Perfectionism Sucks!

Are you like me? Do you have lots of great business or home improvement ideas that go unfulfilled? Do many of your sentences start with "As soon as I ... then I'll..."? If so, read on!

Perfectionism sucks! It sounds like a good thing (as in "Perfectionists do everything perfectly!") but it's not. In fact, perfectionism is like a huge glass wall covered with sticky notes that say "I'll do this as soon as I...". Between the sticky notes one can still see the original goal, but it gets harder and harder to focus on with every darned sticky note. For instance, I revised the previous three sentences several times and I'm still not satisfied. But you know what, I'm going to leave it that way! And that's really hard for me to do! (and I lied - I actually went back and revised it again!)

Perfectionism can paralyze your best efforts, making it impossible to reach your goals. Case in point. Since the time I began this blog (back in 2009) I've had hundreds of ideas for postings. For those of you keeping track, only 7 (this one makes 8) have actually been published. Why? Because every time I thought about a great blog post, I said to myself, "Wow! As soon as I...I'm going to write that in my blog". To paraphrase Pink Floyd, all in all it's just another note on the wall!

Well, 2011 will be different! I'm going to make regular posts (one per month at least, hopefully more) even if I don't think that the verbiage is perfect or that I've perfectly captured the original idea.

Are you a perfectionist? How do you deal with the paralysis? Leave a comment below or drop me an e-mail.