One of the big worries that we have when we’re making plans for our new year is how can I get this right? Whether it is an idea for a business or you just asking the boss for more responsibility, we make excuses to put off doing the hard stuff.
When we try something new, our brain loves to go into overdrive and sabotage all the ideas that we come upon. It gives us every excuse we possibly could think of as to why it is better for us to just sit on the couch and watch television than to go outside and do something new.
One of the biggest excuses that it comes up with is that you’ve gotta get everything just right. I get it. We are raised in school that we have to get 100% on everything. If we get below 70% all of a sudden we’re gonna be digging ditches for the rest of our life. Our parents are going to be ashamed of us. We’re never going to find happiness. All because we didn’t get it perfect.
This sense of perfection is what kept me from doing a blog 10 years ago. The sense of having to get the writing down to the art and make sure that everything can be diagram perfectly was one of the biggest weights on my shoulders for the longest time.
Then I heard Darren Rowse explain that you won’t have a grammar teacher come along and all of a sudden bleed all over your blog post. You don’t have to be perfect. And that opened a door to a world of possibilities. All because suddenly I didn’t have to aim for “perfect”. I could aim for “pretty good”. I realize that I’m at, “all right”, and that is OK.
Why we procrastinate
So why do we procrastinate? What is it about perfection that keeps us out of the world of possibilities? Why do so many of us think we have to get everything just right before we hit the publish button? Do we believe that if we are not perfect nobody will read it? If you think that’s true then look at Bob Dylan. The dude can’t carry a tune in a paper bag and still makes a name for himself. Is that because he invented singing? No but because he believed in what he was doing.
We procrastinate as a means of keeping us small. Our mind comes up with all these wonderful, beautiful, incredibly talented, and ingenious ideas as to why we need to sit on a couch to stay safe and warm. Because if we do something weird, wild, and out of the ordinary, we might die. Sounds like a good reason to stay safe on the couch, huh? But how true is that?
Perfection is just a fancy procrastination
When we are talking about perfection, we are just talking about procrastination with a bunch of extra steps. Because we will make a logo and then create a different logo. Will then delete that logo and create an alternative to the first logo with elements of the second logo. And then we’ll reverse that and we will spend weeks if not months on something we believe is highly important, but does not matter. The logo is honestly the last thing you need to worry about when you’re starting up a business.
What you really need to work on is a minimum viable product. Do you have something you can truly sell?
The vast majority of people the answer is no we’re busy trying to put logos and business cards together. We have a basic idea of what we want to accomplish, but we’re so distracted by doing all the little busy work that we don’t take the time to be productive.
It’s you being busy, not Productive
You see it’s easy to be busy. There are 1000 things you can do and not produce what’s needed to be done. We all know that one guy at the office who was always moving around always doing something, but he’s always behind on his projects. When it comes to our dreams and our goals, we are that guy. We would rather work on logos and websites and business cards instead of getting out and talking to people, letting them know what we have to sell, and see if our product can help them.
Doing all the busy stuff is easy. But doing all the busy stuff is just spinning your wheels. Making a lot of noise, throwing around a lot of mud and dirt and filth, but you ain’t getting very far forward.
How can you be more productive? What is needed to actually move you forward to your goal? That’s the big hard question. And the sad part of that is a lot of times you think you’re being productive until you step back and realize you haven’t made a sale in four months. That’s you being busy and not being productive.
Gives you a weak excuse
Perfectionism also allows you to have a very weak excuse. Well, I’ve got to get this sales page written out to where it sounds just right.
Why?
Because if I don’t, my customers won’t take me seriously.
Are you sure about that?
Yes, do you see any customers right now?
Have you gone out and told people that you’re in business?
No, because I’m getting my website done first.
How are you going to sell to your customers if you don’t know what they’re looking for?
You say we could keep going on and diving deeper into the excuses, but there’s always a counter for the excuse of perfectionism. Because you could launch it as it is and make adjustments later. Simply because when you first start out, no one‘s gonna know that your website exists
Yet, if you hit publish, you run the chance of people seeing that and honestly, most people don’t care about a typo here and there. Yes, you will get the occasional spelling know-it-all-all, but they are rare. I find more spelling mistakes after I publish than I ever find them before I publish
It’s just an indulgent thought
Feeling that you have to get the project done just right is just a means of buffering against the possibility that you may fail. As if failing is a bad thing. To let your mind run in circles of I have to be perfect is exactly what your mind wants to do so you don’t have to run the chance of being embarrassed.
