Don’t Get Trapped By Your Perfectionism

Hey there, I hope you’re having a great day today.

Today’s video is going to focus on a bit of a different idea than I normally do.

This video is for people who really like to take a project in their business and keep working on it, working on it, working on it, but they start to get the impression that maybe they’re fidgeting with it too much. They’re sort of too hyper-focused and they have trouble not being a perfectionist.

This video is for you if you’re dealing with that.

If you’re not, skip it.

Go do something else with your time.

A New Interest

If you’re finding yourself working on something too much, I wanted to bring in a principle that I’ve recently come across from a activity that has nothing to do with business.

These past few years I’ve tried to diversify, have more interest, and do more things.

I’m trying to be a more three-dimensional human being that’s just not about business and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

I’ve expanded out and tried new experiences and found some new things I really enjoy.

And one of these things I’ve started dabbling with is watercolor painting.

I am not a master artist by any means. I’m rudimentary at best, but I have a lot of fun anyways.

One of the interesting things with watercolor painting is when you put it down, it’s a bit messy. And if you keep putting it down, it just gets all globbed up and it turns into this brown mushiness that’s hard to tell even what’s going on.

I was painting and my dad was giving me some advice. He used to have an art teacher who would say, “When you’re working on a piece of artwork with watercolor, you get to a spot where you’re going to be tempted to do more. And it’s really important you don’t do any more, because when you do too much. You’ll mess it up. You killed it. You killed it.”

So you should have stopped before you got to that point.

Don’t Overwork It – Applied To Business

This same idea applies in business.

We see this little corner that we don’t like the shading on this tree or something, and we try to keep working it to make it better and better.

And we can overfixate and actually mess up the whole thing.

To me, a business has a soul. It is an expression of art to some degree.

It’s an expression of who we are as a human being.

And a common way to kill it is by trying to make it perfect, to make it exactly what we want.

Instead, there’s a bit of allowing some looseness, allowing it to stay a bit abstract, and getting it to a spot where, okay, this is a B+. I’m pretty happy with it. I know I could keep spending a lot of time in this area, and at the end, it might not be any better, or it might actually be worse. I might have sucked the soul right out of it.

So this was a different way of thinking about things.

Maybe it’s a helpful analogy for you if you find yourself overworking a certain area of your business to step back and let it be.

Optimize For The Business As A Whole, Not A Single Project

On top of that, if you’re thinking about all of the projects that you have to do, typically, getting one thing to an A+, a 99% on your grade card, is not going to have as big of an impact as getting it to a B+, and then also getting these others that you have an F-, and a 20% on your grade card, up to a 50% or 60%.

Typically, going all in on one narrow area or project of the business doesn’t have as big of an impact.

So if you really want the best business possible, address your perfectionism at the business as a whole, as opposed to overfixing on one component as much as you can.

Hope it helps.

Work hard, but when you’re out, don’t overwork it, and don’t “kill it.”

Stop while you’re ahead.

Have a great day!