What's that saying, three steps forward, two steps back, is still progress.
I wrote that sentence on December 27th, 2020. And then left it as a draft, to be completed later. It's now 25th of July, 2021, and as I look at that one sentence, I know that I had stuff to say. Something that I wanted to get out, but what happened.
I'm committed to finish this today, because I listened to a podcast on Spotify by Jay Shetty (the British-Indian former monk, who's only 33, as of today and has a gazillion podcasts, books and other stuff he's done) where he talks about 7 things you can do to boost your mental health.
And one of those things can be a book on it's own. While it focusses on the issue of being a perfectionist, it is about procrastination. And here's the tip.
Don't aim for 100% complete, stop at 75%.
He says that all of his videos are 70 to 75 percent complete. That he doesn't even bother going back to correct the mistakes he knows are in the video.
Perfectionism can add a lot of stress in your life, increase anxiety, cause depression and even some suicidal tendencies.
I'm a chronic procrastinator. I have a million projects started, some started years ago. But very few get completed. I'm certain that most of them are past the 75% mark, probably closer to 80% or even 90%, but I still think I can make them better.
Continuous improvement, I call it. But if we want to be truthful, it's procrastination. Because, truthfully, I don't look at the stuff daily, trying to make it better. I just think that it's quite not yet good enough to be launched out there. That there's still something (which I feel, but cannot articulate) yet to be done.
When I studied architecture, in my first year, I had the same mental blocks. I would draw, and draw, and draw and read, and read, and research, and research projects to death. And the grades were somewhat average. Not too shabby, but not reflective of the effort that went into the production.
Sometime in my second year, a professor, Bruce Anderson, told me to go with the first thing that came to me. And develop that. It completely changed my approach and I ended up with the prize in architecture for my year when I graduated. There are no perfect chairs out there. No perfect homes. No perfect stories. No perfect meals. Some are timely (good for a moment). Some are personal (good for some people). But perfection doesn't exist.
And so, get on with it. Just get it done and move along, because the feeling of progress, of movement, of change and growth is much better than stagnating going around in circles, over and over and over again.
Practically...
- Start something.
- Get going.
- At some point, your brain gets tired.
- Stop.
- Pick it up later when you're fresh.
- At some point you get tired again.
- Stop.
- Publish - get it out there.
The discipline is allowing yourself only two stops - and then saying to yourself, even though I think there's more, right now, this is good enough to go out.
And with that said, and with my two stops since I started this yesterday, I'm releasing this now.
THE END.
