If you find it hard to complete things because they are “not good enough” yet, then you’re letting ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘good.’
I mean that sometimes we have this idea of what something should be like, the perfect, and we strive to reach it.
But you never will because perfection is impossible.
Right now, I want you to permit yourself not to be perfect. None of us are perfect, and none of us ever achieve perfection. And that’s okay.
And this idea of perfection and reaching perfection is holding people back, it’s incredibly paralyzing, but if something isn’t perfect, then that automatically means you’ll have failed.
You are Good enough
You need to adopt an attitude of “good enough” or even “bad but finished.” That way, there’s so much more scope to be successful, and there’ll be less fear of failure.
If your business Facebook page isn’t perfect, that’s fine, as long as it’s good enough.
If your emails aren’t perfect, that’s okay if they’re good enough and you get your message out.
Your exercise routine probably isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t matter. As long as you get yourself moving regularly, it’s good enough.
Buying a new car is fraught with decisions and, for many people, causes anxiety. But you don’t need to find the perfect vehicle! Instead, you need to find one good enough for your purposes.
Pareto Principle
Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle? It’s also known as the 80-20 rule, which usually takes 20 percent of the time to complete 80 percent of a task. However, completing the last 20 percent of the task takes 80 percent of the effort.
So at 80 percent completion, can you perhaps declare it “good enough”? What else do you need to do to finish right now? Knowing that the last 20 percent takes 80 percent of the effort and that perfection is impossible, it makes no sense to continue working away at something already good enough.
Experience the freedom of doing it badly.
Perfection is especially detrimental to creativity. Let me give you a quick experience of this. Grab a piece of paper and a pen. I want you to come up with five great ideas for booking games. They must be new ideas, creative, innovative, and perfect. You have 5 minutes….start now!
Do you have any ideas yet?
Okay. Grab a new piece of paper and write down five bad ideas for sponsoring people in your organization. These are just five terrible recruiting ideas. You have 5 minutes again….go now!
Do you have ideas now?
What happened? If you’re like most people, you had many more ideas in the second activity because you permitted yourself to come up with any ideas. Most people find it easier and more fun than the first activity, where you were looking for great ideas. Trying to be great or perfect stifles creativity. It paralyzes you.
What would happen if you put on a timer for ten minutes and wrote down every terrible idea for sponsoring games, recruiting seeds, conversation starters, etc., that you could think of? Then, of course, you would write down plenty of bad ideas and some good enough ideas that could work.
Letting go of perfection is freeing.
Permitting yourself to do it “badly” lets you get on with the job and get things done. And by getting things done, you keep the momentum going.
So how do you ensure that what you do is good enough? By focusing on the process. Try to improve the process, and don’t focus too much on the result. For example, you will increase sales, bookings, and recruiting leads by making your parties and events more enjoyable for you, the host, and the guests.
By doing the process well, the result will be better. So that’s where you want to focus your improvements, not on the outcome.
Because focusing too much on the result makes you needy, locks you up, takes the joy out of the process, and leads to perfectionism.
And perfection is the enemy of good and the enemy of done.
