Never let perfection be the enemy of good

Putting stuff out there is hard. Doesn’t matter if it’s a video, photo, blog post, article etc.

When you share something that was created solely by yourself, you might start thinking about how it will be received.

It’s hard and scary because you’re afraid people might not like it and expose you on that. You ask yourself whether you should put yourself out there to such a degree where people can easily tell you that your content sucks, leaving you completely in doubt about your own abilities.

In my interview with Atwal, a Kenyan music producer, we briefly touched upon this subject in the last question, so if you want to have a look you should you check it out.

So what’s the solution? You want to put content out there but you just can’t deal with any negative backlash that might come your way. How will you possibly be able to achieve this? Easy. By making it perfect, so that everyone will like it! Sounds good, but then again, when is something perfect? The answer is NEVER.

It doesn’t matter what you are trying to create. This applies to anything that you do in your life.

Trying to be perfect in order to please everyone doesn’t work. It just doesn’t.

Create something that you are proud of and that you want others to see and potentially learn from. Perfect is in the eyes of the beholder. Every person has their own definition of perfect. If you create something unique, how will you know if it will ever be perfect? You can’t compare it to anything that already exists, there’s no reference point.

At the end of the day you can never expect that all people will like your content. Some will like it, other’s don’t. It’s normal!

The problem with trying to make your content perfect will become counter productive at some point. You will always find an excuse to not share it, simply because you think there’s always room for improvement. You will constantly do this until you believe that it can never be finished, which leads you to give up and make you feel like a failure because you couldn’t accomplish something you set out to do.

So if you create something that you are proud of, share it! Put it out to the world! The most important thing is that you are happy with it. You will get constructive criticism from people that genuinely want you do succeed, which will help you learn and provide you with the necessary input and support you need to make your next project better than the last one.

Originally published at www.sidneytrompell.com on December 3, 2017.