Productivity Prescription: Don’t be Perfect

Posted by workingtoworld on April 13, 2016 in Productivity Prescription | 2 Comments

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough.” That is what a good friend of mine told me as I was working on a pitch for my business plan.  It was late the night before the presentation and I was obsessing about the wording for a sentence about 1/2 way through the deck. It wasn’t even something written, this was just working for a sentence that I was going to say as I switched slides.  Of course, when you’re doing a big presentation, wording matters.  But does it really matter enough to stay up all night or worse to potentially miss finishing the presentation on time or to stress out to the point of being flustered going into it?

As an objective observer, and one that I had rehearsed the presentation for numerous times, she could tell that I was just being type-A and obsessive.  People weren’t going to be holding on to every word of something that was said in passing. But it was my baby and to me everything had to be perfect.  But she had a point, at this rate, I would never get done.

Now, I do have to say that we spent a lot of time working on the introduction and the conclusion. Those were extremely important, something that people would hold on to.  The introduction set the tone for what I was going to be talking about and the conclusion was the part where I made the requests of my audience.  In those instances, the only thing good enough is perfection.  But that is not always the case.  In many instances, perfect becomes the enemy of done.

I would say, in this case I was lucky. I had a deadline and I had a friend who was objective but cared about me getting what I want, but in many cases, wanting to be perfect becomes our enemy; it stops us from accomplishing what we want because we are too busy being obsessive to be productive.

This is especially true when we have no real deadlines, when we are the only ones holding ourselves to getting done.  In those cases, we have to just hold ourselves to an objective measure and then just do it and put it out there. The amazing thing is that perfectionism is the ultimate cruel double edged sword because the more that we work in our caves to make something perfect, the less feedback that we are getting from consumers on what they consider perfect.  What we want in our heads is very often not what works in the real world.  When we start getting feedback, we can start making tweaks to make it more user friendly and more fit to accomplishing the goal that we set out to do.

I know that I have this issue, so when I started this blog, I decided that I was going to do five posts and then I was going to put it out there. And you know what, I am extremely glad. The parts that I thought were going to be the most successful haven’t always been and its really great that I was able to learn that so that I can focus on the areas that my readers want to hear about.  And I am making adjustments as I go.

Basically, when you’re trying to get something done, it is important to figure out what makes something good enough. In some cases, good enough means perfect but in most cases good enough means stopping before you’re 100% satisfied with the results. The quote, “the worst mistake anyone can make is being too afraid to make a mistake” just about sums it up.

Now, go on focus on the important, not the perfect, and be productive.

If you would like to read the other posts in the productivity prescription series check here.  If you like this post, please share it, it would help me out a lot.  Make sure that you follow this blog to get updates and to be notified of new posts.  There will be a giveaway happening soon, so stay tuned for that.