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Episode #73
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You may have heard the phrase “Perfectionism is the enemy of progress” or “Perfection is poverty“ and in many ways, they are true particularly when you are starting your own business. Although personally, I think that it isn't perfectionism itself that’s the main problem, it’s how you manage that trait if you have it that makes the difference.
Perfectionism, in psychological terms, is a personality style where a person is obsessed with striving for perfection and is usually very self-critical and worried about what other people will think of them or what they are doing.
But like everything in life, it’s not one size fits all, because the traits of perfectionism can be seen as positive or negative depending on how far you take them. Perfectionism can be seen as a strength. Perfectionists set themselves big goals, have high standards, are highly motivated and willing to work hard for their success; they are achievement-oriented and also want to learn and grow and enjoy being challenged.
But there is a dark side to perfectionism. Where your perfectionism makes you create goals that are not just stretching but actually physically unobtainable in the time or with the resources you have. So you mostly don’t reach them and then feel like a failure. Another problem is that your standards are so high you have to work yourself into the ground to keep up with them.
You can be quick to blame yourself when things go wrong, even if it’s out of your hands. You tend to procrastinate for a long time on a project out of your fear of failure. Then you shrug off compliments and forget to celebrate your success when you do achieve your goals.
Research shows that perfectionism can cause:
Lower levels of achievement. As a result of procrastination and spending excessive time getting a task just right meaning less work gets completed.
Psychological distress. perfectionists are more likely to have stress, anxiety, depression, and feelings of self-loathing.
Burnout as their unrealistic expectations can’t be met, so they work excessively to achieve them, creating a vicious cycle that results in burnout.
So perfectionism is not bad in itself but how you utilise that trait is key. You want to use it in its positive form. But it is very easy to fall into more negative tendencies. Particularly when you are doing something new like becoming your own boss.
Perfectionism can be the enemy of progress for aspiring entrepreneurs. When starting a business, it is just impossible to be perfect at all things. Everything you do is new and you have to accept you are not going to get it right first off the bat. A key thing when starting your own business is get into action and perfectionism and perfection can be the enemy of action. if you spend too long on every single element at the start, you probably will never get it off the ground, or at the very least take twice the time it should have taken. It’s great to have big goals and high standards, but not if they make you procrastinate.
So how can you master your perfectionism to make it a positive for you as you start out on your entrepreneurial journey?
Well, there are three strategies that I use to stop me from drifting into negative perfectionism.
FOCUS YOUR PERFECTIONIST POWER
This strategy is good to help you from having unrealistic expectations about the amount of work you can get done. So typically perfectionism makes you expect to be able to do everything and do it all perfectly! That is just not possible! You are setting yourself up to fail.
So you have to choose where you focus your perfectionism. You need to stop giving everything equal value and work out what needs your best work and what doesn’t.
Look at everything on your to-do list this week and prioritise what is more important at this moment. Choose the one thing that you do need to do as near to perfect as possible, so let’s call it your A+ work. Everything else you do will be B-. So it doesn’t mean that your work will be bad, it will be absolutely good enough, it just means it will be more manageable. You are agreeing with yourself ahead of time that certain things do not need to be perfect.
Set the quality level you are comfortable with, so you can get into action. So if setting it at A+ paralyses you then set it at B - or even C+ so you can do what you said you would do.
FACE YOUR FEARS & RATIONALISE THEM
A bad effect of perfectionism is that you quit before you start You get so caught up in thinking something has to be perfect and worrying so much about it being right, that it brings fear in you. So then you don't start. You really want something but are paralysed by that fear.
Another annoying thing is that if you don’t quit before you start, you quit at the first sign of trouble.
So when you think something's not good enough, when you make a mistake, you start blaming yourself and slip into self-doubt. So let’s say you make a mistake. what do you do? You think “I knew this would never work”. You apply pressure on yourself and blow up mistakes in your mind to something far worse than the actual reality.
Why is this happening? Well, it's simple, it’s the primaeval part of your brain protecting you by allowing Negative self-talk. Your brain is naturally wired to perceive the negative first. Your fears are not real fears. But how do you shift your brain from negative to positive perfectionism? You need to step out of the primaeval part of your brain and let the higher thinking part of your brain take over.
How do you do that? You write down your fears. So if you have scared yourself into not going ahead with your plans to start a side hustle or to leave your day job and launch a business ask yourself why and then write it down. You write it down because when you see it there on paper, you higher thinking part of the brain naturally starts to question it. Is it a real fear or are you just telling yourself that you aren’t ready or not good enough? Then when you recognise it's not a real fear the higher thinking part of your brain will start to solve it. You will see it for what it really is, a fake fear and start to work out what you need to do. Where you can go for help, what you can do to move forward.
FIRST DRAFT MODE
I tell myself that everything I do is just a first draft so it doesn’t need to be perfect. So if I’m writing a blog article or am designing a course, I tell myself I'm just writing the first draft. Knowing that what you are creating is not the final product that people will see takes the pressure off that everything you decide has to be perfect.
This in turn allows you to be more creative and inspired and usually means you work a lot faster because you are not self-editing and being self-critical as you go. It’s about getting something done, no matter how imperfect it seems at the time. Then book time for later when you do go back and review what you have done. Usually with a bit of space and time, when you go back to it, you really don’t have much to change.
THE BOTTOM LINE IS…
You are allowed to have work that is less than perfect and you are allowed to make mistakes. What you aren't allowed is to let your perfectionism stop you from moving forward productively with your business and life change plans.
