Practice makes progress, not perfection

Perfection is the clamour for the highest degree of excellence or quality, whilst practice is the repeated performance to attain skill or proficiency.

I grew up in the eighties, yes I am in my forties now (thanks for reminding myself, yes I talk to myself, whilst I type sometimes!)

In my formative years growing up in Northern Ireland, I always wanted to impress in whatever I did. Whether that was playing chess, trying out for football teams, running (before it was popular!), biking, skate boarding, playing pool or throwing darts. I also had this in school work, first to finish crosswords, algebra, literature, reading, mathematic problem solving…

There is a competitive streak in my personality that I seek out competition, whether that is playing tiddlywinks or being the first to finish an assignment.

But the problem I have had in the past, I practiced for perfection, when in fact if I practiced for progess and made a mental note of the progress, it would have shown how far I had come from starting point to now.

If you concentrate on being perfect in anything, usually you will fail (unless you are Usain Bolt), therefore end up with a negative result. But if you practice for progress, you can see your progress, and have a positive result everytime. Small acorns grow to big oaks.

Practice Makes Perfect’ is such a well-known saying, and in a way it is true. But I feel practice to progress is a far better mindset to adopt.

Perfection can be:

• A form of procrastination — if I can’t do it perfectly then there is no point doing it at all.
• Perfection breeds a fear of negative judgments from others.
• It adds anxiety which can impact performance.
• Impacts on your self-confidence as it comes from a self-critical place, where you are judging yourself too harshly. Bad self talk.
• Robs you of being in the present moment, enjoying what you are doing right now.

3 Benefits of Practice to Progress

• Progression is all about those small incremental steps forward. Often when aiming for perfection you can discount those small steps forward as irrelevant and any tiny wins as unimportant. Nothing can be further from the truth. Small wins all add up. Recognising the importance of those wins contributes to boosting your confidence and building your skills.
• It’s through these small wins that you hone your craft, in whatever you do. Whether that is writing an article, creating a process, delivering a service or doing a repetitive task. It helps you find more efficient ways of doing things, leading to creative ideas.
• With practice experimentation happens whilst in the flow. This is what creativity is all about, mixing things up to create new ways, new challenges. It’s where the magic happens.

About the author:
Johnny Cree is a SAM consultant working for Version1 in the UK and Ireland with over 15 years in Oracle license management. He has a wealth of experience and knowledge across all Oracle product categories. He especially likes audit defence, negotiation and Oracle applications and technology.

Johnny loves sport, especially 1 on 1 sports such as snooker, pool and darts. He sees it as a challenge and loves the competitive spirit. Johnny is a technical wizard also and has many years’ experience in a lot of programming, project management, project delivery and face to face customer interaction. Prior to working for Version 1, he headed up the UK and Ireland Oracle delivery for SoftwareONE. He has worked across implementation projects and managed services coupled with sound knowledge of Software Asset Management tools such as ServiceNow, Snow and Flexera.