Enough with the Best-Practice Shaming
We need to learn from five specific monkeys.
(Here you are, going about your day, probably thinking you want to learn from all the monkeys. Silly human.)
Five monkeys are sitting in a cage at the zoo: Fluffy, Duffy, Scruffy, Muffy, and Sam. One day, the zookeeper places a ladder in the middle of their habitat. At the top, she places a few bananas. Naturally, one intrepid monkey (probably Sam) decides to climb the ladder and grab the reward, but right before he reaches the top, the zookeeper comes sprinting over with a hose and blasts all five monkeys with icy water.
Shaken but not broken, feisty little Sam tries again. The zookeeper instantly sprays Sam again—along with all the others.
The monkeys dry themselves off and grumble about the water and the ladder and the economy, and that's when Fluffy decides it's her turn. She starts climbing and, sure enough, the zookeeper comes running back with the hose and sprays all five of furry friends. They hoot and holler and complain about gas prices, and now it's Duffy's turn. WHOOSH goes the hose. Then Scruffy. WHOOSH. Then Muffy. WHOOSH. Then the ever-determined Sam decides he's had enough of the water and the zookeeper and the crazy cost of eggs and the housing shortage, and he goes sprinting towards the ladder once more.
But then a funny thing happens.
All the other monkeys grab Sam and yank him down off the ladder. The zookeeper doesn't need to budge. The monkeys stopped Sam themselves.
Muffy, ever the opportunist, sees her chance while Sam shouts sat the others. (SO Muffy, right?) Now she starts climbing the ladder. But then all the others pull her off and start whacking her on her head.
Then an even funnier thing happens.
The next day, the zookeeper returns, but instead of dragging a hose, he's carrying a new monkey. He removes Fluffy from the cage and drops Larry in her place. After saying hello and voicing his opinions on gerrymandering, Larry spots the ladder and the bananas. He starts to climb, but before he can reach the third step, all the others tackle him to the ground and start wailing on him and screeching.
Over the next few days, the zookeeper swaps out each of the original five monkeys, one by one. Naturally, each new monkey tries to climb the ladder to get the bananas, but every time they do, all the other monkeys attack the new one.
By the end of the month, none of the original five monkeys remain. None of the current crew has ever been sprayed by the hose. But each and every time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all of them pull him down and beat him up. And why?
Because that's how we do things around here.
* * *
Creativity is a funny thing. You live a life and build a career where stagnation and the status quo become your direct enemies. Entrenched behavior and a fixation on "how we do things around here" become walls to scale—or obliterate. Maybe you're like me and actively shout about that stuff, or maybe you quietly do good work, but regardless, to be creative is by definition to challenge the status quo. Because being creative requires two things: trial and error.
You have an idea, wish to solve a problem, imagine something interesting, and so you try it. In trying it, you learn better than you ever could in theory before taking any action. In learning, you modify your attempt or future versions, thus getting better. Extrapolate that out far enough, and people might even declare that you're innovative, a lead, a visionary ... or just call you creative.
Everywhere you go, you're running the same equation in your work. Creativity = repetition + reinvention, over time.
You try, you learn, you try again but differently. Over and over again.
This is the monkey's worst nightmare. You keep climbing the ladder. You keep refusing their demands to come down. You reject that the way we do things around here make any sense at all. I mean, can they even explain WHY we do things that way? Hardly.
Through the act of trial and error is where you find all rewards, all the things you need to stand out and do work that moves people: you develop your personal style and tone of voice; you learn what you were really trying to say all along and how you should say it so it resonates; you discover big new pieces and tiny but magical wrinkles to add into the work. Everything you and I want from our work is found through the act of creating. Which is the act of trial and error.
But increasingly on the internet, more and more people seem to love discouraging us to stop trying. And they'll be damned if they tolerate your errors. Heck no.
Recently, I've started investing more in video. Already, I've gone through a ton of trial and error, with a handful of things really working for me so far, like short, emotional clips on LinkedIn (a very Jay-way to show up in this world), along with my behind-the-scenes series taking you inside my process, and even a coaching call I shared publicly, with more on the way.
Time and time again, whether publicly or privately, people see these experiments of mine and begin to discourage the trial and error process. In short, they best-practice me to death.
I didn't caption things the right way. I didn't open the video the right way. I didn't use the right technique here or there. Did I know there's this app which can do this part or that part? Did I hear about the algorithm change which rewards THIS kind of format instead of THAT one?
It's like they have some kind of monkey-sense that tingles anytime someone posts a video that isn't there precise idea of the "right" way. They run over, giddy. They get to share the best practices they know with you. But that sharing feels more like bludgeoning. I'm trying to fill myself with oxygen from my creative process, and they're running over carrying razor blades.
Enough.
Nobody has never "best practiced" their way to anything exceptional.
Look, sometimes, I appreciate their input. (The word "sometimes" was written in size Earth font, but your screen may be unable to show that.) Mostly, I just get annoyed. They're not the monkeys who were initially blasted with water. They're 12 generations later, declaring they know for sure how something must be done. But why?
Because reasons.
Because that's what works.
Because that's how we do things around here.
It's mansplaining but gender neutral and for marketers.
It's marsplaining.
