[DAY 93 OF THE DEEP END PROJECT]
I’ve been thinking a lot about perfection lately.
Personally, I was never a perfectionist. Good enough was good for me. There were a few things though that I needed to make almost perfect.
Cleanliness, for example!
I was obsessed with keeping things as clean and tidy as possible. I remember doing night shifts, coming back home at 4 am and cleaning my entire house before going to bed.
I still like to keep things clean and if something isn’t, it bothers me to no end but my obsession with it faded with my second son.
I was too tired to have an immaculate house without a speck of dust. I didn’t care that much.
Good enough was good for me.
This morning I left the house with cushions on the floor rather than the couch. I could have picked them up, straightened them, fluffed them up. But I didn’t.
We’ve made our living room a makeshift bedroom for my husband till our 8 week old pup, Cleo, gets house trained.
So it doesn’t matter if the cushions are on the floor right now, coz they will end up on the floor within 15 mins of me fluffing them up.
In my business too, I am not a big fan of perfectionism.
Progress before perfection has been my mantra.
I’ve launched and sold stuff worth thousands of dollars from a google doc.
Perfection slows you down. And I think it is overrated.
In her book, Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert says “I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, ‘I am not good enough and I will never be good enough.”
I agree.
I also think perfectionism doesn’t show up as “I am not good enough”, it shows up as “procrastination”
It says “I don’t have time right now to make it perfect, so I am going to do it tomorrow”
If this is you. I want you to examine it. What is more important? The fact it will be done and you would have made progress? Or that it is perfect?
And, perfect according to who?
Who decides what is perfect?
Your Fear aka your ego will always say “Oh not yet! Not perfect yet.”
But I do believe if you truly, truly wanted that thing (whatever it is – your book, your course, your blog, your videos) to be out there, you’d be more excited to get it done than make it perfect.
Yes?
How about this for an encouragement?
I just finished a fantastic novel called Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewel. She’s a New York Times Bestseller.
I loved the novel. It’s gripping, a real page-turner.
Here’s the thing though – I caught 2 errors in the print. Frankly, I’ve never read a book in print with an error.
One was a spelling mistake and the other was a wrong word.
Should there have been an error in the first place? Probably not.
Did it change my experience of the book? No!
Am I glad she wrote this story? Yes!
So to close out here’s what I want to say to you – If a published novel from a New York Times Bestseller can have two errors in her book, you can press publish on that post, that email, that video.
Yes? What do you think?