My name is Karl and I’m a recovering perfectionist. Unchecked, perfectionism leads to procrastination, because nothing is ever quite perfect. Unmanaged, this can become a dangerous spiral for anyone, especially when it comes to meeting deadlines.
How do I cope with this? What’s my solution? Over time, I’ve finally realized that it’s usually better to be 90-95% now than to be 100% perfect later. I can’t get as much done if I wait ’til everything’s perfect, and I like getting things done.
Conveniently, comedian Tina Fey gave me a new mantra for this “good enough” approach, in her 2011 autobiography Bossypants.
It’s a comment from Lorne Michaels, creator and producer of Saturday Night Live, to the SNL writing staff. He said, “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. The show goes on because it’s 11:30.”
Life isn’t always so regimented, but it’s a good way to look at things. If it’s done, I can edit it, or we’ll capture it in the QA process. I use that in scheduling projects as a project manager — we need to finish the core functionality first, and then add the bells and whistles later.
How do you handle procrastination and perfectionism? I suggest reading the rest of Bossypants (or listening to the narrated-by-Tina-Fey audio book) for more useful — and funny — career and life advice.
Image credit: David Shankbone via Wikimedia Commons
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Karl,
I used to worry over “perfection details” and found myself miserable at times when the event, project, whatever finally launched. You have to be comfortable with what’s good enough to ship as Seth Godin says. Leadership requires making tough decisions that affect quality, performance, etc. but at the end of the day you need to finish the project versus continually delaying in order to be 100%!
Brian, that’s a great point about being “good enough to ship,” especially with digital marketing versus print marketing.
If a website isn’t perfect at launch, you can make edits, or do a Phase 2. If a pay-per-click (PPC) ad isn’t working, you can test a new one (or several). It’s not like a billboard, where you’re stuck with it for the next month.
It is interesting to think about procrastination through perfectionism. Usually when I think of procrastination I think of laziness. So this gave me a whole new perspective. I can relate to this article because I am so competitive and sometimes when I look around at others work, my work never seems good enough. I guess now I have to learn that even though a boss isn’t always relying on me, that I need to get quality work finished that will get the job done and accomplish the goal.
Good point — procrastination can go both ways. Disconnected from perfectionism, I find procrastination is also an excellent motivator to clean my apartment… http://www.despair.com/proc24x30pri.html