There are two broad categories of mistakes: the harmless stumbles that teach you something useful, and the catastrophic ones that teach you a lesson at a hefty price.

I love failing fast and early with many things. Ordering food I don’t like. Trying out a new musical technique and hitting all the wrong notes. Saying something dumb—but forgivable. These are the kinds of mistakes that sting briefly but leave me wiser.

They’re inconsequential, and with a little reflection, I end up learning something about myself.

But there are mistakes you really want to avoid -- the kinds of lessons you'd rather learn from other people's mistakes.

When you're learning to drive a car, you don't need to run it off a cliff to understand that speeding on cliffs isn't the best idea. You don't want to have to crash at an intersection to understand that drunk driving is dangerous. You want all that to be crystal clear before you drive.

The great thing about art is that we can fail upwards. It's not like being a surgeon -- where a mistake could be malpractice. When you're making art, you don't have someone's life in your hands.

You have the freedom to fail and learn from your mistakes.

That's not to discount the social and economic pressures of being an artist. There is vulnerability. There is the risk of being humiliated or wasting time. These are real too.

But there is power in completing your work and moving onto the next piece. Put thought into the art, but don’t overthink it. You will learn the most by seeing how your work lands with people. And the way you do that is by creating, completing, and sharing.

And I get it, failing blindly isn't helpful. If you know you're going to go into a studio recording, do your best to prepare for it. Organize your time, your music, your musicians. Do your best, but don't live in the planning. Get the job done, and you'll be able to see where your preparation served and failed you.

So here's my invitation: find the balance between the low stakes mistakes and the ones you'd rather avoid. Do your best to discover what you need to know beforehand, but move quickly into the realm of action.

We can’t avoid mistakes—but we can choose to make them serve us instead of stopping us.