Sweet & Elusive Perfection
"We don't tell ourselves, 'I'm never going to write my symphony.' Instead, we say 'I'm just going to start tomorrow.'" ~ Steven Pressfield, Art of War.
This quote hurt my feelings the first time I read it, likely because it was so true. I’m a chronic procrastinator, I have been for as long as I can remember. In school, I’d wait until the last moment to do my work but somehow as soon as I sat down to do it, it came out effortlessly; especially if I was writing an essay or a paper. It would be written in my head already, all I was doing at that point was putting it to paper.
As I’ve gotten older and in different positions of responsibility, procrastination has not been that easy to overcome. When my work started to include factors like responses from other people, it wasn’t as easy to get things done at the last minute. I never thought of procrastination as something that I could change - it just seemed like it was baked into me. Then one day I was listening to a podcast with Brene Brown and the concept of procrastination being a side effect of perfectionism came up and I felt something deep inside of me quietly say “Yes, this is true”.
It was clear as could be: I procrastinate because it feels impossible for me to start something unless I’m very confident I can execute it perfectly. And that is rarely possible therefore I shall not start. It made sense why I could get things done quickly at the last minute when it was just up to me - with the time gone to fuss and nitpick and perfect I could produce something good enough. Easily and usually effortlessly.
I’m currently procrastinating something rather significant, significant enough that it is impacting how I feel about myself. I’ve picked up “The Obstacle is the Way” by Ryan Holiday so I can try and untangle the knot that perfectionism and procrastination have created. This act, reading about the issue, is part of of the perfectionism….I commit to conquering the problem as soon as I know EVERYTHING about it and am expertly prepared. Just one more piece of research, a little more data and I’m sure I’ll be ready to take action.
The creative parts of us, the ideas and dreams can die a slow death by a thousand “I’ll start tomorrow” promises. I don’t have a solution or a hack for it other than something very simple that interrupted my stream of thought today. I saw some content that impacted me, it was advice I needed and I immediately thought “What if this person always waited for tomorrow to put their ideas out there, how sad that would be for me as I would not have their influence in my life”
I'm still going to read up on it, overthink it, and reflect on it because that’s part of me too - a constant need to understand myself more. But maybe I’ll also take the advice of a good friend of mine who also used to be my boss. On the regular, he’d interrupt me amid a project and remind me, “Don’t let perfect get in the way of good.” I think I can live by that until I get can perfect figured out.
