Well Begun is Half Done

I don’t know where we are going, but I know exactly how to get there. 
- Renias Mhlongo

Beginning well is only the second-most important part of beginning. The most important part of beginning is to simply...begin!

Any beginning will get you where you want to go faster than no beginning, and setting out in the wrong direction will allow you to discover the right direction faster, and more definitively than just sitting around endlessly pondering the challenges before you set out.

The greatest impediment to taking that first step in any direction is that it feels so weighted with commitment—the first word to crack the pure possibility of an empty page, the first brush stroke on a blank canvas, the first notes of a melody. These initial gestures seem to determine everything that comes after, narrowing options, committing you to a direction before you have any real notion of where you want to go. With such pressure, how do you get started on a journey with a destination that will only be known upon arrival?

By learning to trust in the process, and keeping things simple to begin with.

In architecture school, we were often told to slow down and not jump to conclusions. We were cautioned to step gingerly and incrementally into a project, gathering and analyzing information before forming hypotheses, and then testing myriad optional and tentative ways of deploying that information before ever really allowing ourselves to imagine this nebulous cloud of factors coalescing into anything resembling a piece of architecture. And that was entirely appropriate in an academic setting, where the entire point was not so much making architecture as breaking down facile preconceptions, and learning how to think about making architecture.

While it may sound like the antithesis of simply beginning, getting comfortable in that theoretical fog was actually effective training for what would prove to be most valuable and rewarded in the rough and tumble of being a working architect: the ability to jump to conclusions; the development of a robust heuristic sensibility—or rather, rules of thumb that allow for quick, effective, broad-brush decision-making. And perhaps the most important use of heuristics is triage—deciding on the front end of a project which options are not worth pursuing.

While working a stint at a large commercial development firm, my partner and I were told by the execs there that our job was to be deal killers. He said all developers were deal junkies:  they’d fall in love with some idea and hang on to it long after it should’ve become apparent that it wasn’t going to fly, squandering precious resources in the pursuit. It was our job to stress-test it as quickly and efficiently as possible, and if it wasn’t a winner to prove it out with dispatch, so everyone could move on to something with greater profit potential.

Beginning a design project well requires a ruthless evaluation of its potential (beyond profit alone) to somewhat less tangible, but perhaps more gratifying aesthetic, functional, and experiential ends. Presented with any given project type, budget, schedule, client profile, site, current market conditions, and availability of expertise and resources—a lead designer must be able to quickly rule out a majority of the directions a less experienced designer may be tempted to explore. This dismissal may strike the junior designer as insensitivity to the true potential of a project and a failure of nerve to push the boundaries of a been-there, done-that formulaic design solution.

But what this initial act of discrimination provides for the design team is the precious breathing room a project requires to possibly achieve something great and unforeseen—or at the very least to be the most it might be under the circumstances.

By definition, achieving something extraordinary is rare and difficult. We all want to do it, but it won’t be accomplished by going for broke. It will happen, if at all, by developing a disciplined approach to your work, a sensitivity to the variable boundaries of the possible, patiently honing your skills and giving each project its due. Great work happens in the context of consistently good work over a long period of time.

Ultimately, what is rare and difficult is not any particular isolated effort, but rather the patience and discipline required to apply oneself over time, with consistent attention and care, to all the ordinary things that make up the work at hand.

“What this initial act of discrimination provides for the design team is the precious breathing room a project requires to possibly achieve something great and unforeseen.”