It’s 6:30 a.m. on Sunday. I have a massive personal project that is obliterating my weekend. I don’t have time to write a blog post. My plan was to write it earlier in the week and schedule it for release in advance. That didn’t happen.
Now my choice is to skip the blog post this week or do a half-hearted job. The former conflicts with my streak of posting every single week since the first the year; the latter is completely incompatible with my perfectionist zeal. As much as it pains me, I chose the latter.
Perfectionism makes it hard to get stuff done. (Note to self: find a more articulate and eloquent word than “stuff” on re-write.) Worse than that, it makes it hard to even start. In his recent The New York Times article, Tim Herrera writes about his desire to have every article “just right” and falling into an “editing and re-editing spiral.” I get that. I often spend more than an hour refining a blog post even though it took me far less than 60 minutes to write it. Mr. Herrera makes the point that obsession with perfection, in writing and no doubt in all endeavors, prevents us from achieving the goal of task completion. He references Dr. Alex Lickerman’s point that writers need to understand and recognize the point of diminishing returns while refining and editing their work.
I’m not proud of being a perfectionist, but I’m not ashamed of it, either. It’s just one of my intrinsic characteristics, and it drives me in positive directions in many aspects of my life. But I recognize that it is central to procrastination, as well, because I worry about being dissatisfied or even embarrassed about the finished product. So, while I’m not a reformed perfectionist, or even a recovering one, at least I am an aware one.
Oddly enough, I credit daily exercise as my most effective tool for battling perfectionism. I have many days where my self-imposed thirty minutes of exercise is, well, lame: days when all I can muster is sauntering around outdoors with coffee or slogging slowly in circular paths. I often fail to lift weights or do core body exercises on scheduled days. But I’m a big fan of Voltaire’s idea that perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of good, and I assuage my exercise guilt with the knowledge that I’m moving around somewhat vigorously every single day of my life. So, good for me!
It’s 7:15 a.m. on Sunday. I promised myself that I would write this blog post, edit it, and set up my Mailchimp delivery in less than an hour. Here it goes! Do me a favor: don’t email me and tell me this week’s effort fell short. If you do, I will tell you that you’re wrong; it’s absolutely, positively, perfectly mediocre.