[ahimel]

Richard Feynman tells a story of when he was taking a drawing class. The teacher told them they needed to loosen up and not focus so much on the outcome of the drawing. To help with this, she told them to draw for 15 minutes without looking at the paper.

This of course met with a lot of complaint. As they were sketching, there were many mutters of "This is stupid" and "You can't help looking at the paper."

One student declared, "I bet everyone's peeking."

"I'm not." Feynman answered.

There were many scoffs, and once the teacher called time, everyone gathered around Feynman to see if they thought he'd peeked during the exercise.

It immediately became clear that he hadn't; his pencil lead had broken after he'd drawn about two lines, and the rest of his drawing was nothing more than scratches in the paper.

...

What you need to stop doing is thinking that something is only worth doing if it's done perfectly. Did your parents raise you perfectly? Are you still glad they did it?

Did you get straight A's and perfect attendance through all of school? Do you still know more than you did in Kindergarten?

At the end of each drawing, forget about whether it's good or bad. You already know its quality, and it doesn't need any more analysis. Instead, write on the back of the drawing what benefit you got from doing the exercise. Was it relaxing? Did you get to look at a new style? Did you learn something about perspective or shading? Did it allow you to put off doing dishes for 15 minutes? Did it justify buying an Anime that you wanted?

Think about benefits gained instead of focusing on all of the ways it could have been better.