How Not to Be Perfect
14 lessons in being bad at things
Although I hate to admit it, I, like many others, used to use perfectionism as something like a humble brag. By claiming I was a perfectionist, I was pretending to say “it takes me ages to finish stuff because I need everything to be perfect”, when really what I meant was “everything I do is perfect”.
It took me a long time to understand how toxic the idea of perfectionism really is. Far from simply taking pride in good work, perfectionism is the debilitating fear of doing bad work. Perfectionism is a product of vanity and ego, not good work ethic.
But even now that I’m fully aware of this, it’s still hard to overcome this horrible fear of being bad at something. Or worse, being bad at something in front of other people.
I don’t even know how much this fear of being bad at something has held me back in life. How many things I could have tried or ways I could have improved if I weren’t terrified of opening myself up to judgement or criticism.
This is an open letter to me, and to perfectionists like me. A reminder that we’re allowed to suck at things, that “perfect is the enemy of good”.
- You’re allowed to like something without knowing everything about it. You can like a sports team without knowing its full history. You can…
