Done Is Better Than Perfect

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Stop Aiming For Perfection
- Ch: 6.5 of How To Get Your Sh!t Together -

“Strive for continuous improvement; instead of perfection.”  – Kim Collins

Quite a number of years ago, a training partner of mine was developing an online business to sell customisable martial arts gear. He was going to provide a variety of basic clothing models, with the option to use an online editing program to alter the designs to customers liking. The result would have been completely customisable shorts, rash guards, Gis, gloves, shin guards and other wearables.

My friend had an amazing vision, and great plans to outsource production and delivery. It could have been quite commercially viable. The perfect business really, because once it was set up, it could have provided a steady income with little hands on work (far less than his previous employment at least). The best part was that he loved the industry and was exceedingly passionate about it. I had high hopes.

Like any project, starting up a business has multiple components (including branding, marketing, supply, production, delivery, website design, finances and legal), all of which need to be adequately addressed before the business can even open its doors, let alone start to break even and make a profit. If any one component is missing, or woefully below standard, the business will never get off the ground. Unfortunately for my friend, this was his exact issue.

Rather than looking at the overall picture, he was instead hyper focused on a couple of areas of the business. He wanted to perfect those components before even beginning his work on the next component. No one example of this was more apparent than with his logo. He underwent countless revisions, redesigns and tweaks.

“Which do you prefer ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘C’?”
“They are exactly the same.”
“No they’re not, ‘A’ has this part slightly more curved, ‘B’ has this tweak and ‘C’ is darker here. See?”
“Ahhh, I think they would all be fine.”

The decision for the final logo took months, and he was still not satisfied. When this same level of perfectionism was applied to all aspects of the business, it is easy to see why the business never got off the ground. He ended up blowing all of his savings, wasted a year of his life, as most importantly lost a lot of his drive on the project. All before even opening his doors.

He took his failure hard. He viewed the business as an attempt to make something of his life, to make a change and to become, in his words, ‘a self-made man’. When this didn’t eventuate, he fell into a depression of sorts, he withdrew from his friendships as well as from the very training that he loved. He was embarrassed that he had not been successful, and felt incompetent in business. In reality he was quite competent at whatever part of the business that he set his mind towards, but simply struggled with perfectionism.

The desire to ‘make it perfect’ makes complete sense. You want every aspect as good as possible, because having it that way would ensure that the business will run optimally. You want to take pride in your work, and to know that you put in 100% effort, that you worked and worked and worked until the vision in your mind was turned into reality. Unfortunately, this approach simply won’t work.

Perfection doesn’t exist. The closer you come, the harder each incremental step becomes.

The truth is that my friend could have spent a day, a week or many months on his logo, and would not have ever been completely satisfied with it. Yet, from a practical perspective, one of his first attempts would have sufficed for quite some time. My friend’s inability to accept that his work was not ‘perfect’ cost him the entire project.

 “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” – Idiom

It is far better to focus on long term successive improvements than to strive for perfection from the start.

For simplicity’s sake, imagine that a project you are working on has five major components, labelled, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, and ‘E’.

At the beginning of the project, all components have a ‘perfection score’ of 0/10. If a component is perfectly completed, it would have a ‘perfection score’ of 10/10.

Analyzing the components at the beginning of the project, would reveal the following:

A ­- 0
B ­- 0
C­ - 0
D ­- 0
E­ - 0

If you focused on perfecting one component (in this case ‘B’), over time, the project would look something like:

A ­- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0
B ­- 0 - 2 - 5 - 7 - 9
C­ - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0
D ­- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0
E­ - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0

This is the approach that my friend took. Working on his logo at the exclusion of other aspects of the business resulted in that component being disproportionally complete compared to all of the other aspects.

A more balanced approach, one that addresses all aspects, may look something like the following:

A ­- 0 - 1 - 3 - 4 - 6
B ­- 0 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 6
C­ - 0 - 1 - 4 - 5 - 7
D ­- 0 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
E­ - 0 - 1 - 2 - 5 - 6

Although by revision 5 none of the component parts are close to perfect, as a combined whole they would be at least operational.

For most projects getting started and making adjustments along the way is the best approach to take. It is better to be operational and somewhat functional, than not at all. Just be content to get started and commit to making continual, ongoing changes.

What Does Perfection Even Look Like?

It is of course vital to have an idea in your mind about where you are heading as well as a vision for what you want to create. However it is unlikely that you will know the exact form your project will take until it is close to completion. As you work on each component, each other part may need to be adjusted to fit with the part that you are currently working on.

Even if you make your first component ‘perfect’ it won’t stay that way because as soon as you start working on the other parts, that original component will have to change to fit. If you instead insist on keeping that first component the same, you will have to rigidly force all of the other components to fit it. This may result in the rest of the components not working as well as they could have otherwise have worked.

Anyone who has attempted to create any form of art, complete a creative project, group assignment or business endeavour will know the difficulties of attempting to perfect one component of the project without considering the whole.

