Perfectionism slows us down and prevents us from making real, meaningful progress. If you want to know how to organize your life, know that one of the first things you have to do is overcome perfectionism.
Perfectionism paralyzes our organization attempts. We need strategies for beating perfectionism so we get organize life and get things done.
Iteration, or iterating plans, is how I beat my own perfectionist tendencies. If you’re a recovering perfectionist, this strategy will end your procrastination as well as help you just get started.
Perfectionism is a mindset. It is all in our heads. So we beat it by starting with our attitudes.
We need a thinking strategy that will help us to talk back to perfectionism. I call this strategy iteration. Iteration means that we take a small steps forward, looking back to assess and learn after each step. Instead of holding out for the ideal or trying to jump to the final goal, iteration looks for progress and learns and grows and adapts as progress is made.
Perfectionism paralyzes our organization.
We need strategies for beating perfectionism so we get organize life and get things done.
Perfectionism slows us down because it keeps us trying to leap from where we are straight to the end point. We think the answer is a better checklist or a better plan, but the real problem is in our heads.
Perfectionism is a mindset, so we beat perfectionism by changing our thoughts and by getting started. It really is not more complicated than that, even though we have a hard time doing the next thing and not listening to wrongheaded thoughts that pop into our brain.
Iteration, or iterating plans, is how I beat my own tendencies toward perfectionism. If you’re a recovering perfectionist, this strategy will help you learn how to just get started.
Iteration, not Perfectionism
A helpful mindset shift is iteration. Iteration means taking small steps forward, each step looking back to the previous one to see what worked, what did not, and then moving forward. It is incremental progress that learns along the way.
It does not get stalled out by trying to make one big leap from where we are to the end goal. Instead, iteration says: I am here, this is my goal, what is one step toward that goal that I can take now? Then you do that.
Iteration is not only baby step by baby step. It is investigative. You take one step, then you assess. What worked? What did not work? What do I know now that I did not know before? That process helps you take a more informed, better, more effective next step.
Rather than trying to envision the whole project or the whole path forward, you move one step at a time and realize that life will change, experience will change what you know, skills will develop, and capacity will expand. Each step gives you more to work with.
One way to iterate is to break your time into increments. Those increments might be a month, six weeks, or a quarter. Instead of making one giant goal for the whole year, you break it down into a smaller step with a closer deadline.
Then, when you reach that point, you pause and assess. What did you learn? How have you grown? What can you do moving forward? Only then do you make the next goal. That way, each next step is more informed and more effective than the one before.
The truth is that we are always going to be iterating and never actually reaching that end point perfection, because life changes in ways we cannot predict. So the better question is not how to finally arrive.
The better question is: what should I do next? Do that. Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep moving forward. That is iteration, and it is the best answer to perfectionism.