideas you can draw from later in your work. The goal is to generate more content than you will actually use, and begin to find a rough organization for your vision of the project. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, filled page after page with drawings because drawing was his way of putting the practice of observation into a tangible activity that engaged not only his mind, but also his eyes and hands. In other words, drawing was thinking for Leonardo da Vinci. It was how he figured out how things work, so he could harness that understanding to create new inventions, paint stunning images, and even take flight for the first time in human history. In this way, he even figured out that light sometimes moves in circular motions like water, an intuition that was later proven by Einstein’s theory of relativity. In fact, Einstein’s theory clarified the cosmic law that governs both water and light (E=MC²), which Leonardo demonstrated hundreds of years earlier implicitly in his drawings. Just like da Vinci spent countless hours studying birds in flight and imaging inventions based on the same principles, you can also let your ideas soar. You can draw inspiration from the movements of nature and other people, as imperfect as they all are, and let your ideas to evolve organically.

As you continue to gather inspiration, you might begin to envision how the different elements of your investigation can come together in a coherent project. Rather than trying to capture everything in a linear fashion with sharp resolution and flawless details—which will only slow you down and interrupt the iterative process—use a big-picture framework that can contain all the constituent parts of your project.

Only some of Leonardo’s sketches and notes graduated into the next phase of his creative process. Many of his paintings have underdrawings where the figures are in different poses. But the abundance of inspiration in his initial studies ensured that the ideas he did commit to on a more formal level were the best. Similarly, you can bring your creative process back to life by clearing some space for yourself to experiment and explore fun questions. Make it a place where you focus more on questions than answers. A place where your ideas can walk around drunk and naked without anyone around to judge them. A place that no one else has to see but you. A place where your imagination can truly soar into images and ideas. Don’t make the mistake of committing to the first idea you have. First take the time to ask questions, research, contemplate, and explore.

A Window for perfection

So far, you’ve read about delaying the need for perfection, but that doesn’t mean that your work should remain messy and experimental forever. There’s a special window of time when you’re supposed to edit, refine, and complete the project—and this requires meticulousness. At the same time, you have to be careful not to overedit the color and personality out of yout project. So how do you know where to draw the line between messiness and overediting? How can you actually get projects completed? First, let’s learn what we should not to do by looking at the unrealized potential of Leonardo da Vinci, and in particular, his unfinished painting called The Adoration of the Magi. Then we can learn what we should do from some of his masterpieces like The Last Supper.

The Adoration of the Magi is an example of Leonardo da Vinci attempting to weave together so many complex, interplaying dynamics that the vision ultimately proved too ambitious to fully realize. He wanted to depict the moment of baby Jesus offering a gesture of blessing. But Leonardo wasn’t content with stylistic or flat representations. He wanted it to look more like a vision into the actual moment than a two-dimensional painting. That meant realistic lighting and shadows that placed every figure in the same physical space, and accurate depth of field that gave the composition a true sense of perspective. Each person was supposed to be anatomically correct, as if an x-ray would reveal that their bones and muscles were all perfectly accurate. They were also supposed to appear to be in motion, using the most refined painting techniques to create this illusion, with their body language revealing their emotional reaction to the divine baby. Each figure needed to be unique, yet also part of the group’s collective amazement. He envisioned over 40 characters, including horses, each situated at different points in space and interacting with one another through gesture and gaze. One 16th-century biographer biographer named Gian Paolo Lomazzo described the perfectionism of Leonardo da Vinci by saying that, “he never finished any of the works he began because, so sublime was his idea of art, he saw faults in things that to others seemed miracles.” Unfortunately, in the approximately 38 years between starting The Adoration of the Magi and passing away, Leonardo never came anywhere near to finishing it.

The unrealized potential of Leonardo da Vinci is a disappointment for the millions of people who have admired his work over the past 500 years. Kenneth Clark, for example, wrote that, “It was a variety of employment that Leonardo enjoyed, but which has left posterity the poorer.” In other words, he tried to do too many things while hardly finishing any of them, and this is too bad for the people who lived after him. We can only imagine what this painting could have looked like if the master had finished it himself. The lesson here is that high standards are better than impossible ones. Even an imperfectly finished painting would have been better than the draft we’re left with, which is itself one of the most famous unfinished pieces of art in the world. It would have been closer to perfection if the artist had let go of the absolute need for perfection.

You might not be the reincarnation of Leonardo da Vinci himself, but how many projects have you left unfinished that are in a worse state than had you just finished them as best you can? Life is short and you never know how long you have left to complete your work. It’s better to finish your projects, even imperfectly, than to leave them unfinished just because you’re worried that they can’t ever be good enough.

Select the most promising ideas or drafts from your experimental phase. Then use the rough draft to guide your work. Often a rough draft serves the purpose of intuitively conveying the gist of what you want to accomplish. It might also provide a general framework that you can use to organize all the constituent elements into their proper places. Even though the contents in the draft are mostly replaceable, if you’ve done a good job already in the drunken creativity phase, then it still communicates the overall direction of the project. Your job now is to be empathize with the spirit of the draft, reinforcing the parts that are already good, and finding better ways to express what could be better. Draw dark lines over well-placed light ones or find better anecdotes to convey the message. The important thing is to replace tentative elements with selected ones that better serve the personality and purpose of the project. And the more space and time you’ve taken between creating and refining, the easier it will be to see the project in this new light.

