The Art of Making Sh!t Up

INTRODUCTION

Listen, we all make shit up to a degree. Call it testing, iterating, innovation, ideation, hypothesis. It all boils down to the same thing: We are making shit up as we go and figuring it out from there. At its worst, it can make us feel like frauds. The fear that someone will call us on our bullshit and we will be exposed for the uneducated, untalented charlatans we are can stop us in our tracks, holding our desire and ability to do something new and different and meaningful hostage.

At its best, it is the truest form of intellectual freedom. Creating something from nothing, free of judgment or even the expectation of results. Originality and innovation blossoms from deep in the recesses of the mind, not because some people have the magical creative gene, but because they have overcome the fear of judgment of others and themselves. As a poet once said, “To make shit up one first has to not give a shit” (no poet ever said such a thing).

So the question is, how do we use this thing that we all do for fun and profit? How do we take this much‐maligned concept, often correlated with the idea of being unprepared and undisciplined and turn the concept on its head? After all, if nobody ever made shit up, nothing would ever exist.

Let's all come to an agreement here, shall we? It will make this whole thing easier as we continue. Making shit up is a skill. It may be a skill that you do not currently recognize or appreciate, like being able to whistle through your nose or ...