I’ve been in a funk lately. I’ve been suffering from two distinct paradigms:
- I want to do a lot.
- I do very little.
Take this blog for example. Back in April when I was wrapping up the look and feel of the website, I starting building out a list of blog articles to put together. I was pretty excited. I enjoy writing, ranting, and humoring myself through the process of spilling my thoughts onto the Internet. On top of that, I decided I would secure the hatch on the Fucks Gate and no longer give them out as a utility. I made an internal agreement that I wasn’t going to answer to anybody here, which is something I suspected to be one of my barriers.
I was wrong.
I listen to The Biggest Problems in the Universe, a podcast ran by Internet Champions Maddox and Dick Masterson. In episode 54, they present perfectionism as one of the Universe’s biggest problems. Bump to 44:05 to get to the beginning of the discussion. I’ll sum it up with a quote:
“Perfectionism keeps talented people from making amazing stuff.”
~Dick Masterson
This personally resonated with me. I’ll often start piecing something together and scrap it because I feel it isn’t quite perfect, and only perfect deserves my signature. Unfortunately, that school of thought means nothing gets my signature.
It’s a little different when producing work for someone else. I can easily get something 90% of the way there, have it pass everybody else’s test, and move on. That last 10% is cost prohibited. It’s an additional 90% of the effort (if not more) to achieve. It’s also invisible. It makes no difference to bottom-lines or shareholders or whoever the fuck. That last 10% is the soul. Rational people don’t even believe it exists, but when it’s MY work with MY name for MY legacy it’s a barrier.
It stems further back than just finishing something. This perfectionist mentality is keeping me from actually starting things. I know the massive amount of time and energy it takes to pass my own test, so I make a determine that at that very moment, there’s not enough fuel in the tank to do what needs to be done.
Ridiculous? Maybe. But others are dealing with this too.
I did a Google search and found countless articles about fighting perfectionism. I’m going to be spending some time digging deep.
Until then, I’m going to post a blog article without a thesis and without covering everything I intended to just to show myself that imperfection is okay.
