Notes from a Cold Bathroom Floor in South Africa

Many years ago, during a brief stopover in Johannesburg on my way to Madagascar, I spent three hours sitting on a bathroom floor.

Why the bathroom? It was winter in the southern hemisphere, and the only heater in my room was located by the sink.

Unable to procure a chair from the lodge I called home that week, I camped out on the floor, laptop on lap, with more than one hundred manuscript pages for my next book strewn around the small room. I put on three shirts and two pairs of socks, and still shivered as I worked through edits and revisions.

My room had only one power outlet, and the heater had requisitioned it. Every hour or so, I stood up, attempted to stretch out the cramps in my legs (bathroom floors not being equipped with ergonomic chairs), and returned to the cold bedroom to leave my laptop charging for ten minutes.

Such a glamorous life! It would all make for a fun photo shoot, with all the layers of clothes and marked-up pages around the floor.

Except … most photo shoots don’t reflect real life.

And most creative work doesn’t look very interesting from the outside. It’s hours of repetition, revision, and occasionally wondering why you started in the first place.

When you’re in the middle of that process, you face a difficult question: How do you know when you’ve done enough?

There are at least two theories about finishing creative work. I like them both in different ways, but they’re also somewhat opposing theories.

The first theory is, essentially, “just get this thing done.”

In the circles I travel in, this is sometimes known as the Seth Godin school of “shipping.” The message is: stop waiting! The mailman is waiting … you must deliver!

I love this perspective, because I know if I wasn’t willing to get things done and move on, I’d never finish anything. In the early years of The Art of Non-Conformity, I never missed a scheduled post. I usually worked ahead, but if I’d ever been in danger of slipping, the backup plan was a post entitled “Here is the post!” with those same words as the body. It never came to that. The point was, there would always, always be a post.

Taken too far, however, this philosophy has a weakness: you can start treating the act of shipping as more important than the quality of what you’re shipping.

You can’t write a book entitled “Here is the book!” with the same thing duplicated for 240 pages. You want to be proud of work like this, and such a thing takes time. It takes hours, hours, and more hours. When you finally finish, you look at it again with fresh eyes and realize … you need to spend more hours. Alas.

The second theory of creative work is to take your time and get it right.

Craft a masterpiece. Invest your sweat and sacrifice to make something beautiful.

As much as I like the “get it out the door” theory, a big part of me is also attracted to the “don’t send it out before it’s ready” theory.

So, which theory is right?

The difference depends on the kind of work. Not every blog post is brilliant or amazing, but I keep plugging along regardless. If it’s not ready when the publication time comes, too bad for me—I queue it up anyway. Done. Moving on.

But in the case of a 70,000-word book manuscript, I feel differently. There’s the addition of commercial pressure, which I feel only mildly with my blog, and the related fact that a lot of other people are working on the book from the publisher’s side. I want to be a good author for them, a good partner in producing something that is truly helpful and inspiring.

The greatest pressure, however, is internal. In the case of my book, I don’t want it to be “good enough,” “not bad,” “decent,” or “nice.” No thanks. Not everyone will like it—but I can live with that. What I can’t live with, as I look through the pages and pages of draft manuscript covered with circles and crossed-out sentences, is the idea that I gave it less than my best.

Editing a manuscript on a cold bathroom floor doesn’t produce photo shoots, and it can hinder your short-term goals. That month I fell behind on a number of other important projects, and stayed behind for a while afterward.

But as much as I hate being behind on things, it was a choice I made deliberately. And so I shivered on the bathroom floor for hours, thinking of different examples, stories, paragraph breaks, and structure. Correcting as many of my plentiful mistakes as possible. Trying to write more clearly. Finding the right mix of challenging readers without going over their heads.

I know the finished product will be far from perfect, no matter how much time I spend. But I want it to be better than good enough. This desire is what brought me to the cold floor, where I kept the heater as close as possible, trying to finish one more page of edits before bed.

Whatever you’re working on, get in the habit of shipping without waiting too long. That’s a more useful lesson than chasing a perfection you’ll never reach. Keep showing up. Finish things. Move on.

But sometimes, the work deserves more of you. Not because it will ever be perfect, or because everyone will appreciate it, but because you want to know you gave it your best. And if that means spending a few more hours on a cold bathroom floor, so be it. Some things are worth getting right.

What are you willing to spend more time getting right?

Whatever it is, I hope you give yourself the time and space to do it well.