I struggle with wanting to be perfect, or at least to appear perfect. I know that doesn’t make any sense because it’s not even possible. Nonetheless I get really uncomfortable when I need to produce something people will evaluate, especially when it’s something I’ve never done before. Even though it’s something new to me, I tend to expect myself to deliver perfection.
This expectation is paralyzing. I’m in the throes of this struggle right now. I’m creating something I think is super-cool. I call it a Life Impact Assessment. It’s a tool to help people understand what their life’s impact has been up until this point. It stems from my passion for people to be aware of how they are impacting other people. It’s also a great starting place for people to consider what they want their impact to be from here on.
I’ve never created an assessment tool like this before. It started off simple. Next thing I knew it had the potential of being a 25-page inventory. I got this panicky feeling. I don’t want it so long people won’t take it. I don’t want it so simple it doesn’t capture the impact. I felt stuck.
Today I remembered a study John and I read about. (I don’t remember which book we read it in but it is cited in another book called “Art of Fear.”) A pottery class was divided into two groups. In one group, students’ grades would be determined by the number of pots they made. The other students’ grades would be determined by the quality of one pot. The results were dramatic. The students who made many pots got really good at making pots. The quality of their pots was much higher than the quality of the students who focused on creating one really good pot.
Isn’t that funny? Focusing on creating one really awesome thing did not end up creating that one awesome thing. However, creating a bunch of something did result in creating really awesome things. It’s like the old adage, “Practice makes perfect.”
I’ve decided to stop worrying about making this assessment tool perfect right out of the gate. Creating several iterations of it will much more likely lead to a great thing. After I create the first version, I can share it with people, tweak it, share it, tweak it and so on. The end result will be a powerful and useful assessment. But it will never happen if I shoot for it to be perfect from the beginning.
John and I once had a business coach, Brian Sharp, who told us to not worry about trying to be perfect. In coaching us on new endeavors, he told us to, after doing a reasonable amount of preparation, “go make a mess.” That advice has served us well as we are always learning by experience.
The same permission that was given to me, I now give to you: “Don’t worry. Be crappy.”
In the end, you will have a beautiful pot if you’ve gone through the effort of making a whole bunch of other pots, too. That’ll work out a lot better than trying to be perfect.
