When perfectionism is holding you back from getting started
You might know the feeling.
You have an idea. You get excited. You start planning, fantasising, you're stoked.
And then, once the excitement fades away and the reality kicks in together with a realisation that you need to take tangible steps to make the idea happen, you feel afraid.
Is the idea actually any good? What will people think? Can you pull this off? How do you even get started? Will you have the time, money and other resources to keep going?
And these are only some of the louder voices.
Then, there are also the more subtle ones that aren't as explicitly articulated in your mind but are there nonetheless.
Things like memories of past experiences that might have left a mark that still affects your confidence. Or, quiet but unrealistic expectations that you set for yourself and demand yourself to be flawless even though you are just learning.
And this is exactly what we're talking about today - 3 mindset shifts that are helpful to remember when you set the bar just a tad too high for yourself. They are:
- Between doing mediocre work and doing no work at all, choose the mediocre
- Zoom in and focus on the step in front of you
- Understand that failure is normal and accept it
Let's get into it.
1) Between doing mediocre work and doing no work at all, choose the mediocre
I read a cool quote in Show Your Work by Austin Cleon. It came from a book called Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky and went like this: On the spectrum of creative work, the difference between the mediocre and the good is vast. Mediocrity is, however, still on the spectrum; you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.
I think it is a wise quote, and I think it is a healthy way to approach new projects.
Nonetheless, it can still be terrifying to know there is a huge gap between you-now and you-good and to realise just how much work you have ahead of you. Or maybe even worse - perhaps you don't even believe you stand a chance of ever becoming good. In these situations, too many of us default to staying in a safe space and not doing anything at all.
But let's look at it more closely and imagine two scenarios. In the first scenario, you did exactly that and effectively convinced yourself that the idea is not worth pursuing. In the second scenario, however, you kept showing up despite your poor work.
Starting with the first scenario, what are the costs of this approach?
For one, you will not stand a chance of becoming good, that's clear.
Two, and more importantly, you convinced yourself that you can't do something - which is not helpful because our actions partly form our self-perception. And if you give in to your fear on multiple occasions, you will create a self-perception that reflects that. This means that next time there is something you would like to do but are afraid to do, you won't only be dealing with the fear itself - you will also be dealing with the layers of past experiences and actions that have confirmed you are a person that gives in to that fear. And that is much harder.
What about the second scenario? You clearly don't have the confidence yet because confidence comes from evidence. And your evidence shows that your work is mediocre at best. So, you muster your courage to be vulnerable and share a true, raw picture of where your skill is currently at. And you do this repeatedly, day after day - you show up, fail, show up again, apply the learnings in your next gig, and slowly but surely, you improve.
And not only that - conversely to the first scenario, you have created a building block of your personality, a piece of evidence that proves you have overcome your fear. And that's priceless.
So, to me, the math is simple - between doing mediocre work and doing no work at all, choose the mediocre.
2) Zoom in and focus on the step in front of you
I noticed that another thing that can hold me back from starting something new is this expectation that once I start, I would need to do the work - and all the work ahead of me - perfectly from the start and forever. And when you realise the amount of work ahead of you, it isn't very encouraging, to say the least.
Imagine starting university and instead of focusing on the next due exam, you would be pondering the amount of exams and essays you need to write to get your degree. You would likely not even bother starting, especially if you are a perfectionist looking to ace everything that will be coming your way.
But because the exact number of things you must do to get a degree is not written out on the university's front door, you are unaware of how much effort will need to go into it. And that's good. Your profs take care of the scope and dosage of work you are given at any moment, so your job is to focus on what is in front of you.
But things become tricky when you are the prof and the student simultaneously - which is the case when you start a side hustle, for example. You'll need to know what is ahead of you to choose the next best action. But once you do, I suggest you focus on that one action, forget about the long, long road ahead and focus on the next step.
In this way, you make sure that you focus just on the relevant piece and minimise distraction with things that, at this moment, are out of your control. You also permit yourself to feel a sense of accomplishment once you complete that first step because you scaled down enough not to cloud your success with the 100s undone tasks that the entire project consists of.
3) Understand that failure is normal and accept it
The truth is that you are likely going to fail. On multiple occasions. This is especially true when starting something new or building a new skill. This is just the nature of the game - you fail until you succeed.
Of course, it also depends on how you define success. And I think there are at least two ways, one more helpful than the other:
1) You could say that success is when you meet your target inputs (again, piggybacking on Alex Hormozi's input-output concept). For example, suppose you want to have a profitable business. In that case, your initial target input - something that is completely in your control - can be to speak to 20 potential customers per week to understand if you are addressing a real need. If you hit those 20 interviews weekly, you succeeded.
2) Alternatively, you could say that success is only once you have that profitable business.
Of course, the first will create more frequent positive feelings than the second. It is also a sane way to measure your day-to-day success because you focus on what is in your control and evaluate yourself based on that rather than focusing on the outcome, which also depends on things out of your control, like luck, time, etc.
But ultimately, you still do want to get to that final outcome. And on the way there, you will fail — many times. Just like the many extraordinarily successful people you watch in the news have failed their way to success, you too will fail until you succeed. The Psychology of Money by Dr. Vishal Krishna Singh is loaded with such examples.
One of my favourites is Disney's success story. He created cartoon after cartoon, amounting to 400 cartoons by the mid-'30s. While the public loved many, only some were financially successful. It wasn't until Snow White came along that Disney made a fortune that could cover previous losses - he financially failed many times until he finally succeeded.
It is something worth remembering, especially when you're in the failing stage. Knowing where you are in the curve and seeing failure through the right lens can help. Being where you are now doesn't define you - it just means you are one step closer to getting from point A to point B.
The bottom line
In summary, if perfectionism is holding you back from getting started, choose to show up and do shitty work instead of no work at all, zoom in on the step in front of you and remember Disney's story next time you fail.
Let me know how it went x