Perfectionism does not help you in any way. It does not move you forward. It does not move you backward. It keeps you in the same spot. It gives you the excuse of why you haven’t gotten a sale yet. Well because I have to get this website done first. No, you have to get the website done first so that you don’t have to face the scary part of actually making a sale.
Yes, talking to people is actually the scary part. That’s where most of us have our hangups because we do not want to be judged. Yet we’re judged all the time. So be OK with people thinking poorly of you because it doesn’t matter.
Do it scared
When you’re OK with people, judging you, you lighten up in the fear department. We’re no longer afraid of what other people think. Which makes us able to take the needed steps to accomplish our goals a lot easier.
Yet there is still going to be some lingering fear as we try new things. So one of the biggest pointers I could make to anybody is to do the launch scared.
Except the fact that you are scared and that you’re afraid that you’re going to fail and do it anyway. What’s going to happen if it doesn’t go according to plan nothing is horrible you think because you’re not gonna die You’re not going to shrink because of embarrassment. Some people may judge you yeah that’s the worst thing that happens. Somebody has thought about the fact that you failed.
Be OK with B- Work
What if you just did the work to the best of your ability and let it go? What would happen? This is what happens when you let yourself do just B minus work. Yeah, it’s not the best but it’s not the worst either. It’s about average. And the cool thing about average is that you can improve on it
A good example of this is Cyberpunk 2077. CD Project Red put out a game that was a buggy mess. People were demanding refunds. There were videos upon videos upon videos of all the problems that were happening with this game. And I agree with them. It was a horrible experience when it first came out. But talk to anybody today who has played it recently and see what they say. They love the game. It is an incredible game. The story is magnificent. The DLC Phantom Liberty was an incredible addition to the story overall. The decisions that were to be made we often sweat over.
Cyberpunk 2077 came out as a maybe D plus game because of all the bugs and the crashes that happened. But now it is a solid A-minus game. See the project red didn’t just give up on it because it was a poorly received game.
Another example of a video game that came out as B- or worse but is now a phenomenal A-graded game is No Man’s Sky. There’s so much to do on those planets now. All because again they let the game launch and listened to everybody who complained, but never stopped working on it. They improved with every increment. And you can do that too. You actually will produce a better product because you have taken the time to listen to what people were wanting and adjust the product to what they need.
Yes you are going to fail
Now I’ve been talking a lot using the business analogy. Yet all of this applies to whatever your goal is losing weight yeah you’re still going to have thoughts of perfectionism. If you don’t stick to your diet while it’s all done and you give up for the week and you might try again next week. Yet somebody who is not aiming for perfectionism may go off and succumb to the urge to have a cupcake and then they realize what they’ve done and they’re immediately back on the diet that day.
Any of your goals are better when you aim for a B minus result than perfection and an A+ result. That is because you are going to fail as you go along this trail of accomplishing your goal.
You have to be OK with not getting it right the first time. You also have to be OK with not getting it right the second third fourth 10th or maybe even the hundredth time. But eventually, you will get it figured out and you will get one step closer to your goal whatever that goal is. If it’s losing 50 pounds there’s gonna be a week or two in there will you gain 2 pounds just to turn around and lose three the following week?
Failing isn’t fun. It hurts the ego, but you also have the opportunity to learn from that failure and become better because you failed.
If you’re in high school, your teachers not going to like what I’m gonna say here but you don’t have to be perfect. No one is going to review your high school transcript after college. So don’t sweat the fact that you have English papers that look like they were murder scenes. Yes, there are reasons for knowing how to write English properly, but when it comes to writing in your blog, you do not have to have perfect English.
To the grown-ups that are reading this right now. Tell that scared little 14-year-old inside of you that you don’t have to be perfect. Let them try. Experiment and see what that little 14-year-old inside of you is capable of doing. When you allow them to mess up to experiment and mess up again and experiment some more your results will be that you have blown your own damn mind. So go grab a pen of paper and sit down to write out a detailed plan of what you’re going to do this year. It may not look like what you’re imagining by December 31, but I can guarantee you’re gonna be further down the road than anybody who has never even tried to go and accomplish their goal.
You can achieve what you want to achieve. But you’re gonna have to be OK with a mess and with it not being perfect. That is the only way you’re actually going to get out there and have the life you want.
