Does Perfection Hold You Back?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Sep 7, 2010
I have a friend who is very good at what she does. In my opinion, she can do some amazing things. However, she also has a major problem, one that I feel will hold back her business.
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She's a perfectionist. In other words, she looks at everything and thinks it can be better. This does a few things that harm her and her business.
One, it slows down her production, and thus she can't serve as many clients to make more money.
Two, it makes her want to change everything, no matter what it is, and sometimes that leads to mistakes because, unfortunately, perfectionists aren't perfect.
Three, it leads to her constantly questioning the client as to what it is they want, when what they really want is for her to ask them once, then tell them what they need, with a few touches here and there. After all, people pay for expert advice and great work, and they don't want to have to work as hard at it themselves, otherwise they'd do it.
I have worked with her on this issue, but to no avail. Perfectionists also sometimes want to make your advice perfect, and thus they can be hard to get through to at times.
I brought up the Bill Gates business model, which is to put out a product that's very good, then work on making it better while you're making money off your "inferior" product. I say inferior because it could be better, but the truth is that most of the time Microsoft products are actually pretty good (Me and Vista notwithstanding), even if flawed in some fashion. Just imagine how the computing world would be if Gates decided he couldn't release any of his products because they weren't perfect.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do the best you can. There's no point in doing anything if you're not going to give it your best.
What it does mean is that if things aren't perfect, you almost always have the opportunity to fix it, or make corrections. What it means is that you shouldn't get bogged down in minutiae and look for problems that might not be there.
It means being able to put together a schedule of things to get to and being able to actually finish those things on time. It means making your life easier, making your mind feel freer, and getting more things done, thus progressing further than you could by holding yourself back needlessly.
Does perfection hold you back? If so, what are you going to do about it?
Good post Mitch! Perfection is a “disease” lots of internet marketers suffer from as well, they spend hours, days and weeks making their website look perfect and still there is always something to change, a banner in the wrong place or wrong color of the links or similar.The time that is wasted could be used for marketing, link building and content writing.
Thanks Tom. People get locked into these things at times, and I have to say that I’m glad I’m not one of those people. What I’ve noticed, however, is that perfectionists will find a reason to critique and criticize you for doing it, even when you ask them “what have you done lately?” Everything I do might not be perfect, but it’s pretty good I hope.
Aiming for perfection has definitely slowed me down in the past. I learned to control it in an internship that I had in college. I would work on a project and pay attention to every single detail, and my boss was not always pleased with how long it took me. I was still young and learning, and focusing on speed is what I took away most from that internship.
Now instead of perfection I focus on efficiency. I still pay attention to the small details, but I have them all in a list and check them off as I complete them. I also have templates for things I do over and over. This way my projects still come as close to perfection as I can get them without eating up all of my time.
It’s very true that some clients don’t want to be contacted over and over from a contractor, and being on the contractor end, I love those scenarios. The client knows that you know what you are doing and they give you more freedom to do the project. This leads to a more efficient, higher quality product.
Great stuff, Keith, and I’m glad you overcame it. My interesting story was an employee I had about 15 years ago. She was good but not perfect. She was one of those people who needed to have her desk perfectly clean at the end of the day, in a job that most of the time didn’t allow it. Her output was fantastic, even if her efficiency wasn’t. And yet, I appreciated that because even though she might have gotten back more stuff than other people, the stuff she didn’t get back was much higher than what anyone else was doing.
As an employer, you need both types to have an efficiently running system. But perfectionists will hold you back, because in the end they’re never perfect anyway.
Hmmm so this is what Mitch Mitchell does. Interesting. So I can understand her struggle, and being a perfectionist has many. But you are so correct that we let our need to be perfect at what we do, hinder our actual capabilities. We second guess ourselves when we should go with our gut instinct. When you question a client more than once about what they want, when you are suppose to be the expert, almost makes it seem as you are unsure when you should have all the confidence in what you are doing. It could potentially lessens their confidence in you.
Well, it’s a big part of what I do Karen. lol You hit upon an interesting point that I hadn’t thought of, that being the client’s confidence in us if we’re trying to be too perfect. Having a set of questions to ask makes great sense, but going overboard could scare a potential client. Great point!
I suffered from attempting to a perfectionist several years ago. I learned that perfectionism had fear at its roots and that I needed to allow myself to be human. I love “you don’t have to get it right…you just have to get it going”.
Exactly Rachel, and I’m glad you’ve added some extra perspective to this. I actually talked to my friend about this issue. She acknowledges how it holds her back, yet just can’t stop herself. And that’s too bad.
Being a perfectionist can not only slow down whatever project you’re working on, but it can also keep you from ever getting to the project in the first place. Writers do this all the time: I’ll start working on that article as soon as the dishes are done and the laundry is put away. I almost forgot, I have to renew my driver’s license. Better do that, and then I’ll start writing. Hey, I wonder if we’re out of milk…
Excellent post, Mitch, and great advice. Does your friend read your blog?
No she doesn’t, and I even told her about the post and she said she was too busy working on something else. lol