Perfection vs. Continuous Improvement

Day 203 / 365

In my opinion, procrastination is the biggest obstacle to getting things done in life. But I would say a close second would be our obsession sometimes with perfection.

Procrastination would stop you from doing anything, but striving for perfection might make you throw away any work that you have done. Not to mention, it would demotivate you and further fuel any future procrastination. You know you are not gonna do a great job, so why bother?

Life would be much easier if instead of focussing on perfection we focused on continuous improvement.

Suppose you made a timetable that you will try to stick to. Of course, you won’t be perfect at it right away. If you keep trying to follow it 100% from day 1, you will just be left disappointed and on the verge of giving up.

But if you think of it this way. Today you managed to do say a third of the tasks on time. Tomorrow, try to better that and try to surpass tomorrows performance the day after. Each day you will be gaining motivation, as you are achieving your goal — which is continuous improvement, not perfection.

I’m not saying that perfectionism is all bad. Everyone admires perfection, and everyone notices the slightest imperfections. But there’s a time and a place for it. The stuff we do daily is of two types — efforts towards learning new things, efforts towards applying what we already know. On the application part, you should definitely aim for perfection, but give yourself a break on the learning part.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — The Flow State