It’s an honest question: Are you letting perfection get in the way of progress?
My friend Mark Riffey recently reminded me of the sentiment that, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” He also links to an interesting article in a blog post ‘cult of done‘. The article, ‘cult of done manifesto‘ by Bre Pettis points out to us that we need to banish procrastination, be keen that there are three states of being, not knowing, action and completion. He nicely summarizes it with, ‘Done is the engine of more’. Amen, and amen.
It is easy to be a perfectionist. In some cases, it acts like a security blanket. While it is easy to be this, the results and impact aren’t easy. Unnecessary stress, and many back burnered projects and irons in the fire become evident.
How do I know this? I’ve been there many times.
You could call me a convert to the get stuff done crew. Having realized the implications of an overly perfect approach to business and life, I’ve taken the action to move over to the side of getting things done crowd.
You can’t make progress unless you are taking action. If you are doing too much study, then you aren’t doing enough hitting the pavement which is the actionable part of life and business.
Real Life Example in Business – Sales
I once had a sales development coach share with me an important lesson using an example from his family’s own experience. His son works for a highly successful software company and was one of the first hires and was hired to help sell the products and services to the first round of customers.
He did everything he could to develop the perfect systems, the right messaging and getting prepared, which is necessary, but one day the CEO came to him and said, it is time to start selling.
This meant get it done, make it happen, take the research, process building, and whatever else and put it into action.
The Positive Implication
I will conclude with a thought… if you were to take the next 5 minutes and think about those un-done projects, long forgotten tasks, and huge mountains of “I wish I could” and wrote down a few actionable ideas to help you take the first step towards done what are the positive implications for you?
(Photo credit: Kellan)