Next, begin to refine the details by repeatedly going over them from different perspectives, incorporating feedback, and always looking for opportunities for improvement. Do the best work you can. Make sure to complete your project with a high standard of craftsmanship, love, and devotion. Put your heart into it. By focusing on quality and making sure to finish what you start, you’ll transform your initial ideas into well-developed, impactful work.

Leonardo da Vinci did exactly this in many of his works. In The Last Supper, for example, he began with countless sketches exploring gestures, facial expressions, and group dynamics before carefully selecting and refining the most powerful compositions into the final mural. His notebooks are filled with rough anatomical sketches and swirling water studies that later informed precise details in paintings like The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. And in Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, he returned decades after starting it, using his deeper understanding of human anatomy to revise the musculature of the neck with astonishing accuracy. His process shows how a loose, intuitive draft—when revisited with time, skill, and insight—can be transformed into something masterful.

The following are some obstacles you can expect during in the sober editing phase:

Emotional Overwhelm

When you’re editing, feelings of stress and anxiety come from the emotional investment you’ve poured into the project. It’s like performing surgery on someone you love. The intensity of your emotions is a testament to how much you care. But instead of resisting this emotional weight, or evading it with distractions and delays, let these feelings ground you into an earnest and sincere mood. Sit with your work as you feel your feelings, channeling this emotional heaviness into focus and gentle workflow. Just like an addict needs to accept his feelings before he can get sober, you need to accept this unpleasant experience as part of the creative process, and continue taking action towards completion. This is the deeper meaning of “edit sober.”

Retaining Authenticity

One of the biggest challenges of editing is eliminating flaws without also erasing your own voice. Especially for a perfectionist, including a personal touch in your work feels more vulnerable than an outright error. Fear of judgment can make you overedit to sterilize the project of any sign that you made it. This is useful in hard sciences, but hardly any other endeavor. Even when you’re trying to convince other people of proven scientific facts, you need soft skills to get them to listen.

The first question to ask is whether the project is a way to express yourself, or whether it’s meant to benefit other people. Either way, the best foundation is to know your art—whether it’s singing, storytelling, making graphs and charts, or whatever. If it’s a matter of simply expressing yourself, then it’s more important to stay centered and secure in yourself than to worry what people think. For example, when you’re singing, too much concern about what other people will think can make you sing tensely. This affects the quality of your voice, and ironically, contributes to the effect you were trying to avoid. If the project is for the benefit of other people, then it’s important to put your heart into delivering results as best you can, from your audiences’ perspective.

Self-Doubt and grief

There is a unique type of grief that comes from finishing a project. It is something like the heartbreak of ending a relationship. The work has occupied your thoughts, shaped your routine, and carried a piece of your identity for some time. Now that it’s suddenly finished, that comes a sense of loss. It’s the end of a chapter. Embrace the bittersweet feeling and be grateful for the journey that has brought you here. It has prepared you for whatever opportunity is coming next.

But for now, it’s time to put your work out there in the world. This is an essential step that will consummate your project. It can come with the fear of being exposed. You might worry that people who know better than you will realize that you’re just a fraud or an amateur. There’s always a temptation to assume that the sinking feeling in your stomach is proof you’re making a mistake. But all it really means is that you’re stepping outside your comfort zone. It’s a natural feeling that comes from vulnerability, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re unprepared; it means you’re growing as a person. So don’t hold back. Put your best work out there for other people to see.

Merge the Apollonian and Dionysian

The phrase, “Write drunk, edit sober” happens to fit nicely with a framework that was used by Friedrich Nietzsche. In his book The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche explains that there were two Greek gods who represented creativity. One was the god of intoxicated creativity, chaos, emotion, and instinct; while the other was the god of sober creativity, order, discipline, and reason. Their names were:

Dionysus, the god of intoxicated creativity, and
Apollo, the creative god of sober creativity

These two gods represent opposite approaches to creativity. They’re meant to cooperate and balance each other, as we see in works of many great masters. The following are two examples:

Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome, exemplified the fusion of science and design to serve humanity. His domes, composed of interlocking triangles, evenly distributed stress to create structures that were both exceptionally strong and remarkably lightweight. Centuries earlier, Leonardo da Vinci had studied the strength of arches, and Fuller extended these principles into three dimensions. Inspired by nature, he analyzed how basic geometric shapes like triangles, circles, and squares evolved into complex, efficient structures such as honeycombs, carbon molecules, soap bubbles, and fractals in crystals and trees. These natural designs taught him how to maximize strength and size while minimizing weight and material use—an approach he called "doing more with less." Fuller applied mathematical precision and engineering principles to adapt these insights into sustainable architecture, drawing detailed plans for optimal structures that could address global needs like housing and resource conservation. By collaborating with architects, builders, and manufacturers, Fuller ensured that his visionary designs were not just theoretical but functional, real-world solutions, aimed at improving the quality of life for as many people as possible.

