I’ve written about this concept before, but I was reminded of it recently and want to take it a step further:
When making pancakes, throw out the first one.
It’s your tester, your draft, your playground. You’re using it to figure out if the pan is at the right temperature, if you’re using enough batter, or if you’ve oiled the pan correctly. It doesn’t matter if it fails—you have a whole bowl of batter still to go.
And as I mentioned last time, this post isn’t really about pancakes, it’s an approach for making anything new. Don’t get too precious about the first version. In fact, be willing to throw it out so you get to the good stuff faster.