Toning Up vs. Toning Down

You begin work on a project, and you can approach it two ways:

1) Play Small, Tone Up Later. Start measured and reserved, thinking you’ll spice things up as the project unfolds.

2) Play Bold, Tone Down Later. Bring your fullest expression early, take creative risks, and push boundaries. Sand off rough edges once the draft is done.

Both are well-intentioned, hoping to strike the perfect balance of groundbreaking and practical. Seems like either could work just fine.

Not true.

When you play small first (option 1), you’re constantly second-guessing and self-editing. You rationalize each creative compromise and talk yourself out of boldness. You kick the can of inventiveness down the road to some future moment when you’ll regain your mojo.

But that moment almost never arrives.

By the end of the project, you’re tired and ready to move on. You’ve already convinced yourself the idea is fine. The lift of spicing it up now is 100x harder, so you end up accepting mediocrity.

When you play bold first (option 2), the experience is completely different. Yes, it’s a little uncomfortable to start with your fullest expression. But it gets easier as you go.

You give yourself permission to play big, provoking the status quo instead of complying with it. As the project moves forward, your inventiveness accelerates and your creative momentum becomes unstoppable.

You reach the end of the first draft feeling alive with expression. After suspending criticism during the creative phase, you can then go back to sand off any rough edges.

Toning down is far easier than toning up. The gravitational pull of caution makes toning up extraordinarily difficult — you’re trying to inject life into something that was born safe. Toning down is just craft. You’re preserving the creative integrity of bold work while refining it for the real world.

I’m learning this firsthand as I write my next book, Co-Flow: The Science and Soul of Creative Collaboration. I started the first couple of chapters playing small, planning to tone up later. When I recognized what was happening, I made a deliberate choice to do the opposite — play bold and tone down later if needed.

We all have a tendency to embrace the first strategy because it feels responsible. But the second one is by far the better choice.

Next time you’re starting a project that matters, bring your fullest expression early. You can always tone down later — but you can’t easily recover what you never had the courage to put on the page.