Salvador Dalí was an eccentric painter known for making the familiar into something surreal. He often made philosophical statements with his dreamlike imagery of seemingly unrelated things. For example, in a painting of a slave market, he positioned the figures in such a way as to outline the face of the philosopher Voltaire. The painting is a statement that Voltaire’s one-sided emphasis on rationalism and materialism were mere slavery of the mind. Like Leonardo, Dalí believed strongly in blending observation with imagination, and incorporating multiple fields of study into his work. But unlike Fuller, his observations were less about the objective world around him, and more about the subjective world of the mind and perception. Dalí also had his own iterative process, called the Paranoic-Critical Method, where he would disassociate from his own mind while observing paintings and other visual objects, and then use his visions as raw material to organize later, using the rational part of his mind. In other words, his works are not entirely random. They actually carry both philosophical depth and visual intrigue because he fully invested both sides of his brain into his work. His legacy reshaped modern art, challenging our conventional assumptions and pushing our imaginations beyond the rational.

Friedrich Nietzsche lamented that the delicate balance between intoxicated and sober creativity had been disrupted in ancient Greece because of the rise of Socratic dialogue. Socrates had assumed that human decisions and beliefs only had value if they could be rationally explained and defended. While this emphasis on logic and critical thinking contributed immensely to philosophy, morality, and science, Nietzsche believed it compromised the world of art and creativity.

Earlier playwriters, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, had woven together emotional intensity, existential chaos, and intellectual structure. They invited audiences to confront the mysteries and contradictions of life without reducing them to neat explanations. However, under Socratic influence, art began to dismiss the importance of emotional and aesthetic resonance in favor of dry, moral reasoning. They became more like sermons that were put into the form of a play as an afterthought. Writers even spoiled the plot by revealing from the beginning what was going to happen, neglecting the instinctual, visceral, and chaotic elements that made earlier art so relatable.

Nietzsche’s lament over the stiffening of Greek drama serves as a timeless warning: when creativity is overly dominated by logic and discipline, it loses its soul. In a similar way, the modern culture of perfectionism suppresses the chaotic side of creativity. As a result, our creativity becomes very flat, boring, and stripped of its raw vitality. That’s why you need to make sure you create space for the wild side of creativity. Dionysian creativity allows your mind to create intuitive connections that will enrich the depth of your thought on any given subject. You will begin to see things in a new light. Embrace this experience as an opportunity for growth and learning. Follow your gut feeling into the darkness of the unknown, with the trust that you might emerge with something of valuable for your project.

For your own creative process, ask yourself: Are you more Dionysian, like Salvador Dalí, thriving on delirium and imagination? Or are you more Apollonian, like Buckminster Fuller, who was rooted in altruism and knowledge? More importantly, consider what your current project—or the particular phase you’re working on—demands! The consummate problem-solver is able to adapt his approach to meet the needs of the moment, embracing the chaos of Dionysus when you need to generate ideas and channeling Apollo’s discipline when it’s time to polish and complete them. By merging these two energies, you can achieve high levels of creativity—just as Leonardo da Vinci did centuries ago.

The Renaisance of your creative process

Learning how to be creative is a kind of therapy for the recovering perfectionist. Too much concern about seeming perfect keeps you playing small, suppressing your creativity in favor of predictability, and imitating established standards without taking risks. You conform, compete, and hide your humanness behind a mask of stereotyped images of success. Tragically, in an attempt to make things perfect, you eliminate any personal touch that says something about you as the artist. You end up trying to look like someone you’re not, losing touch with authentic parts of yourself that could spark real growth and connection.

In a world that celebrates defines perfection by conformity, it’s easy to neglect creative pursuits like learning a new language, picking up an instrument, or writing a book. We get caught up in the notion that if something doesn’t have an immediate payoff, it’s not worth our time. Even if you have creative inclinations, they often fall by the wayside, buried under more “practical obligations.”

But we’re not satisfied working hard for someone else’s profit or power. We’re bored with doing things the same way, especially when they don’t work! We need to learn how to be creative individuals so we can form a vision of the future and pursue it with passion and perseverance. Even if it’s imperfect, doing your best work is a spiritual practice that allows you to solve problems and take charge over the direction of your own life. That’s why overcoming perfectionism and reviving your creativity is often called art therapy. Through creative expression, you tap into parts of yourself that have been suppressed by fear and the pressure to conform, as you show what you’re truly capable of. You break the mold and start fresh.

Take inspiration from great minds like Leonardo da Vinci, who pursued both art and science with a vengeance. He wasn’t afraid to make mistakes, to go back and try again, or to refine his ideas over time. He understood that true mastery is born from an iterative process, and knowing the right time to be meticulous and the right time to be experimental. By following in his footsteps, you can do amazing things. Whether you’ve dreaming of painting, writing, playing an instrument, or even learning to dance, now is the time to start. Pick up that dusty guitar, open the notebook you abandoned months ago, or try speaking a new language with friends. Don’t wait for the perfect time—just start now. Your creative renaissance begins today, as you embrace the journey of creativity, and turn raw ideas into works of lasting significance.

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