Design Smarter, Not Harder
Join 11,000+ engaged creatives to know how to get ahead, and stay ahead, in your field.
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When F1 drivers arrive at a new track, they first walk around it. This helps them get a hang of the track and prepare for it accordingly. In every new goal, we should adopt a similar approach: walk around the track. Why? Because it helps us build the skills needed for mastery. Let me explain. The Path to MasteryEvery new pursuit is complex. When you sign up for a new tool, its myriad features could feel overwhelming. When you start exercising at the gym, it’s a task to figure out how to use the equipment. When you begin to learn a new skill, you realize it’s actually a combination of various sub-skills. For instance, leadership is not just about telling your reports what to do. It involves prioritizing, decision-making, communication, and more. When faced with such complexity, many of us fall into a trap: we believe extensive research is the key to success. Not to mention how online platforms make it seductively easy to spend hours researching rather than doing. And we justify such behavior. After all, wouldn't thorough preparation help us get things right the first time? Wrong! No one gets it right in the first try. (If they do, it’s beginner’s luck.) In reality, such perfectionism gets in your way of improvement. It’s like trying to become a chef by watching YouTube videos. Secretly, you also know that you are researching as a proxy to doing the actual task. You want to protect ourselves from the pain of failure. “Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight.” — Brené Brown But in most cases, what we call “failure” simply means you haven’t achieved the expected outcome. So all you have to do is try again. Thus, failure leads to learning, because you are failing forward. That’s why you must walk on the track, which means you must get to the finish line as soon as you can. Each time you finish a workout, get an output from a tool, or complete a project, no matter how scrappy, you fail forward. This is especially true for implementing AI tools in business processes. There are myriad tools, and just as many people telling you, “X tool is the best, or Y is.” Things can get overwhelming to the point that you give up. To make the most of AI tools, it’s important to sprint through the process (like F1 drivers engaging in track walks). And here are three steps I follow to do it for myself. A Gift For YouOur AI x Creative Accelerator Cohort (Cohort #14) starts on 3rd June. As a subscriber to this email list, you get a $150 discount to join it by using this link. In this 3-week hands-on course, you get everything you need to:
... and much more. Check out the course here. (Now... back to the article.) My 3-Step Process to Fail ForwardI’m currently building an AI Content Engine to help me create up to three videos per day from scratch. In the process, I’ve spent hundreds of hours failing forward and enjoyed every minute of it. Here is how I do it (and how you can do it too, for creating high-quality content quickly): 1. ExploreStart with targeted exploration, not endless research. First, I figured out 10 tools to use by asking my professional networks. This approach gave me a starting point rather than drowning in endless options online. I limited this phase to just identifying potential tools without getting lost in feature comparisons or reviews. The goal isn't comprehensive knowledge, but a direction to start experimenting in. 2. ExperimentHands-on experience trumps theoretical understanding every time. My next step is to sign up for the tools, click the most obvious buttons, and get to an outcome. If it's not as expected, I go back and reiterate. Rather than drowning in tutorials or reading documentation first, I approach each tool with curiosity and a willingness to make mistakes. This rapid trial-and-error process teaches me more in one hour than days of passive learning. Your mistakes are your most valuable teachers if you're paying attention. 3. PersonalizeIntegration creates value that isolated tools cannot provide. Now that I know each tool well, I build my tech stack — my Swiss Army Knife for generating high-quality AI videos quickly. I have tools for recording, editing, repurposing, adding subtitles, adding B-roll, enhancing my voice, etc. By understanding each component's strengths and limitations, I've created workflows that maximize efficiency and quality simultaneously. Your personalized system becomes a competitive advantage that others can't easily replicate. What makes this process sustainable is how it naturally maintains my motivation thanks to two factors: speed and iteration. The quicker I get an outcome—any outcome—the faster I learn, refine, and improve. We get bored when we go slow or when we do the same thing on a loop mindlessly. When we fail forward, we remain engaged in the task. We enjoy doing the task for the sake of it. Apply this approach to your own projects using the simplified framework below:
Stick to this process for 2-3 months, and you will make progress that compounds. And if you stick to it for a year, you will become an unrecognizable person. 1 percent growth every day doesn’t just yield 365 percent growth at the end of the year. It compounds to a mammoth 3778 percent! Taking Filmmaking To A Whole New LevelGoogle recently launched Flow: a new filmmaking tool that, in its words, "combines the best of Veo, Imagen and Gemini — built with and for creatives." Plus, it maintains character and visual consistency across clips. Here's a striking demo the company put out. Here's a Google Veo 3 vs Open AI Sora head to head comparison. You be the judge. You can see more about the platform's capabilities here: Talk soon, Sachin and Diana |
Design Smarter, Not Harder
Join 11,000+ engaged creatives to know how to get ahead, and stay ahead, in your field.