“Perfectionism is the Enemy of Creation”
— John Updike (1932-2009), American writer
My own perfectionism has been driving me nuts lately. I’m researching and writing my second book and have found the process to be challenging. Writing a book is never easy so I didn’t expect it to be a walk in the park, but I did expect it to move with more speed than it has. After all, I’ve been speaking and consulting on my topic for years. But pangs of self-doubt have been creeping in. What if I’m not saying anything truly new? What if I don’t bring the material to life? What if it’s not compelling? These fears have been paralyzing me – causing me to hang on sentences and paragraphs far too long in an effort to make them perfect. I felt my creativity at an all time low this week and sought out colleagues for advice. In a nutshell, they all said the same thing – If you want to succeed at this, you’ve got to loosen your grip on perfectionism; you’ve got to give yourself room to fail.
Consider this:
The precursors to success are never perfection. Rather they’re mistakes, missteps, & bad ideas – the only way into the game. As the expression goes – you’ve got to figure out what doesn’t work before you figure out what does. For some reason though, no matter how many times we learn this lesson, it’s easy to forget. We just want to nail it on the first try. But meaningful accomplishments never work that way. If it were that easy, it wouldn’t be that worthwhile. If we want to succeed, we’ve got to set goals and go through the process of trying to achieve them. We’ve got to fail more. And then we’ve got to keep moving. Eventually we’ll reach the right place.
Try This:
- Build your muscles for momentum (like the shoemaker’s own shoes, I’ve taken my eye off of this one)
- Set multi-layered, smart goals – day, week, month, & total project.
- Make your smart goals results-based, not activity-based – i.e. here’s what I’ll have completed, not here’s what I’ll do.
- Finish each goal even if you feel quality is not 100%. With enough small goals you’ll have opportunities to improve along the way.
- Share your goals with someone else who can help hold you accountable.
- If you miss a goal, don’t worry about it. Just keep moving.
©2011 TakingSmartRisks.com. All rights reserved. You may send this to your friends and family, but please don’t republish it in any form, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from us.
