you might be wondering if i sent this email by accident. honestly, i don’t blame you; the perfectionist inside me was convinced this was an accident too. but the rest of me wanted to highlight something more important:
sound familiar?
- you plan to start something (task, decision, action) but end up spending all your time thinking about everything which could go wrong
- even when you start, a large chunk of your energy goes into ‘what ifs’ - ‘what if this doesn’t work out’, ‘what if this isnt the right next step’, ‘what if there are better alternatives’
- when you finally finish what you started, you feel more frustration at how long it took than accomplishment at the fact you completed it
see, when we let perfectionism take over our decision making process, often the result isn’t genuine quality; it’s procrastination with a ribbon and a bow tie.
starting this email in this way is my way of showing you embracing imperfection doesn’t end in catastrophe as much as you’d think.
breaking the perfectionism-procrastination loop
i used to be convinced my perfectionism was a biproduct of the high standards i had for myself; a natural, healthy phenomenon. i always told myself ‘either i do it to the best possible level, or i don’t do it at all’. spoiler, most of the time i only managed the latter.
but looking back, the clue was always in the name - they’re supposed to be high standards, not perfect standards. and perfectionism which more often than not leads to procrastination isn’t a ‘perfect’ process by any metric.
yet, i held onto to this mindset even as i first started posting content less than 2 years ago. i did endless takes for the simplest sentences, spent longer than i’m willing to say on basic editing, and refused to publish a single video with what i considered an ‘unpolished’ caption.
i thought that was the ‘right’ way to approach making content people would find valuable.
now, 200+ videos and 400k+ of you lovely people later, the pattern is much clearer. we often think the parts of ourselves people value most are the parts we’ve already perfected. but time and time again, i’ve been shown that the parts i’m still actively working on - the parts which are inherently imperfect and ‘unpolished’, are what people are drawn to most.
the cost of perfectionism
these two years have also helped me realise that, contrary to my previous belief, perfectionism isn’t free. perfectionism has an opportunity cost. and in my efforts to be ‘perfect’ by all means, i missed out on many opportunities.
by design, perfectionism requires delaying starting something, because we’re waiting for that perfect moment, state, or condition. the issue is that, at a certain point, starting with what you have becomes more advantageous than sitting and waiting for an incomplete idea to become complete. participation isn’t as impressive as perfection, but it’s definitely more impressive than never making it to the finish line.
in my case, the irony is that those raw and unpolished videos got me closer to perfection than overthinking every word, re-editing every video, and optimising every hook ever did.
so what can we do about perfectionism?
the dilemma is that it often isn’t enough to tell ourselves ‘it doesn’t have to be perfect’. our brain doesn’t want to believe it; our body doesn’t want to act on it.
what’s helped me most is adopting a curious mindset and following through on the curiosity.
i did a deep dive into curiosity last week if you want the full context.
for example, with this email, i asked myself ‘what would really happen if i started the email with complete nonsense?’
honestly, i still don’t know the answer, and that’s okay. what’s more important is that you’ve read this far, which probably means you found some kind of value in it.
no voice message this week; i want you to spend the time starting something you never did because the conditions weren’t ‘perfect’ enough.
if you’d like me to go deeper on this topic, just reply ‘yes’ to this email. i read this inbox personally.
that’s all for today. speak wisely, choose intentionally, and look after yourself x