The Strive for Perfection Kills Growth.
People come into business and have this idea that if they do things perfectly, they will succeed at a higher rate. Trying to write the perfect article, or build the perfect website, or create the perfect ad.
The problem is we don’t know what perfect is. Perfect is often times our own particular viewpoint, which could be significantly off-base compared to what perfect ACTUALLY is… assuming it even if it exists.
Another thing to consider is that if you are striving for perfection, you are unlikely going to experience any level of failure because of your lack of action taking. The fear of doing something incorrectly, will lead to doing NOTHING.
The reality is that messing things up are critical. You have to be willing to be imperfect to get closer to perfect.
Let's look at a good analogy.
We Shoot Lousy Shots, Before We Sink Baskets.
I have been playing basketball my entire life. I remember my younger years going down to the park and literally spending hours shooting 3 point shots, missing more than I was making. Through time, and through lots of missing shots, I got better at sinking baskets.
I never read a book on "how to shoot a basket". In other words, I didn't try to perfect what I was doing before I practiced doing that very thing. It was a requirement for me to fail, and to fail lots in order to get better.
If you think in terms of playing a particular sport like basketball, when you shoot a ball and it doesn't go in, you are naturally learning how to shoot the basketball better. You learn from your mistakes and what not to do.
But if you try to perfect your shot before you ever took a shot, you wouldn't be getting the critical practice that you needed to succeed.
If you apply those exact same principles of business, I think you were going to find that striving for perfection is not a good approach. It is a "limiting" factor to your overall success as it leads to less action taking, and bigger focus on analytics than productivity.
Again, lack of action means lack of productivity...and lack of potential for success.
Find Failure Faster. Succeed Quicker.
As a rule of thumb, if something slows down the process of us finding failure then it is going to lead to less productivity and realization of what leads to success.
So what I want you to do is focus entirely on taking action, embrace any sense of failure and use that as a learning experience to make your next action that much closer to perfect. Get out there miss some baskets so you can start hitting more and more baskets with greater frequency as a result of the practice and consistent action that you are putting forth.
Perfect doesn't exist. Close to perfect does, and that will be achieved through trial and error.
Try stuff, fail at stuff, get better and doing stuff, and find your way "towards" perfect with much more efficiency.
Recent Comments
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Hello everyone and thanks for y’all’s 10cents about this ( sickness lol) state of mind that we all tend to fall into time and again from time to time and thanks Kyle for the very timely subject and advice, I can tell you’ve been here before lol, I know it fits like a glove , in my case very much needed to keep moving forward with the training at this time when its getting a bit confusing for me and its easy to get frustrated, thanks again, pushing forward!
I have been there many times, and I have tried to perfect things before I even knew what perfect (or close to perfect) was. That just slowed down my progress as it stifled my productivity.
Push forward, take chances, and don't fear failure. Embrace the unknown, the fast way to learn what the unknown is is to face it head on.
True, I have given up on perfectionism, it just slows me down. I’m perfect enough already, lol.
As for getting things wrong, I don’t mind. It just means I’m getting closer to getting it correct.
As for failure, it’s just a learning curve for me. Funnily enough the more I fail the better I get.
Great motivational post.
Stephen
Yeah, that is the main thing. It will slow down any progress, which serves as a hinderance for success. :)
Good morning Kyle,
I hope that you are all doing well.
I appreciate your excellent blog post as unfortunately, I have seen perfectionists in action! I have also seen the results, it literally means that they do absolutely nothing as you rightly mentioned!
I really like your basketball example, it's so true, we have to practice and mess up before we improve. It's great to try and do things well, however, perfection really brings failure.
I know of someone who spent hours having a logo created, they just wanted to get the logo right for the website! The time could have been spent on creating blog posts which would have given far greater results. Basically, the result is that virtually zero blog posts have been written. The website looks beautiful and professional, the logo looks wonderful, but obviously no traffic and no business!
I know for sure that every top businessman has messed up massively, but they refused to let it hold them back! They keep moving forward and carry on regardless!
There are some really fantastic points in your blog post, thank you.
Wishing you all the best.
Roy
Yeah, this happens. In the case of the logo, at least they took action to create it and if those two hours were spent fumbling around the canva editor and learning that, then it wasn't done in vain and that will lead to further efficiency down the road.
Thank you for your reply, Kyle, it's appreciated.
The logo was outsourced to a professional, I guess the whole process took a couple of months. I believe several different people tried to create the logo, however, when you work with a perfectionist it becomes almost impossible to achieve anything at all!!!
Once again, Kyle, your blog is a great topic, I seriously believe that perfectionism holds many people back, massive time!
All the best.
Roy
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Hello Kyle, Your basketball analogy is great for this time of the year. I am watching the playoffs and I have been watching the reactions of the players, more closely this year, when they miss their shots. Some miss and get right back into running down the court, others stand for a second or two and wonder how did they miss it. You are correct when you write about being a perfectionist and not moving forward. I have that mindset. I have been asking more questions and trying to move forward with confidence here. I have been with WA for a little while and I know there is a lot of support here and I attend the webinars, but the perfectionist in me still has a problem with putting out a product that is not 100% correct. Thanks for this article. Still on the court and fighting for a rebound. Yolanda