[GROW-1] Perfectionism kills growth

So, this series is about one thing: Making the most headway with your blog and business… in the shortest amount of time.

It is about rapid progress despite a lack of time. And we have quite a few high-leverage actions we’ll be discussing as part of this series over the next few weeks.

But, first things first.

See, there’s a few matters of MINDSET that are pretty important to adopt of you want to make headway quickly.

Have you ever gotten into a seemingly endless loop trying to make something perfect?

I have. In fact, like many of you, I have definitely been guilty on several occasions of spending way too much time tweaking my blog theme. It is easy to do. You end up trying plugins, tweaking the theme, trying colors. It is like the inner artist comes out and you’re sitting there looking at your blog like a canvas!

And I actually enjoy tweaking my site. But, at SOME point, I have to realize that I’m spinning my wheels on it rather endlessly.

Same with writing a blog post. In the end, any blog post can be better. You could add more to it, add better images, tweak something, reword something. But, all that time you’re doing that, the post isn’t live. It isn’t being read.

In both cases, one has to ask… at what point is it actually DONE?

What I’m speaking to is the effort to seek perfection. Many people like to call themselves a perfectionist, even sometimes admitting that it can get in the way because they don’t get things done.

If you want to make fast headway and get things done in short time, you cannot be a perfectionist.

That doesn’t mean you put out crap. What it means is that you realize that perfection is NOT attainable. There is no such thing as an absolute. In most cases, you can’t even define it.

Perfection is a hidden standard. It is an unknown. Any real standard, to be a useful standard, has to be known. If it isn’t known and defined, it becomes a hidden standard and isn’t useful. And if you spend your time trying to attain it, you end up spinning your wheels endlessly.

That’s what being a perfectionist is. And, of course, for some it is being used as an excuse not to launch (see my email from Friday about the fear of failure).

So, how do you defeat this need for perfection?

By making the unknown… known. In other words, define EXACTLY what “DONE” looks like. Set out, in advance, the specific goals of your actions and what exactly you’re looking to accomplish. Then, when you get that done, you are DONE. Know the result you’re shooting for, then when the result is achieved, you move on.

The other thing is…

Your market will never know that you don’t think it is perfect. 🙂 They will literally never know. All that private wrestling you were doing in the background to try to seek this hidden standard…. it isn’t recognized by them. It won’t cross their minds.

So, stop worrying about it! 🙂

In short, it comes down to 3 things:

1. Define clearly what the goal is and what “done” looks like.
2. When you get to that point, be willing to declare it done and move on.
3. Know that perfection is not attainable and it isn’t defined, so chasing it would  be like chasing a rainbow.

If you want to make rapid headway and leverage your time well, you must defeat perfectionism. You’ve got to get things done and release them to the public.

Thinking about fishing won’t catch a fish. Trying to build the perfect lure won’t catch a fish. Only having the hook in the water has any chance of catching the fish. While you may have been trying to build the perfect lure, somebody else is catching fish with just a worm.

Tomorrow, I’m going to share with you another thing you have to know (and practice) in order to get a lot done with a short amount of available. Like…. a way to actually MAKE TIME.

See ya tomorrow morning. 🙂

– David

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The WP Edge is the official weekly newsletter of the Blog Marketing Academy.