Done > Perfect
Perfectionism is a disease.
We often perceive perfectionism as an ideal to strive for, but in reality, it’s a trait we should probably avoid.
Perfectionism is often defined as the need to be or appear to be perfect, or even to believe that it’s possible to achieve perfection. People may use the term “healthy perfectionism” to describe or justify perfectionistic behavior. But whichever way you look at it, the truth remains: in striving for perfection, you’re restricting the natural human process of making errors on your path to success.
The perfectionist in us is a battle of fear on two levels: Fear about ourselves and fears about others. Internally, we fear that what we have worked tirelessly to produce is inadequate. Externally, the fear is that others won’t understand it.
We need to fight both these battles in order to get stuff done. So, let’s get to work.
Fears About Yourself
We have met the enemy and He is us — Commandant, Oliver Perry
When we embark on something new, there is an imbalanced relationship between us and what we are attempting to produce. It’s almost as if you are a child again and what you have in mind as the end product is the parent, guiding and shaping your efforts along the way. A good parent guides, but a not-so decent parent only scolds. If the relationship that we have with our work is that of a child to a not-so decent parent, any attempt that we make will leave us feeling inadequate because we will feel as if we are assuming a position that we may be not quite worthy of. That we are somewhat faking it until we make it. This is known as Imposter Syndrome. Imposter Syndrome does not necessarily attack your experience, but it can attack your whole being, often making you feel as if you are incompetent — this manifests into a noisy voice that might say “you’re not a real artist,” “what you’re doing can only be produced by someone who is extraordinary” or worse still “you are just not talented enough.”
The voice may not be this noisy, but it definitely at the very least whispers doubt into your ear at your every endeavour. That little whisper of doubt is at its most frequent when we come up against something that is difficult. What we often find most challenging is what is new. So, guess what? We can quickly abandon what is novel and give up completely.
Self-doubt originates from expectations. The issue is that our expectations of ourselves can quickly lead to fantasies, which can be dangerous. Our expectations generally tend to come from hopes or memories. Having a good relationship with yourself will help you manage expectations and allow yourself to put out your work. Expectations are a good thing but ought to be managed. They can set us up for our next piece if used healthily.
As a creator, entrepreneur or someone who is trying something for the first time, we need to normalise the internal argument we face with self-doubt. We should anticipate this struggle because we are doing what is alien to us. Rather than coasting, we are trying something new and by extension constantly putting ourselves in the position to doubt our ability to execute. Remember though if you can’t stand the heat you can always get out of the kitchen — you may just need to deal with regret down the line.
As for the issue of imposter syndrome, Bayles and Orland, authors of Art & Fear remind us that you “Make good work by making lots of work, some that won’t be great — you are learning what doesn’t stick.” In a previous piece, I spoke about the importance of Quantity over Quality when it comes to creative work. Artists like a Basquiat or Tupac and Inventors like an Edison or Composers like a Mozart produced a large amount of work before hitting their seminal piece — why should your journey be any different?
Instead of succumbing to the narrative that you lack the talent for the work you are attempting because you’ve hit some sort of obstacle, focus on nurturing your ability over time. We’ve all heard the story of the failed wonder kid, the one with all the talent in the world who neglected working hard. Talent moves you from 0 to 1 but the gradual development of your abilities, moves you from 1 to infinity. So if all else fails, rely on intuition and instinct and then hit publish.
Fears About Others
Art is a powerful commodity. An artist, if you’re good at it, should never behave as a commodity — Dave Chappelle
When you put something out into the world, no matter how great you feel about it, you want others to let you know that they appreciate it too. This naturally seek for validation is a problem. Validation could be someone letting you know how much a podcast episode helped them or a client paying for your service —each instance represents a level of acceptance and understanding for your efforts. But when we heavily rely on external approval, we put the power in the hands of our audience to deny what we seek and inadvertently cripple our confidence to test our work out in the world.
An audience comes with all sorts of demands. The bigger the audience, the greater the diversity of requests. Just ask any Political leader, they will tell you the same — its impossible to satisfy everyone, so why would you try to? When we attempt to meet the demands of the many we end up conflating others’ priorities with our own. A small example is as a tech business, customers may often demand new features for their own consumption. This is their prerogative. But as the business owner, you have to weigh whether the extra 40 hours it may take to build this feature for this specific customer is worth it. All demands aren’t equal. All demands don’t take into account what’s best for you. So, you say at that stage you might say no. This is how to manage an audience.
Bayles and Orland remind us that chasing complete understanding and acceptance will only stifle your output. The chances are that your work won’t be understood absolutely. If your need for acceptance exceeds the authenticity of your work, then the two will arrive at a nasty collision. My view is that the world rewards authenticity. This is why we see artists often build in abandonment. Art rarely emerges from committees. For this reason, you must always optimise for a strong core group of 100 supporters rather than a large flaky group of 1000.
Another way to protect yourself from the criticism of the so-called committee is to work away from the noise. Produce your work in the sanctitude of your space, away from the demands of others and arrive to the table with your work in hand. Recording Artist, Kendrick Lamar is phenomenal at this. Kendrick is known for his lengthy gaps between his music albums. His first album landed in 2012, the next arrived in 2015, it then took him another two years to deliver the album ‘DAMN’ in 2017 and his most recent taking 5 years and arriving in 2022. All four albums are pretty different from one another. Kendrick addressed this in an interview saying “…I spend the whole year just thinking about how I’m gonna execute a new sound, I can’t do the same thing over and over… I need something to get me excited.”
Obviously most of our careers don’t allow for this disappearing act. But there’s a lesson in here about protecting your creative process by avoiding the noise and trusting your true audience to grow with each of your attempts.
Aim for completion
Perfect is the enemy of the good — Montesquieu, 1726
If Great is the road that we trying to get on to, then good is the road connected to it.
One of favourite parables on creative work is:
A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.
At grading time, a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Showing up at regular intervals, without worrying about results — will actually lead to better results.
Marianne Williamson, author of a course in Miracles, famously said:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
So, bid farewell to the stagnation that accompanies the pursuit of unattainable perfection, and welcome in the forward momentum of progressive error.
