Cringe at your past work

That feeling of embarrassment when you revisit your old work? Chase it.

Ugh.

We all know this feeling.

You come across something of yours from the past. An old creation. A dusty artifact from the attic of your old self.

It could be anything. A drawing. A design. A picture. A snippet of code. An email. A blog post. A video.

It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is the reaction it produces. The cringe.

Ugh… What was I thinking?! This is terrible.

It’s happened to me countless times. It still happens regularly. Every time I see an old design of mine for Swift, a cold email I’d sent to a role model, or even an old social media post — I cringe. I’m irritated by the gaps. All the little mistakes — the typos, the rushed brushstrokes, the misaligned pixels, the poorly written function. And it feels like there’s a million of them.

Ugh…

I used to shy away from this feeling. I’d feel a knot in my stomach and get smaller, almost trying to create physical distance between my past work and my current self. I’d cover it like an unwanted scar or blemish on my skin, always conscious of its existence but forever trying to hide it nonetheless.

But feeling it day after day, year after year — I realized that this feeling is growth.

The cringe is an indicator that you’re now further along in your journey than you were at that time. The old drawing, the “ridiculous” design, and the “terrible” blog post are all visible checkpoints on your path to progress. The widening gap between your old work and your new is only visible because you published your past work.

If you hadn’t been brave enough to try, you would’ve never made it this far.

So now, I err on the side of over-sharing. I hit publish early, and often. I’m chasing this cringe, so I’m creating as many artifacts as I can. I want to put as many markers as I can now so I can look back and feel good about myself in the future. I think you should always find your past work terrible, because if you don’t — you’re likely at the same spot now as you were then.

So regardless of how good of an entrepreneur, writer, designer, builder, or thinker I think I am now...

I hope (for my own sake) that I always cringe at my past work.