As a professional coach and facilitator, I sit with people as they sense-make the relationship between their inner world and outer circumstances, and I can tell you a good deal of us are walking around feeling the pressure to be further along than we honestly are. To know what we want before we've had time to find out. To skip the long hours with the marble — the not-knowing, the sensing, the waiting — because the world wants the statue, not the studio.

It makes sense. Think of all the models we have for how to build something: figure out what you want to do first, validate the idea, refine it, then release it polished with a great marketing campaign. I'm not against polish. And I've seen too many beautiful possibilities die in the validation phase over polish.

The experiments that have worked best in my life are the ones I've let stay experiments for a looooong time.

I have a little square of knitted fabric. About three inches across, in a muddy not-quite-anything red. It sits on a shelf in my craft room, in a pink woven bucket no one ever looks into. And I've kept it for years.