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If you’re doing your work properly, you’ll do it at least 2.5 times. The first time you build a document, project, character, sound, whatever it may be, it won’t be great. You’ll probably restart from scratch. The second version, it’s better, but you have to re-iterate half of it. This is normal.

If the thing you’re making is bigger, more complex, or you don’t have the experience building it, the iterations can reach tens and even hundreds. With iteration within iteration. I often see people sad they couldn’t do something right the first time. But it’s normal. It’s fine. It’s correct!

This also means you’re tooling and workflows have to be set up to allow for easy iteration. If it’s only easy to do something the first time, but it’s a pain to change any of it later, then the tool has failed. Iteration is part of all work, so always think of workflows as repeatable instances.