Show Your Work Early—Even the 'Ugly' Parts—for Fast, Low-Pain Feedback

You might feel nervous showing work before it’s polished—most of us worry that rough drafts make us look careless or unprepared. But here’s a lesson many creative professionals learn the hard way: the pain of changing direction is lowest when you haven’t invested too much in what you’ve built. Waiting for perfection before revealing your ideas is actually riskier, because it locks in your thinking and discourages honest, early feedback.

Remember the time you poured weeks into a major project, only to discover that the key assumption was off, and rework became exhausting and demoralizing? What if you’d shown that first sketch or wireframe—crooked lines, messy text and all—to your team or a trusted user right away? You could have learned what truly mattered and tossed out what didn’t, with no sense of loss.

Consider athletes who videotape practice, watching back awkward, unrehearsed moments, learning and adjusting each time. Or writers in a workshop, reading rough chapters aloud before anyone worries about punctuation. By getting feedback while things are ‘ugly,’ you stay flexible, less attached, and more open to meaningful change.

Psychologically, this taps into the principle of “sunk cost” avoidance and affirms rapid prototyping science: the sooner you get outside perspectives, the less resistance you’ll feel to pivoting—and the better your result will be.

Push through those worries of embarrassment and share your next rough sketch, plan, or draft with someone whose opinion you trust. Ask for frank feedback, and listen with curiosity, not defensiveness. Use what you learn to revise quickly, knowing you’ve lost little if you need to scrap or shift direction. Keep repeating this process for every major iteration, focusing more on learning and less on polish. By making revision and feedback a normal, early habit, you'll build solutions that hit the mark—without the sting of wasted effort. Give it a try at your next opportunity.