Much is Learned in the Making of Things
Clarity doesn’t come before action. It comes from action.
Wright’s Law, sometimes referred to as the learning curve, states that for every cumulative doubling of units produced, costs drop by a consistent percentage. In other words: the more you make, the better you get at making it — and the cheaper, faster, and more efficient the process becomes. This clever law works in individual effort too.
We learn more in the repeated making or doing of the work, than just in the invention or thinking of new ideas.
Real learning happens in doing the reps, not theory
Not to be Captain Obvious here, but learning happens when you practice. Wright’s Law shows that improvements don’t come from having singular breakthrough ideas. Improvements come from actually doing the thing over and over, finding the flaws, refining the process, and getting more skilled with each iteration.
Think of each attempt to craft something as a mini production run. Each time you build something, you discover inefficiencies, better techniques, overlooked dependencies, and customer reactions you couldn’t have predicted in the invention phase.
You can theorize all you want, but actual understanding of where the efficiencies comes from the repeated attempts and doing or making. Cost reductions, speed increases, and product refinements only happen through active production and learning from those cycles.
Making builds organizational wisdom
There’s an old African proverb that says if you want to move fast, go alone, but if you want to go further for longer, go together. Just like an individual learns by doing, organizations and teams build collective intelligence and culture by making things repeatedly, refining them, and compounding that learning into future projects.
“Wright’s Law proves that learning isn’t a thinking exercise — it’s a doing exercise. Every time you make something, you get smarter, faster, and better. Not by sitting in a room thinking harder, but by rolling up your sleeves and shipping something flawed, then making it better.”
Thinking and overthinking
We read the books, we attend the webinars, we fill our notes apps with ideas we’ll never read again. We nod at TED Talks, convinced that if we just think harder, clearer, and more strategically, we’ll finally become smarter, better versions of ourselves. But the truth is that while thinking matters, it’s the application of that thinking that drives learning.
I’m a huge fan of contemplation and daydreaming. It’s where most of my ideas come from. I’ve dreamt up books, products, companies and even documentary movies but it’s the work of writing those books, making those products, assembling the teams and shooting those scenes that turns these things into something I, and others, can learn from.
You can’t learn to cook by licking recipe cards. You can’t learn to ride a bike by reading about gyroscopic forces and balance algorithms. The real magic happens in the mess. In the mistakes. The burnt meal, the wobbly handlebars, the questionable prototypes.
Creation is learning with skin in the game.
When you make something, even something small and absurd like a doodle on a cocktail napkin, you force your brain to translate abstract ideas into reality. And that translation is where the learning happens. Your mistakes get loud. Your half-formed thoughts show up in crayon and glitter, demanding to be cleaned up, reshaped, or thrown in the bin. That’s good.
Confusion is where learning starts
Formal education often misses this point entirely. Schools are packed with brilliant minds taught to regurgitate information but not to build anything with it. The smartest student in the room is often the one brave enough to do something risky in the lab, learn from that, and then make it better. The real geniuses are not the ones with color-coded notes; they’re the ones who ship the ugly first draft.
Even writing this article is an exercise in learning. The first draft was, frankly, awful. But writing forces me to think harder, argue with myself, and find clarity. If I had just sat around contemplating the idea, it would have remained a vague musing floating in the mental ether. Now it’s a thing. And things can be improved.
Think of architects. They don’t learn by imagining buildings; they learn by making models, messing them up, and starting again. Software developers don’t become great by reading API documentation — they write bad code and debug it at 3 a.m. Chefs learn by burning soufflés. Writers learn by writing bad sentences and rewriting them.
If you’re stuck, start making. Think but don’t overthink. Plan but avoid analysis paralysis. Make. Draw it, write it, prototype it, bake it. Watch it flop. Then make it again. The learning happens between attempts, in the quiet humiliation of failure and the spark of understanding that follows.
So, next time you feel stuck or overwhelmed, remember: The universe is a construct of our manifestations. The universe rewards those who roll up their sleeves. Make something. Anything. And watch how much you learn in the process.
