200,000 Bad Drawings

The father of animation legend Chuck Jones tried and failed at many different types of start-up businesses. Each time he launched a new business venture, he would buy stationery and pencils with the company name and logo on them. When the business eventually failed, he’d give the papers and pencils to Chuck and his siblings with instructions to use them up as fast as they could. The Jones children used the supplies to draw. Constantly.

Later in life, Chuck attended art school and had a professor who told the class that they each had 100,000 bad drawings in them that they must first get past before they could possibly draw anything worthwhile.

Imagine the relief Chuck Jones felt in knowing that we was well past the 200,000 mark because he helped use up all of his father’s stationery by drawing with his siblings.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Outliers, he writes of the 10,000 hours of practice required by an individual to become an expert in any area, but…

What if you put in 20,000 hours?