May
27
This is my new saying I remind myself of all the time, “Not perfect but done.”
I spend all my time thinking about things and trying to make them perfect. I stress and worry and spend so much wasted on time trying to get something to be perfect.
Perfect means: being entirely without fault or defect.
Spending all my time on creating something perfect leaves me with two major problems.
Change – If something is perfect, this would mean it would never change. That means it would always be as is and I would have to live with it FOREVER.
Anyone who knows me, knows I love change. I love to make things better, bigger or more fun. I always love the opportunity to take anything to the next level. If I was to create something that would be perfect, I would lose the ability to change it as I see fit.
Action – Waiting for perfection means I am always in a state of planning, preparing, editing, etc and never in a place of complete. This also means a lot of my what I am doing never sees the light of day because it isn’t perfect yet. Instead of taking action and making it happen and real zing I can change it later, I keep myself back in a holding pattern over the idea, project, and/or event.
I have learned to let go of perfect. To realize that done is better than perfect because it is at least a start and a new beginning. I have the right to be able to change it as I see fit and play with new ideas.
We all grow in life. We never reach a moment of perfect because we thrive on growth. That is what life is all about.
I am free of perfect and I hope soon you will let go too.
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Jeremie
on 27 May 2009 at 4:23 pm #
Michael,
This is something I have always struggled with as well, but the whole act of blogging has really helped me realize that perfect just doesn’t happen and is keeping me in a state of delay.
With my blog I have promised myself to make one post a week, every Wednesday, and if I spent the time to get each post to a state of perfection (in my eyes at least) I would never post. By having a blog deadline, each Tuesday night I need to release what I have written into the wild no matter what. This has helped me to start letting things go in my life in general as well and is a positive step forward for me.
I think the concept of perfection, in writing at least, comes from the age of books: once you printed it was set that way unless someone did a new edition a few years later, so you had to kvetch about each little bit and make it as close to perfect as possible.
Now, in the age of the internet making a change to an idea or a piece of writing is simple, part of the process, and in many ways more honest. People can see that the person writing is constantly evolving, just like they are, and to me, that sort of writing is more truthful.
Jeremie