Perfectionism is my greatest obstacle as a creator. It’s so evident to me when I look over my library of notes and articles.
I count over 1,000 articles, glossary entries, and lessons that are 70–90% complete. So many of them are “almost ready” – just needing the right example, to fold in the notes of one more reference, or to adjust the format. These belong to several courses and writing projects that I’ve started and not finished, many of which are already represented in partial form on the website. This is my perfectionism on display.
Here’s what bothers me most: this nearly completed, imperfect content would be valuable to others if published, even if it doesn’t meet my internal standards. But unpublished, it helps no one.
The reality, though, is that it’s even worse than just being a missed opportunity to provide value. All of these partially completed projects exert pressure. They’re always lingering there. I continually feel the pull to turn my attention to them. Sometimes people email me about them. It’s hard to enjoy victories because each victory is so small in comparison to the large body of unfinished work that remains. There are, perhaps, thousands of hours of work represented in this unpublished work, and I feel that too—a specter of waste that hangs over my head.
This pressure creates a pernicious excuse for procrastination. I tell myself I can’t market my courses until I’ve finished that one missing module. I can’t promote the memberships until I’ve finished these three subprojects. But this is a trap. I’ve already created enough value to justify marketing my work. The incomplete pieces obscure how much has already been done, as if nothing counts until everything is finished.
My practice now is to ship more, even in imperfect states. That 70% complete version I’m holding back still contains ideas that might help someone right now. Maybe, once it’s out there helping people, I’ll find the energy to improve it further. Maybe it will strike up a conversation that causes me to refine or elaborate the ideas. But even if I don’t, it will still have created more value than it could sitting in my note vault.
References
- Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis
Pros go to work whether they’re inspired or not. They allow for imperfection in their work. They finish what they start. They share their work when it’s finished. The exceptions only prove the rule.
As creators, we’re always going to be far more aware of the flaws in our creation than others are, and some of us have a particularly hard time grappling with imperfection. It’s not ready yet, we think. One more draft. One more week of color correction. One more scene in the can.