You good? (My bad.)

What is good, and how can you tell if you’ve got it? Creatives weigh in.

Oct 11, 2024

And we’re back. Thanks for your patience while I was busy getting ~~betrothed~~ married. It was wonderful in every way and I was left full of gratitude for all the people in my life who love me very much, as well as those who just kind of tolerate me and have still had to listen to me talk about getting married for months!! You can watch my Instagram Stories—if you care—and I’ll probably do a belabored post on it soon.

In the meantime, let’s dive into a question that’s been on my mind after it came up in one of my digital coffees: “How do you know if you’re good at something?”

The expectation vs. reality of creative careers

We’ve all seen the highlight reels: the designer with the steady stream of viral concert fliers, the writer whose debut novel tops bestseller lists. We’ve read books and listened to talks that told us that our work is important and world-changing. These stories fuel our dreams but often skew our expectations. The reality? Most creative careers are built on a foundation of unseen effort, countless revisions, and yes, a fair share of “bad” work. Good work doesn’t have to be hard, but it often is.

As Willa Köerner writes for Are.na, “It can be hard to find a good job—especially one that aligns with your values, interests, financial needs, family obligations, and (perhaps most importantly) sense of wellbeing. To make it even trickier, most of us start out on a “career track” when we’re young and naive, before we really know what we want out of life.”

Mind the gap

Ira Glass, host of This American Life, shared, “All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.” This gap between our taste and our ability can be frustrating, but that’s also where growth happens.

Take this iconic poster circa 2014 (?), whose creator no longer considers good!

I’m conflating a lot of different things here—comparison, taste gaps, growing pains, iteration, economic realities—but they all speak to this common experience of taking a good long hard look at your work or creative practice and feeling like it’s not where you want it to be. But where is it you wanted to be?

The vulnerability of creation

It’s a popular joke that designers will make something and instantly hate it. Or that as soon as you finish perfecting your portfolio, it’s time to make another. This speaks to two things:

You grow when making the work, making the outcome beneath the new quality bar you emerge with.
You look at work differently once you are preparing to share it with the world.

What looked great while you were jamming on your own, suddenly seems flawed when you’re ready to send it to a client or a friend or the world wide web. Sharing work can be terrifying, but it’s also how we get better.

Feedback, when from the right sources, has the power to illuminate gaps you may not see and help you improve your skills. Depending on who you solicit feedback from, you may also be building a community around your work in the process. Embracing that growth mindset doesn’t mean you won’t feel the sting of criticism. It means you see the value of it despite that. It probably also means you’ve separated at least part of your identity from the work itself. (It was never about you.)

The 10,000 hour rule revisited

The seemingly not infallible Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in any field. While recent studies have debated the exact number, the core principle holds true: mastery requires sustained, deliberate practice.

But not all of us can dedicate 40 hours a week to our craft. Perhaps the key is consistency, not intensity. Even if it’s just an hour a day, that dedicated practice can add up over time. Sometimes the hardest thing is simply making the time.

The recipe for success

If I had to break down the recipe for success in a creative field, it would look something like this:

Talent (10%): That spark of natural ability or inclination.
Hard work (70%): Consistent effort, learning, and improvement.
“Luck” (20%): Being in the right place at the right time—but remember, you can create your own luck.

“Luck” often comes from putting yourself out there, building relationships, and persisting when others might give up. As Seneca says: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

What is good? How do you know if you’ve got it?

This has been my go-to conversation topic for the past week, and as you can imagine I’ve been insufferable. So I extended the question to a bunch of people who I consider to be good. Here’s what they said:

Rachel Yaeger: When you can speak enthusiastically or lovingly on your work, your why, your how and it’s dare I say fun and feeling easy, you’re getting good! I would also add that when you’re really good at what you do you can interact with others by taking feedback and critique gracefully; listening, taking in another person’s POV without jumping at them immediately and becoming defensive.

Shawna X: Good is subjective! But what I consider beyond what’s “good” is style. I think style is one of those things that says more about a person and their authenticity in their work. I can tell when someone is learning or discovering, when someone is jaded or having fun. It all comes through in how they choose to apply themselves in their work.

Julian Alexander: In my practice and in life, good is synonymous with being sufficient. Great is the goal, good is what happens when we fall short. Good has a more positive context when it comes to self-assessment. I view myself as far better than average professionally. However, classifying myself as good acknowledges that there is much more potential to be realized. I will forever be chasing greatness.

