The point of the first draft

I’ll never forget the day in my high school English class when my classmate, who was assigned to critique the first draft of my essay, drew massive “X”s across multiple sections.

I was broken — more specifically, my ego was deflated.

But the feedback turned out to be very useful. Eventually I dropped my ego and applied my classmates input which resulted in a significantly better final paper that I was proud of.

Recently, I had a similar experience after producing the draft of a report in my new job.

It didn’t feel good in the moment to see the ways in which my first draft had fallen short, but then I was reminded of this experience in high school and what the point of a first draft actually is.

The point of the first draft is to start.

The point of the first draft is not to make something perfect. In fact, in many cases it’s going to be inferior compared to what you end up producing in the end.

Despite how it might feel, a bad first draft is actually a great start.

Because then you can get feedback. You can look at the whole thing laid out and start systematically making improvements.

Don’t worry about doing poorly on your first few go arounds, this is what it means to start.

The most important thing is that you start.