A Challenge to Overcome Perfectionism

How I’m using a writing challenge to break through perfection paralysis

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

At the beginning of 2020, my Medium habit was strong. I was writing a lot and having fun doing it. But as the year wore on, and my mood shifted from optimistic, to frightened, to anxious, to depressed, my writing took a serious dive.

I have noticed a perfectionist tendency that I cycle through. I fear failure and the shame that comes with it, and so I procrastinate. Sometimes the procrastination becomes so entrenched that I become overwhelmed by the sheer effort it’s going to take to overcome it, and I just give up.

I think that’s largely what happened with my writing on Medium. I started judging that what I wrote needed to be important, meaningful, helpful. I was worried that something might sound too frivolous during such a dark time, and then I worried that I wasn’t enough of an expert to write anything serious. I got trapped into a mind-spiral of perfection paralysis.

The other day though, I happened upon this challenge page. And I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. There was something a little different. The challenge wasn’t to just write 30 essays in 30 days because I would have immediately scoffed at that and not even tried. It was to publish to 30 different publications (or at least submit them). As I thought about it, I realized this could be the golden ticket out of my paralysis.

I view this challenge as useful for perfectionists for these reasons:

1. There is almost certainly a guarantee of rejection. Hear me out. One of the things perfectionists fear most is failure. But, in order to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, we have to embrace failure! We have to start to see that it isn’t a reflection of our intelligence, it’s an opportunity for learning. Out of 30 publications, there is definitely going to be some rejection, it’s just probability. Going into the challenge with that knowledge is a good start.
2. The speed breaks down your inner critic. In order for me to keep the momentum up of sending them out every day, I’m going to have to just hit submit whether I think the article is perfect or not. I’m going to have to get it done, which is a big hurdle for…