Barbara Eldredge: I ask myself: 1. Does the thing successfully do what it needs to do? (evoke emotion, communicate, call to act, etc) —If not sure, ask for feedback 2. Does the thing hold its own against similar things that I KNOW are good? (aka find great examples and compare)

Eric Hu: My criteria for good design is simple. Good design gives more than it takes. As for what makes a designer good, it’s more complicated. If you ask yourself what is considered good, you also need to ask yourself why that question matters to you. And the reasons it matters to you might be more based in fear than any other emotion. Like what would really be different if I told you, you were good? Would you stop designing, thinking you’ve accomplished what you wanted and move to another career? Probably not. Would you be afraid of losing the title of ‘good’ and take less risks with your work? Would you crave being told ‘good’ until nothing feels enough. Before seeking information, it’s a good idea to figure out what you plan to do with that information. For me, this was a hard lesson to learn. Ever since I was young, I wanted to be good so bad that it crushed me and I was never going to be good enough if I kept going down that road. What saved my life was someone much older than I noticed I felt that way. He pulled me aside and said, “I want you to go home at night. Shut the door to your room. Turn the lights off. Look in the mirror, say your name and say you’re a good designer.” He told me not to leave the room until I believed it. I learned a lot about myself that night. It took forever to leave the room because I didn’t believe the words I heard for the longest time and it was never really about those words, there were deeper issues going on. At the same time, I also heard “you’re a good designer” enough to last me the rest of my life—so I could move on to other things. If you’re reading this, we’re already on the same team. Out of all the things in the world that we could do, we chose to do the same thing. You’re good. Please start the rest of your life.

Taylor Levy: hahaha. What’s bad? knowing what’s bad

Gabby Lord: “Good” is clever ideas executed with taste/craft without being a c*nt to other people in the process.

Good (enough) signals for me are: Creating work that has a positive impact (big or small), happy clients, respect from peers and those who work with/for you, making enough money to pay the bills (ideally more)

Good (GOOD) signals for me are: Being happy / fulfilled / sleeping enough while achieving all of the above, investing back into community, dare I say PROUD of the work? It’s a rarity lol

Oscar Dumlao: Here’s something I’ve often measured my own design against: Good is unexpected, yet inevitable. I learned about this as a principle of strong storytelling. Think of a well-executed plot twist. It’s completely surprising when it first hits you. But once it’s revealed, it connects all the dots so perfectly, you wonder how you didn’t see it all along.

Good design feels like this too. It’s unexpected when a design is more clever, more playful, or more simple. And it feels inevitable in that you can’t help but wonder why everyone else didn’t already provide you something as clever, playful, or simple. As a concrete example: It’s surprising to every first-time AirPods owner that you can just open the case near your phone and start using it, with no elaborate Bluetooth pairing dance in settings. Of course, though…shouldn’t every device work this way? Unexpected, but inevitable.

It’s hard to say when you know that you as an individual are good. I’ll try and answer that with respect to the principle above. Achieving the “unexpected” is the easy part—anyone can design something unique. It’s harder to design unique things that also make intuitive sense to others. So, I measure whether I’m good during the design process by looking at the hit rate of how many of the strange lines of thought still land with coworkers in critique. I design almost entirely from weird references and analogies (many a design have originated from inspiration in video game levels, movie scenes, history factoids, childhood memories, pop culture, etc). At every place I’ve worked, colleagues have come to eagerly await whatever insane metaphor I’ll start with, because it usually resolves into a solution that everyone can relate to. If that’s the reaction you start to get instead of furrowed brows when you present something, you’re doing pretty well!

Kevin Twohy: I suspect you’ll get a lot of visually-oriented answers, so just for fun, I’ll give you a completely non-visual take: For any working designer, there’s often a spectrum between leadership and the end user. If you’re working in-house, leadership includes investors and other stakeholders. As an independent designer, the client represents leadership. At the other end, you have the end user who will experience the work.

Skilled, experienced designers have a fluency in understanding what’s really being communicated from both ends of this spectrum. Leadership might say they need X or Y, while users might say they need A or B. The designer’s job is to dig deeper through language, visuals, and an understanding of human nature to figure out what’s truly being asked for. The goal is to find the intersection between what leadership and users want, not in a compromising way, but in a way that makes both parties feel their needs have been captured brilliantly.

Success can be measured by reactions like: “I never knew how to put this into words, but this is exactly what I meant,” from leadership, or “I was skeptical at first, but now this is indispensable to me,” from users. If you can elicit these responses from both sides simultaneously—squaring the circle between leadership/capital/power and the end user—that’s an amazing outcome.

Pedro Sanches: 1. Executing a joyful, elegant solution to multiple, seemingly conflicting needs. 2. When someone surprises you with that type of solution more than once?

Elizabeth Goodspeed

: I think there’s two ways to answer this. The first is more externally facing: I felt confident that I was “good” at graphic design when I started to get regular, unsolicited, freelance inquiries from people I didn’t know personally. Having people hire me based exclusively on the work I had done (mostly by myself!)—not connections, charisma, or anything else—seemed like a sure sign that my work had crossed a certain threshold for quality. (The first year I was able to make a living as a solo freelancer compounded that confirmation as well.)

