when you work in a creative field for a
living especially if you work with other
people a question that comes up a lot is
how good is good enough when can we stop
calling this thing a work in progress
and put it out into the world to find
the answer you need to know the trinity
of quality one how good your work
actually is two how good you think it is
and three how good you want it to be so
the first part of the trinity is the
actual quality itself how good is your
thing on an absolute scale how
entertaining is it how funny how well
edited how accurate is the science how
good is the lighting the resolution etc
some measures of quality are fairly
objective such as the accuracy of color
reproduction
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or having sound levels in the audible
range of human hearing or how correctly
you portray a technical idea and there
are some less objective measures such as
is the composition pleasing or is the
narrator too snarky or is this just what
i needed to brighten my day any creation
whether a video a piece of art a news
article or a meal will have different
levels of quality on different axes a
movie might have carefully designed
lighting high resolution imagery
painstaking sound design and mixing
amazing visual effects but the story
might still be junk internet videos
historically have lower quality sound
and visuals but the content of the video
and the story and editing and
personality might all be high quality so
the overall quality of something will be
affected by how strongly you weigh the
importance of the different possible
axes whether you care more about humor
or scientific accuracy or beautiful
composition but we're going to focus on
the quality of each axis independently
and we'll pretend that quality is an
absolute property of the video itself
independent of anyone's personal
viewpoint personal viewpoints are where
the second part of the trinity comes in
taste also known as preference if
quality is where you are taste is the
target where you want your creation to
be on the quality axis maybe you're what
we call a perfectionist and want the
quality to be as high as possible on
every single possible axis maybe you
care a lot about scientific accuracy and
clarity of communication but are fine
with sloppy stick figure drawings hands
with chapped skin and no sound effects
or maybe you just want to make as many
videos as quickly as possible taste is
personal though there are some somewhat
universal human tastes related to how
our eyes and ears and brains process
images and sound and there are also some
broad culturally learned tastes that
have to do with the media landscape you
grew up in but whatever you want that's
fine that's your taste it's your target
so quality represents how good our video
actually is on various different axes
and taste gives us the target how good
we want it to be on each of those axes
you might think the next step is to
figure out how to reach our targets from
where we are but focusing on how to make
something good skips over a more
important and fundamentally useful skill
how good you are at telling whether
something is good because while in many
fields or industries there are sometimes
rules of thumb or best practices for
making things good even though sometimes
fail or need to be broken or you find
yourself in a new creative situation
that the rule of thumb doesn't say
anything about and a lot of times even
if you know something is good you don't
necessarily know why it's good which
makes it hard to reproduce its goodness
and that's why we need the third and
most underappreciated part of the
trinity discernment discernment is how
well you can perceive quality how
accurately and reliably you can tell how
good something is if quality is where
you actually are and taste is where you
want to be then discernment is how
accurately you know where you are it's
the size of that blue circle of
uncertainty on your gps being discerning
or not is essentially the difference
between perceiving something on a scale
of one to five one to ten one to a
hundred or whatever if i'm a stick
figure connoisseur and you're not you
might say this stick figure is a perfect
four out of four well i'd say it's a
pretty good eight out of ten both of
which would be totally reasonable for us
to say but if our target stick figure
quality is here then we're going to
disagree on whether or not we're there
yet because on your scale we are and on
my scale we're not if we don't realize
this is a difference in discernment you
might think i'm nitpicking and want
something better than perfection while i
might think you secretly lowered your
standards discernment is important
because you want to know when you reach
your target and you definitely don't
want to think you've reached the target
when you haven't
of course maybe there really is no such
thing as an intrinsic quality to discern
and maybe our disagreement really is
just a difference in taste but i think
that's just a confusion while it's true
that taste and discernment are linked
you know like after learning to discern
the difference between different kinds
of hot chocolate you might develop a
taste for one kind over others so
improving your discernment leads you to
change your taste but it's also possible
to be discerning without letting it
affect your taste like how a writer can
know about and still ignore general
concepts about prepositions and not
using them to end sentences with i mean
like how a writer can know the practice
of not ending sentences with
prepositions but still decide it's a
place worth going to is this a hill i'll
die on is it something i'll fight you
over or is it grammar i know nothing
about
the point is there's often an absolute
underlying truth does the sentence end
in a preposition or not is the note in
tune or not discernment of that truth is
a real skill and the more discerning you
are the better you can decide what level
of quality is appropriate for what
circumstance pairing different hot
chocolates with different cookies or
different cameras with different
projects what's more improving your
discernment abilities is critical to
improving the consistency of the quality
of your creative work because if you
can't reliably tell whether or not
something's good how can you make sure
it is however good you want it to be
you'll just be fumbling around in the
dark this is all to say discernment and
taste are indeed different and
pretending they aren't or confusing them
can cause problems especially when you
work with other people in fact there are
three different ways that discernment
and taste can combine to cause problems
first if one person is much better at
discerning the level of quality than the
other then you can be aiming for the
same creative target but one person will
think you've arrived and the other will
think you have a long way to go we might
both want a painting to be hung level
and centered on the wall and i think it
is level while you can tell it's
slightly lopsided
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on the other hand if two people have the
same discernment capacity but different
tastes that is different creative
targets then they'll also disagree on
whether or not they've reached the
target even if they agree on where they
are like maybe we both can tell that the
painting isn't level but it doesn't
bother me as much i think this is the
most common source of creative
disagreement where two people just have
different standards or goals but it's
also incredibly common for people to
think they're disagreeing on taste when
they actually have different capacities
to discern
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and last sometimes you have both
differing discernment capacities and
differing targets maybe one person is
more discerning about the lighting of a
scene and they also care more about
making sure the lighting is perfect when
it comes to the question of how good is
good enough so much of the time people
focus on the taste aspect how good you
want something to be without realizing
that discernment plays a huge role in
determining whether or not you think
you've achieved your target and
therefore whether or not you actually
have so remember the trinity of quality
quality is how good it is taste is how
good you want it to be and discernment
is how good you are at knowing the
difference
okay so assuming that you want to
improve your quality taste and
discernment of science and mathematics
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