Posts Tagged ‘excellence’
Practice Imperfection
The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time. ~ Edwin Bliss
Applying perfection to everything you do can seriously impede your productivity – I know. This is something I battle myself. Being aware of this helps keep me from obsessing about getting all of my work to look ‘just right.’
Some things do not require your best effort. Learn to distinguish between tasks that deserve to be completed with 100% excellence and stuff that just needs to get done.
If you’re a perfectionist, learn to tolerate “good enough” in yourself and others.
Practice this in small ways, like allowing spelling mistakes in your to-do lists or being satisfied with providing a draft while having it (e.g., a letter, project proposal, etc.) fine-tuned by someone else — or vice versa.
If you tend to lose yourself in a task, try limiting how much time you’re willing to spend on it. Set a timer and challenge yourself to just get it done–or a chunk of it done.
Adopt a mantra to help you stop the madness of perfectionism like: “I like it JUST the way it is!”. This is a spiritual exercise that will help you make better judgments about how to spend your time.
Practice imperfection – get more done.
Jana Hartwell, CPO®
jana4sos@gmail.com