Trust the Draft You Almost Deleted

Matthew Gottesman (0:02)

Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at Matt Gottesman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now, let's get into it.

Welcome to episode 920, Trust the Draft You Almost Deleted. We're going to talk about why we are so often wrong about our own work. Why does the work we doubt most often the work that connects? Do you ever have those moments where you're like, I don't know, I think that was maybe the worst recording I ever did, or that's the worst piece I ever wrote, or the presentation that you were maybe preparing, and then you gave the presentation and you leave, and you're like, what did I even just present? Like, was that even good? Things like that, right? Do you ever have those moments?

And it can happen in so many different areas.

I haven't done interviews in a long time in terms of, even when I was consulting, it was more of a referral base. But you know when you interview for something, but it's like your background, like in work or something like that, and you know it well. But it's almost like a transcendent moment where you don't even, it's like you're in a whole other place. You don't even remember, the presentation's over, you created the piece of artwork or your content or whatever, and you're like, I don't know about this. I'm doubting it, right? Let's talk to that. Like what's happening in that? And can we trust the presentation was good? The content you made was good? That the simplicity of the video or the writing or the art or whatever was good? You know, if you make anything, a post, a song, a business idea, an episode, you know, there's these moments. And these moments where like, you know, maybe it's like your finger's like, I'm going to delete this.

Sometimes for whatever reason, you share it anyways. And it's like the one message that everybody like reaches out about us. Like, oh my God, that's exactly what I needed. You know, I'm so glad you posted this. You know, and it reaches everybody that it needed to. And we've talked about this in several other episodes, and I want to talk a little bit further about, you know, how to trust that draft you almost deleted. And I've had this conversation with several friends of mine that are either creators online, like creators within their background or work, you know, but they're obviously also visible online. And they were talking about how there are pieces of their work where they pour, like, it was perfect.

The lighting and the production and like all these things. And then they launch it and they're like, wow, like almost nothing. And then there's other moments where they had something that was so simple, but they were doubting it because they're like, it's too simple. Like, or they're just like, it doesn't, it's missing some things. And they still launched it. They were almost deleting it and they launched it. And it got so highly favored and like so many downloads or so many saves or so many whatever, so many people were reaching out and they're like, why that? And so isn't it funny that it was almost deleted? And thank God they didn't, right? So in this episode, let's explore a lot of this. Like, let's explore, like, why we misjudge what we make and what the doubt is really saying, like what's going on and how to build a practice of sharing before we judge. So first, I want to talk about the delete button moment and what's really happening. And I also want to talk about why we're often the worst judges. You know, I think it's because we're too close to the work, personally, you know, and we're going to always notice more than the people we serve, which is, listen, it's a good thing because you're close to the work. It's something you love. You take it with pride, hopefully, like, you know, you take it with respect and details.

And the things you notice, many others won't. If you have that level of care already, you'll, other people won't notice the things that you do. And even if they do notice, they, they were so far behind you noticing by the time they catch up. Right. Well, let's also talk about why simple isn't small.

You know, simple isn't small. And also what the doubt is actually telling us, why the audience gets a vote in that, in a healthy way, in a healthy way, not the Rick Rubin way where he says, you know, the audience comes second after you for the work, which, you know, he's saying you need to establish a relationship with the work. But the audience gets a vote in terms of, often at times, something really great for the people you serve, you may be doubting, but like, let them have a say of whether it's not even that good because they might actually be the thing that they need to hear.