What if every time we started a new project, we went in with the mindset that it in all likelihood wouldn’t work?

Would it kill our motivation? Lead us to produce a sloppy final product because it was never going to work anyway, so what was the point of trying?

Or would it set us free?

Would we finally be able to create our best, most inspired work, because we’ve already taken our biggest fear — that our efforts would be wasted when our work falls flat — off the table?

If there were no fear of judgment, because they were just crazy ideas to begin with, would we feel a little freer to push the boundaries, experiment wildly, create intuitively, and say our crazy ideas out loud?

If the stats didn’t matter, the revenue, the pageviews, the downloads, would we appreciate the joy of creating for the sake of creating a little more? To show up and say, “Here, I made this” and release it without any hope or expectation as we turn around and go back to work to create something new?

What if we knew before we started, that our work was worth doing even if it fell flat? That there were returns besides acclaim, status, and money that would pay out regardless of the broader reception of the finished product?

Sure, it sounds idyllic. It’s most definitely easier said than done.

But it might be worth trying with each new project, to distance ourselves a little further from the outcome, and do work that’s worth doing simply because it’s worth doing.