Coaching practices for Shitty First Draft Creativity
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Shitty First Draft Creativity, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I freeze before I’ve made a single mark because I’m already measuring it against the polished thing in my head and it falls short
- I freeze at the start because every idea has to be a winner before I’ll even write it down, and the pressure to be brilliant from the first word leaves me staring at nothing, too scared of being dumb to begin.
- I land on the first idea that seems okay and immediately want to run with it and stop there
- I sit down expecting something original to just arrive out of nowhere, and when the blank page stays blank I decide I’m not creative
- A half-formed idea or odd little fragment shows up and I kill it on the spot
Practices that may help
- First-draft permission: produce something deliberately bad on purpose
Commit to writing, sketching, or making the worst version you can imagine — terrible on purpose removes the evaluative stake.
The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice - Deliberately generate bad ideas first
Start with the worst ideas you can think of — bad ideas are faster to generate and reveal hidden assumptions.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Set a volume quota before judging
Commit to a minimum number of drafts or ideas before allowing yourself to evaluate any.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Steal, steal, then remix
Collect the best examples you can find, then combine and mutate them into something new.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Collect everything that resonates — without editing
Build a practice of gathering ideas, images, sounds, and fragments without evaluating whether they are "good enough."
The Creative Act: Rick Rubin’s Approach to Making - Timed drafting sprints
Write for a fixed, short window — speed forces your inner editor offline.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Prototype to think, not to finish
Build or sketch something rough specifically to learn what you actually want.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Separate divergence from convergence sessions
Keep idea generation and idea selection in separate sittings — never mix the modes.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Kill your darlings deliberately
Identify the idea you’re most attached to, then set it aside first.
Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work - Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
Yes — the consistent research finding is that people who produce the most ideas also tend to produce the best ones. Quality is partly a function of quantity: you cannot reliably pick your best work in advance, so generating more output raises the ceiling. The mechanism is well supported in creativity studies, though the exact magnitude depends heavily on domain and task.
Related concerns
- How More Drafts Produce Better Work
Yes — the consistent research finding is that people who produce the most ideas also tend to produce the best ones. Quality is partly a function of quantity: you cannot reliably pick your best work in advance, so generating more output raises the ceiling. The mechanism is well supported in creativity studies, though the exact magnitude depends heavily on domain and task.
- First Draft Bad On Purpose
Commit to writing, sketching, or making the worst version you can imagine — terrible on purpose removes the evaluative stake.
First-draft permission: produce something deliberately bad on purpose
- Quantity Over Quality How More Drafts Produce Better Work During Conflict
Yes — the consistent research finding is that people who produce the most ideas also tend to produce the best ones. Quality is partly a function of quantity: you cannot reliably pick your best work in advance, so generating more output raises the ceiling. The mechanism is well supported in creativity studies, though the exact magnitude depends heavily on domain and task.
- Draft More Write Better
Write for a fixed, short window — speed forces your inner editor offline.
Timed drafting sprints
- How To Stop Overthinking Drafts
Ship a rough version fast to learn what the problem actually is rather than theorizing indefinitely.
Bias toward action over deliberation
- Multiple Drafts
Yes — the consistent research finding is that people who produce the most ideas also tend to produce the best ones. Quality is partly a function of quantity: you cannot reliably pick your best work in advance, so generating more output raises the ceiling. The mechanism is well supported in creativity studies, though the exact magnitude depends heavily on domain and task.
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