The other is more internal, and challenges the question a bit inherently, which is that I knew I was good when I no longer *cared* about being good! I find that as I become more confident in my craft, research, ability to bring concept into a solution (etc. etc. for all possible skills that make up a design practice), I’m not really worried as much about external markers of quality. Usually when I have fun working on a project, or when I’m excited about my solution, the work is also perceived as good by other people. So now I just worry about the first thing, and trust that the latter will follow.

Writing is something I’m still sussing out my “goodness” on, since it’s so much newer to me than design work. But, I would say the same general principle applies. Folks continuing to hire me to write for them feels like confirmation of… something… and my own feelings of satisfaction at having pushed or explored an idea to the point where my conclusion is satisfying tends to result in pieces that other people respond to as well.

Jonathan Vingiano: You know you’re good when it starts to feel effortless.

Mike Smith: I think we should define “good” as whatever makes your heart skip a beat when you look at it. I’d say most designers had a moment where they saw, experienced, or heard a thing that truly captivated them. Something that drew them in and made them want to know more. It’s probably why they are a designer today. So I'd say anything that sparks that kind of excitement in you or whoever your design is intended for is good. Doesn’t really matter if someone else hates it. Someone is always going to hate something. Search for good within.

Collin Hughes: it’s more about a feeling. “I have this idea, how would I do it in my way” tbh what satisfaction can anyone gain from knowing “I’m good” beyond social acceptance?

if I can’t see the path in front of me, that tends to be a good indicator I’m actually on the right track, aka “I’m good”

Cameron Koczon: In client services, we’ve started to frame our work as a means to an end. Our work is “good” if it delivers on whatever business outcome we agree upon with the client. Usually, a brand wants to stand out or be seen as a category leader, and we try to pick metrics together to determine how we’ll make that happen. For a big website, there’s always some metrics they care about, like a conversion metric. So for me, “good” is: Do we deliver on that? That’s the low-ego part of our “good.”

The more selfish part is a bit more intangible. For our engineers, designers, and me in a more holistic sense, it’s: Does it meet our own standards? We don’t have great ways of quantifying that. We have some objective measures: Is it accessible? Is it fast? Is it unique? Does it look cool? We typically want something to look cool and unique, feeling like we’re pushing things forward and not just adding to the noise.

If you look at our portfolio—take the Gecko Robotics case study—there are so many cool ideas we came up with that map to that more subjective, slightly more egotistical approach to “good,” where we think, “that looks awesome.” But if you go to their site, a lot of that work isn’t there. So we’re still “good” because the client’s happy, the work was done on time, and they love us, but we’re a bit sold short on what we consider to be best-in-class work. We have benchmarks. Stripe, Aesop, Ramp, Linear—these folks are setting a bar and we want to put sites out there that set a bar. Our work on the Palantir site is probably the best match between delivering on the outcome and being something badass and cool from our perspective.

Mollie Conlee: When something is good, its value is intrinsic and immutable. Goodness is like truth. Good doesn’t need me or anyone else to give approval for it to continue in its goodness. It will be good whether I care about it or not, whether I agree with it or not. It just is.

Zipeng Zhu: “Good” in my practice means a visual solution that’s practical, beautiful, and clever at the same time. Signals like it’s immediately visually intriguing, then there’s a clear idea & a clever concept upon closer look.

Mitchell Kuga: As a writer I think something is good if it feels true—intellectually, physically, emotionally true. Style matters too. You can feel it in your bones when someone is bullshitting, including yourself, but that requires being able to read your own work from a measured distance. I think that’s why reading is so important if you want to become a better writer: it sharpens your bullshit meter and allows you to become a better, truer reader of your own work.

Ben Pieratt: Designs are seeds you plant in your dreams to make them come true. so bad design feels like a bad dream, a series of choices you don’t understand and can’t escape. Good design feels like a lucid dream, like you’re a wizard skillfully conjuring the world around you.

David Hoang

: “Good to me” is execution through similarity of lived practice. It’s forged by being bad and refining until you’re good!

[Some interviews edited for brevity/clarity, some transcribed—any errors are mine.]

Be bad to be good

The truth is, you may never truly know if you’re good. But that uncertainty can be a good thing. It keeps you hungry, keeps you learning. Instead of fixating on being good, focus on being better. Better than you were yesterday, last month, last year. Celebrate small victories. Learn from failures. And keep going. After all, the only way to become good at something is to start doing it.

What’s your take? How do you measure “good” in your work? How do you know when you’re there? Let me know what you think.