Perfectionism Cripples and Kills Productivity

"Perfect is the enemy of good."

• Voltaire

You have to start somewhere. You can't begin at perfect.

We all have an idea of how a task should go. We want to do it great, but great is not perfect. And when we're chasing perfect, there's always something that doesn't sit right, doesn't sound smooth, doesn't quite feel finished.

I've wrestled with this for years. A pile of unfinished short story drafts that have never been read by anyone, always rewriting, always adjusting the style to get it closer to some imagined ideal. None of them ever shipped.

A manager once said it simply: perfect is the enemy of good. You have to start somewhere in order to improve. It stuck.

Now I approach things differently. First, get a draft on paper, whether it's copy, a post, or anything else. Write it all, then cut back. And along the way, have some fun with it. Improvise. Try saying the same thing ten different ways. Play with the copy before you chisel it down.

Results won't be perfect. But finishing the task is better than not finishing it, and honestly, that's as close to perfect as it gets.