A little inside baseball, I’m a perfectionist.
People tend to frame perfectionism inaccurately. It’s not the for perfection, we know that is nebulous and unattainable. Not even the most stubborn mind can hold that kind of cognitive dissidence for long. No, we are seeking out errors, which are lamentably almost always in plentiful supply.
As I’m sure you can imagine, when you produce ideas, make things, and are trusted with peoples challenges for a living, this daily error hunt, not to mention the self-judgement that goes with it, can be exhausting.
This is why I chose to adopt a daily writing practice.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled if an idea or concept I share benefits someone. But the truth is, this is as much for me as it is for you.
Having a daily deadline, a promise to myself, and the world, that I will ship, combined with a very full schedule means that I simply don’t have the time to agonise over and “perfect” everything I write. I’m forced to press publish and walk away. The purposefully low-fi, crude drawings are also by design. If I gave myself the luxury of time I would no doubt agonise over them. I would worry about whether they were funny/smart/valuable enough. I would try to iron out all the little imperfections. I probably wouldn’t ship.
This practice isn’t a hall pass for low standards, but rather an acknowledgement that for me, the perfect is often the enemy of the good. The unpublished and unseen holds no value. Whereas the things I ship, even if they end up as a masterclass in sloppy thinking, may, at the very least, add value as a lesson in what not to do.
This artificial constraint has brought home the value of adopting seemingly arbitrary rules as a method for positively shaping behaviour, and ultimately, outcomes in the rest of my life as well.
If you’re a perfectionist too, I can heartily recommend it as good therapy.