I don't need to be marsplained. Best practices are just average practices, and I am uninterested in being average. Aren't you?
I'm so uninterested in average pratices as to be bored by their evangelists. I'm no longer stressed being told I'm "doing it wrong." I'm just annoyed. Shoo, fly. Don't bother me.
The Best Practice Cycle Has Entered Hyperdrive
When I started my career, the term "content marketing" was barely a thing (he writes, stepping outside to tell local kids to get off his lawn). Back in those days (he says, pulling his khakis above his navel), a best practice would take shape slowly, only after a little while of people doing something a certain way and reporting back positive results. As with today, best practices were really average practices. They were the table stakes approaches, but as we know, even that is a challenge in many pockets of the working world.
After a few years of this content marketing thing being around, I saw best practices forming at a faster rate. Sometimes, that was due to technology's rate of change. Mostly, however, it was due to a few influential voices or brands publishing their own tactics as THE tactics to try. For example, when I briefly worked at HubSpot as head of content, I arrived pretty alarmed that the team would write about a single tactic or even a series of successful attempts as if it was clearly THE best way for ALL to do that thing. "The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing" sounds a lot better than "A Suggested Thing to Try Based on 12 Attempts of Ours."
So the rise of advice content meant best practices no longer calcified like crystals deep underground: slowly but in a way that felt firm. Instead, starting around 2012 or 2013, they formed like the icicles currently hanging off my house: overnight.
(Spoiler alert: they also melted away just as fast.)
Fast-forward to today, and best practices aren't like gems hardened into form under ground or even ice crackling and clinging to my roof. They're more like ... cheap plastic trinkets my kids bring home from birthday parties. Maybe they sit on the counter for a weekend, or maybe I make the decision immediately, but really, they're trash-in-waiting. Best practices, which were always really average practices, now rise based on averaging out just a handful of popular names and influencers and how they do things, or else a fleeting moment where someone declares they know what works according to a social media algorithm.
Trash in waiting.
So when you do something different, not to be a rebel (though maybe) but to LEARN and to embrace creativity for what it actually IS? Hoo boy, here come a bunch of monkeys to drag you down. Except they aren't the original five. They've lost the script entirely. They're not rooted in firsthand experience or even first principles. They're just eager to tell you how we do things around here.
In 2018, I wrote a book about my frustrations with our overreliance on alleged best practices. I called it Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work. Because finding best practices isn't the goal. Finding the best approach for you is. So how do you make better choices for YOU, regardless of the general advice out there?
I think the lessons of the book may be even more important today, as more and more monkeys come rushing at you each and every time you attempt to try anything new or different. Trial and error is a forgotten art form, and how dare you even attempt things without first researching the CORRECT way to do those things for 7 months?
They rush you, best practicing you to death, because it's their way of feeling part of the tribe, their way of saying to others and to you, "I have value. I am worthy. Because I have the correct answer." Then they tackle you off the ladder with it and beat you over the head with it.
They do it with so much confidence, too, that if you didn't know any better or if you already brought with you any doubts, you'd be excused for believing them. So maybe you stop the work. Or maybe you start doing it their way, receding to the middle of the crowd, allowing your work to become average. The monkeys are so loud and so self-assured in how right they are, it makes it hard to even take their word as useful input or data points. It turns out Dunning and Kruger were really onto something after all.
And look, even broken clocks are right twice a day, but for the other 1,438 minutes, they're unhelpful.
Everything I create publicly is meant to push you towards creating something better. I want you to make meaningful things, to craft meaningful ideas, to develop meaning messaging and speeches, and to stand out easier and resonate deeper on the power of your ideas, not the volume of your marketing. But to do that, to develop your premise and your IP and craft ideas into something, means pressure testing things. A lot. It means aerating your thinking. It means using writing AS thinking.
It means trial and error. My message doesn't stick if we're all afraid of trying stuff, failing, and trying again. My work doesn't make a difference if we're convinced the answers come from some set of absolutes, some rules we find "out there" instead of (I'm tapping you on your temple now) in here.
My request of you, today and always, is to ignore the monkeys. They don't know what they're doing or saying. Not really.
The good news is, they aren't physically grabbing you. It's a mental and emotional friction they provide. That doesn't make it any less real or any less difficult to defeat. But we must. I see too many people who never start shipping their ideas into the world for fear of the monkeys tackling them. I see to many who ask me and others like me what the "right way" of doing something is. (Your way, I reply.) I see too much confidence placed upon people who have built a social following as if that's any signal whatsoever that they've built a good business or learned a craft other than how to build a social media following. I have even watched people well on their way towards reaching those beautiful bananas start to decide that, since their first few steps didn't get them the fruit, they should stop voluntarily. It must be them. It must not be worth it.
That breaks my heart.
Creativity = repetition + reinvention, over time.
This work is trial and error. But we exist in an era where that's discouraged. People don't like seeing you try, and more rapidly than ever, they want to correct your errors. When your work requires you to show up publicly too, as yours and mine does, this can even make us feel too vulnerable, threatened, or exposed to persist. We feel tackled to the ground, beaten down.
I'm begging you to ignore the monkeys. Get back up, and get back on the ladder.
Keep climbing.