One of the greatest takes on creativity that I’ve heard in a while was the talk by Ira Glass on what he called the Taste/Talent Gap.

The basic premise is that creatives in all mediums find that their ability to identify quality and what makes good work develops at a different rate than our ability to produce what we want to produce.

This is an important concept to really wrap our minds around because it can be a very frustrating and demoralizing time “why can’t I do it” is often a dominant thought. In this time we also start to gain access to the masters of our craft either in person or through their work. And of course, as masters of the craft, they make it look so easy and effortless.

The key of course is a combination of patience and persistence. Pushing through and getting the practice in.

In the end, I think that Ira describes the idea best and you can listen to that here:

Have you experienced this phenomenon? How did you deal with the feelings?