Done is better than perfect: Tips to get from ideas to action

Being a perfectionist is to seek for the very best outcome and end up doing nothing. That urge many of us share prevents us from achieving progress and personal and professional fulfillment. Here are some ideas of how I try (hard) everyday to overcome the frustration caused by inaction.

I know it’s a cliché! But as it happens in everything we do, practice makes perfect. I’m not referring to the 10,000 hours rule necessary to master something, but rather to focus and consistently work towards achieving the goals we’re passionate about.

Throughout my professional career, I’ve always been affected by self criticism and constant dissatisfaction with the results I was getting. I often deleted texts and rewrote sentences after sentences. To make matters worse, the few finished texts ended up staying in the drawer, which made me feel frustrated and unable to write content that I was happy with.

One of my goals with this blog is to share my anxiety to the reader. Together we can overcome the barriers of perfectionism and create texts that others can enjoy.

I’m not advocating that we should write just for the sake of it. But when we create extremely high expectations, it’s more likely for us to be dissatisfied with our work and unhappy with the results.

People don’t like plastic flowers. People identify with the imperfections and flaws of others. It’s only through that human identification process that we create empathy and a sense of belonging to a society, a community, a group, etc.

When we compare to others and see the results of their work, we don’t see the whole process and that fuels our frustration. The end result is always the sum of its parts including disappointments and obstacles. We need to constantly remember ourselves that our goals are (almost always) dependant on the effort we put in to achieving them.

Focus

One of my main hurdles isn’t related to the lack of ideas and projects. Quite the contrary. Setting too many goals for myself, makes my attention disperse and stops me from dedicating completely to one project. It used to be very common for me to take interest in several projects and never devote myself 100% to one of them.

So when I started my own business I realized that more important than saying no to others, we must say no to ourselves. That means saying no to ideas I have, to new projects that I think of and to devote myself exclusively to one professional project.

Beating the odds

It’s obvious that our goal is and should always be to improve everything we do, whether it’s writing, exercise or simply to empathize with others. However, we can not let the paralysis of perfection prevent us from creating and sharing something meaningful with others.

Experience help us improve our work processes and foster creativity. We only need to relax, trust our abilities and believe that the more we produce, the more likely others will enjoy what we do. So there are no excuses, the time is now!

Below are some of the tactics I use to overcome the adverse effects of perfectionism:

1. Set deadlines

A project without a deadline, is a project that will never be finished. We all have projects that are being constantly tested and improved. But for every large project, we must set achievable and measurable steps. Only this way, we can evaluate our progress and stay motivated to carry out the tasks we set ourselves.

2. Acceptance

If we think carefully about our personal and professional goals, we end up realizing that we already achieved to some extent some of those goals. Think about why you want to achieve a certain goal and the reason behind it.

For example, if you want to get rich, will you be satisfied after reaching a certain amount in your bank account? If you don’t feel well by yourself, will you feel better in a relationship? If you want to go on a diet or start exercising, can’t you look at yourself in the mirror and recognize all the body parts that you’re happy with?

Coach Matthew Ferry says when you resist something, you attract it. What you resist persists. Only when we start accepting things can we change them.

3. Taking feedback with a pinch of salt

Opinions are a double-edged sword: on one hand, they can motivates us to work harder, try to overcome our limitations and become better people.

But at the same time, what we believe others think of us, can be highly damaging and limiting. If we’re constantly doubting our abilities and be fearful about others’ opinions, then we can never truly produce anything satisfying to ourselves.

4. Positive outlook even in failure

All of the above tactics to deal with perfectionism, become much harder when we create ridiculously high expectations and when we’re too hard on ourselves when we fail to achieve them.

Several scientific studies show that people who see failure in a positive and constructive light that they can learn something with, increase their chances to reach that same goal in the future.

Overcoming perfectionism step by step

Perfectionism can severely affect our ability to produce something fulfilling and it leads to a negative cycle of lack of frustration by the lack of results. Fortunately, as we have seen, there are strategies we can adopt to stop procrastination and feel better with ourselves again. Motivation is an upward cycle fuelled by good actions that makes us feel better and produce more and better work.

But our fear of the negative consequences can also be an excellent source of motivation and lead us to action. To avoid the frustration we rise to the challenge and we are forced to take the necessary steps to achieve our goals.

For example, almost ten years ago I quit smoking because besides thinking about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, I also began to consider avoiding the negative effects of tobacco, such as fatigue and breathing difficulties, etc. When we do something to prevent us feeling bad is also a very important source of motivation.

Overcoming perfectionism is a complicated task, but not impossible. It takes patience and persistence, often we do not see immediate results. But we must believe at all times we’re on the right track to achieve our goals and live a fulfilling life.

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