For me, creating the title for a book or blog post is particularly difficult. When I first started writing, I wanted the title to be perfect, because I figured that it would give me a point to focus towards and guide my writing. Often it would take me almost as long to be satisfied with the title as it took me to write the piece. However, time and time again, I would scrap the original title because the piece didn’t quite match up; or if I attempted to stick to it and write based on the title, I would end up writing terribly. Now I either leave the title until the end, or I just use a working title, with full knowledge that it is not perfect and will be changed at a later date. The important part is the writing, and it is a complete waste of time and effort attempting to make the title perfect from the start. It just does not work that way.

As the true nature of the project comes to life, you will see more areas that need slight changes, improvements or alterations to better fit with the overall project.

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TAKE ACTION

Choose a project that you are currently working on and broadly list all of its components. Your project could be in any area of your life (work, family, side hustle, diet, exercise, hobbies etc).

Give each of the components of your project a ‘perfection score’ out of 10 (10 being perfect, 0 being not started at all). Don’t think for too long on each component, this is just a subjective ranking system to see where you are at the moment.

If there are any components that are significantly lower than the rest, strongly consider focusing your efforts and resources on improving that component before continuing with the rest of the components.

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This book isn’t perfect, but it is close enough. I could have spent years more working on it, writing more chapters, and making each one slightly better. But I recognised that it can never, and will never be perfect, and that attempting to make it so could result in it never being released. Regardless of how good it could be, this book would be useless if it is not read.

It is easy for the person creating the project to never be satisfied with it. The creator knows everything that they wanted it to be, and what they could have made it into had they had more time and resources to commit to the project. However it is also important to note that nobody else will ever know the extent of the creator’s vision. The public can only judge the finished product as they experience it. It may not be the ‘perfect’ version of what the creator wanted it to be, but it could be perfect for everyone else – or at least good enough!

It is far better to have 50% of something than 100% of nothing.

Start your project, release your work and adjust along the way, something that remains incomplete won’t be perfect for you or for anyone else.

“A rising tide lifts all boats.”  – Aphorism

Stop aiming for perfection applies just as much to handing mental afflictions as it does to following your dreams. There are so many aspects to life that all need to be worked on simultaneously if you want to see any overall improvement. They can be broken down into the broad categories of psychological, spiritual (meaning), physical, and social.

I know that attempting to perfect one area at the exclusion of the other areas leads to failure and breakdown. I want to ensure that I have an active and enjoyable social life, exercise adequately and eat well, and subsequently focus a lot of my efforts on those fronts. However I also dedicate some of my time to maintaining a clean and orderly household, budgeting, shopping, working, and to regular therapy sessions. I know that if I let any of those less pleasant areas of my life get neglected for too long, I will suffer. I will suffer regardless of how much I can lift, what food I am eating, or how much enjoyment I get from my friends.

It is important to work on all aspects of personal development in order to see overall improvements in mental health.

When I was first recovering and coming to terms with my new life, I found it very tempting to focus all of my energy on the things that I was good at and enjoyed. Given my history with anxiety and depression, I rarely felt ‘at home’ doing much of anything. So when I finally discovered things that I liked, I would go all in, focusing all of my efforts in those areas, to the complete disregard of the rest of my life.

I became quite good at those things and advanced quickly, but the lack of attention to the rest of my life meant that that initial success was built on unstable ground. Eventually a part of my life that I was ignoring would collapse and demand my immediate attention, but because I had left those problems unattended they had grown so large that addressing them caused me to lose all of the gains that I had made in the other parts of my life. By the end of it all I was right back where I started.

It is much wiser to work on all of the aspects of life, incrementally improving each part, than it is to focus on perfecting one single area. Balance is key.

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Frequently Asked Questions
Q) I can’t stand leaving something ‘half finished’. I struggle to move on, knowing that what I am working on is not perfect.

A) What is the alternative? Spending hours on one part? Dedicating the rest of your life to making increasingly smaller incremental improvements?

It will get to a stage where your ‘improvements’ make no noticeable impact on the project at all. Initial changes may yield significant changes in quality, but those benefits quickly dissipate with each revision.

There needs to be a balance between the search for perfection and with recognising anxious ruminations. Harsh scrutiny of your project will continuously reveal areas where you need to make adjustments, and these adjustments should of course be made, but not to the detriment of the entire project.

It is important to step back from the process and look at the project (and your life) from a detached perspective. It may be hard to let things remain ‘unfinished’ but it may be the only way to ensure that the entire project is not left unfinished (or that a part of your life is completely neglected). It may be troubling to move on from it, but know that you will eventually return to make subsequent improvements, once you have worked on the other aspects of the project. So although it won’t be ‘finished’ you know that you will return to it at a later stage.

Resources
The War Of Art, Steven Pressfield
The Obstacle Is The Way, Ryan Holiday
‘Procrastination’ from Psychological Warfare (spoken word), Jocko Willink
Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert

Summary
Take stock of all of the components of a project and how ‘perfect’ they are. Consider focusing your resources on the parts that are currently lacking.