How Perfection Might Hamper Your Goals
I often think that anything I do or make must follow a certain standard. But is this mindset correct?
You are ready to start to begin what you have in mind. You name it, maybe starting to write your first books, starting to meet those new friends, or starting to make your first ever website or anything you want to do.
But then you ask yourself, “Hey, is this good enough?” “does my audience will be excited?” or even worse, “Is this gonna work?”. I believe this happens not just for the people who think of themselves as perfectionists. Others tend to do the same.
Perfection was positively related to perfectionism. Researcher Stoeber says perfectionism is a multidimensional personality disposition characterized by striving for flawlessness and setting exceedingly high-performance standards accompanied by overly critical evaluations of one’s behaviour.
Perfection does not equal the always-good performance.
Some of you may think that perfection or aiming to be perfect is a holy grail for delivering satisfactory results. Guess what? not entirely correct. Research by Harari shows that there are nonlinear effects between perfectionism and performance.
Another famous example in real life was Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida and an American photographer known for his surrealistic darkroom image. On the first day of class, he divided his photography students into two groups. One group would be in the quantity group. They would be scored on the number of photos they produced. On the final day of class, he would count the number of images submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eight photos a C, and so on. Meanwhile, the other group would be in the quality group. They would be graded by the excellence of their work. It had to be a “perfect” image from an aesthetical perspective to get an A.
At the end of the term, Jerry was surprised to find that the quantity group produced all the best photos. These students experimented with all photography components during the semester and any methods they can think of. In the process of creating a bunch of pictures, they are improving. On the other hand, the other group busy thinking about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than mediocre result.
Beware of the “trying to be perfect” trap.
I believe we are eager to find the optimal plan or the best strategy for doing specific things. For example, the fastest way to lose weight, the quickest way to be rich, the perfect idea to generate money quickly. I’m not gonna avoid this, but I have been in this phase for a long time. I really want to write since I am a high schooler. The thought of waiting for the perfect time to write, thinking that I am not good enough or waiting for supplying myself with the best strategy hampering my goals to write. I, too, focused on figuring out the best approach that I never get around taking actions and getting anything done.
“The best is the enemy of good”
— Voltaire
In his books, James Clear wrote that we should differentiate between being in motion and taking action. If I make several ideas about what I should write for my articles, that is motion. If I actually sit down and hit those keyboard writing the articles, that’s action.
Don’t get me wrong, planning, strategizing, and learning are all good things, but they don’t produce a result. It doesn’t matter how much time you spent browsing about the best author’s best approach; that motion will never create one piece of work. This motion things sometimes convince yourself that you are still making progress. You might think, “I know the best way to do this, I’m going to that anyway, so I think this is good progress”. Really, you are just preparing to get something done. It is just another form of procrastination.
Taking the first action
Up to this point, some of you might be surprised by the fact, or maybe some others already have your own way to do what you wanna do.
I was experiencing the same problem. Not only just about writing, but in many aspects (I cannot specify all of those things, but just to let you know, my head is full of being in motion). My first writing product was not a casual article; it is a more formal and structured one like an academic paper or research journal. In fact, that product is not intended rather than a condition-based push that I should work on for finishing my bachelor degree. Currently, I am also assisting several academic publications for my professor, which is also a research-based writing product. I already started liking casual style writing like articles since high school. It is very challenging to construct credible information, yet it must be easy to understand by others. It was decided a long time ago that I should write something. Still, here I am, not writing anything nor producing anything.
Time passed, and everything change after I keep in mind these mindsets.
“If you want to achieve something, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection”
— James Clear
James Clear thoroughly explains how achieving something started with one habit, and one routine starts with one action. Those actions will lead to mastery. If I can pull the connection line, shaping ourselves is a straightforward action, not just a mere “the best concepts”. For the past weeks, I started to hit my keyboard to write my first ever English articles! For your information, I’m originated from Indonesia; English is not my mother tongue. It is unbelievably hard to start writing an English essay; you know the grammar I do not become fully adept at.
But you know what, screw all of those good for nothing feelings! I don’t give a fuck what others think about my works. My goals shifted from writing the best articles to start writing just an essay. What’s the difference? Yes, I throw away my own standard that I should write the best. Does it help me? A lot! I don’t have to worry about the rules for making the best articles. I just put my finger on my keyboard and start typing anything that comes to my mind.
Sometimes, I constrained by the constant and false reminder of what the other think of me. Thus, it is holding me up from doing something that I want to do. But again, believe me, we will not get any judgement when we do not have anything to be judged. Just do what we want to do right here, right now. We can worry about review later when we are already producing something worth to be judged by others.
It takes me a couple of days for writing this first-ever articles. I know there are still so many aspects I lack compared to the best practice out there. But after this article is published on Medium, I feel fulfilled, thus pushing me to write the second and even the third articles.
