An excellent and encouraging post and one that enables me
to dump all the unread ones
that tell how to succeed in writing something that
is probably not in my style or ability range
and so unachievable. I imagine that writing is like
painting or any other art form in that
if it communicates with the viewer / reader then there is
success between both parties.
As a therapist I am aware of the value of working with
the fears that create procrastination.
M’reen
I Used to Be a
Perfectionist But I’m Better Now
Have you ever set yourself a blogging deadline and
allowed it to slip by
because you weren’t completely happy with your post?
Did you justify your overrun by telling yourself it was
important to get things just right?
Is your inner perfectionist killing your creativity?
Perfectionism is a completely understandable defense
mechanism,
but in reality is simply a delaying tactic, to avoid the
possibility of failure.
We tell ourselves that the reason we haven’t yet posted
that new article,
or finished building that website is because we
want it to be absolutely,
one hundred percent, flawlessly, undeniably perfect. But
what we are really saying is,
“I’m scared to show this to people, because they might laugh
at me shoot me down in flames
tell the world I’m an idiot (Delete as appropriate)
It is fear, plain and simple.
So we fiddle and tinker and adjust and tweak and rewrite
and polish and rearrange and
do all those other time-wasting things to try to assuage
the terror and damp down our self-doubts.
Sometimes we spend so long fiddling that by the time the
blog post is ready to go,
it has passed its sell by date or someone else has beaten
us to it.
Beating the Perfectionist
Bug
The only cure for the infected perfectionist is a healthy
dose of rationalism and a change of mindset.
How do you know that version three wasn’t better than
what you have now?
Or version one for that matter? Did you test it? How much
time could you have saved
and used to create the next piece, rather than fiddling
with this one?
The answer is simple – get it out there and move on.
If it’s rubbish, you’ll soon find out from the feedback
and you can learn from that and improve
the next one. Chances are it’s not and you’ll get nothing
but positives.
I’ve been there.
Having wrestled with self-critical thoughts about my
writing for many years,
it was actually blogging that finally released me. I
looked at what other people were doing
on the web and I could see immediately that it wasn’t
perfect. But, it was good.
I began to realise that readers don’t want perfection,
they want useful.
I stopped trying to compete with the best in the
business and focused on competing with myself;
making each piece just a
little bit better, a little bit more useful than the last.
If I can deliver something of value to just one reader,
then my work is done.
Now I can jump into creating and spend less time
agonising.
As a result I believe I am a better, more relaxed writer.
I often look back at previous posts and see things that
could be improved and sometimes
I do go in and tweak things a little. But, I’ve never yet
had anybody comment on my prose style
or my grammar or my twisted syntax.
People engage with what I say, not how I say it.
Or they don’t. And if they don’t, it’s not because my
sentences don’t scan smoothly.
It’s because I didn’t say anything very interesting in
the first place.
We are not alone.
Having overcome this demon in myself,
I wondered how other people have managed to beat the bug.
One of my favourite bloggers is Darren Rowse of
http://Problogger.net. Darren has built
one of the most successful and informative blogs on the planet. It is a decent
sized business now with over 20,000 visitors a day, but it all began in
Darren’s spare time, just like your blog and mine.
He wrote a very revealing piece, recently about all the
things that he has created that weren’t perfect and he also talks about all the
things that he spent far too long putting off through self-doubt.
In the post he talks about how he started his digital
photography blog and how letting go
of his high expectations allowed him to create something
that wasn’t ideal, but was enough:
“I had the dream and one day I realised that if I didn’t
actually start the blog I’d never have
any chance of arriving at that dream. So I started small.
“I made a call on a brand and domain name – It wasn’t
perfect but it allowed me to start
“I started on GoDaddy Hosting – I knew it wasn’t the best option but it allowed
me to start
“I started with a free WordPress theme – it wasn’t as professional or
customised
as what I saw in my dreams but it allowed me to start
“I wrote a handful of posts – I wanted to have more in my archives but
it allowed me to start
“I started with comments switched off to allow me to focus on creating more
content
– doing so fell short of my vision for a ‘community’
driven site but it allowed me to get moving”
That repeated phrase sums up everything that is right
about taking action, rather than planning for it:
“It wasn’t perfect, but it allowed me to start”.
As Darren shows, the antidote for our perfectionist
procrastination is to simply do something.
Do something that’s good enough and then do something else
and something else
and keep on doing something else until, before you know it,
you have built the dream.
Nancy Butts, in her brilliantly titled post, Perfection,
the Graveyard Where Writers Go to Die,
suggests that you should:
“Give yourself permission to write dreck, and lots of it.
I’m not the first writer to say this, but you have to write a lot of bad prose
in order to find your voice, your rhythm, and get to the good stuff.
If you keep your hand moving, eventually after a few
minutes something will shift into gear
in your writer’s brain and a word, a phrase, a sentence
will pop out—a good one. OK, maybe it will only be a middling good one at
first, but don’t worry. Write it down anyway. You can fix it later.
For now your priority is to stop judging yourself and
keep writing.”
The Last Word on
Perfectionism
The real master philosopher of moving forward
and making things happen is Seth Godin,
successful entrepreneur, best-selling author and public
speaker.
In this inspiring talk Godin explains exactly why it is
that the closer we get to decision time,
the more we start to thrash about in self-doubt.
His mantra, “Ship, don’t thrash” is a perfect summation
of exactly why we have to get off our butts
and create, instead of sitting
around picking our perfection scabs.
Or as Salvador Dali said:
“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it”
My name is Andrew Grant. I’m an aspiring
internet marketer, passionate blogger and believer in
Perhaps you’d like to
check out my sister blogs:
To quote the Dr Seuss
himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn;
the more places you'll go.”
