#29 – Are you a perfectionist & why that might be holding you back

When someone says, “you’re such a perfectionist”, does it make you feel good?
Do you take it as a compliment? 
Do you feel that, by being called a perfectionist, your work must be of high quality? 

What is perfectionism?

Perfectionism is defined as ‘to make something as good as possible’ but can there be an end to making something as good as possible? And even if there is, what is perfect to you may not be perfect to someone else. Your idea of how good something possibly is, might not be the same as someone else’s. 

Most of us take perfectionism as a compliment, which it is in a way. But it might also be holding us back from creating our best work, or venturing into something new or even, unleashing our full potential.  

As artists, creators, architects, photographers, there are always multiple ways of doing something and there’s no end to how much it can be improved or changed. You can create a composition and work on it endlessly and there will still be room for improvement and there will still be possibilities. 

The action of not letting go, trying to make something better and better and being fixated on making it as good as possible, can sometimes be detrimental to our own progress. 

Perfectionists fear failure

When I began my new creative life as a photographer I read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, and it seriously changed my life. 

The book is about leading a creative life fearlessly and Elizabeth has a whole chapter on the idea of perfection. She says that as Creatives we should not seek perfection. Having been someone who prided myself on being a perfectionist, this changed everything. It made me realize that perfection makes you feel as though what you have done is not enough, that it can be better and better. 

Imagine how limiting and negative that can be.

It can be detrimental to our progress, like withholding you from launching a product or publishing a book. It can hold you back from sharing a picture or meeting deadlines. It can actually hold you back from creating a collection of work by making you fuss over details that can only be improved by creating more work.

You end up neither happy with your own work, nor are you happy with other’s work. No one can ever meet the standards you have set, not even yourself. 

Perfectionism is draining and really not required in our creative lives. But what does that actually mean? Does it mean that we produce low-quality work or don’t pay attention to detail? 

Not at all. It means that we stop our compulsive tendency to strive for flawlessness.  Because the state of flawlessness is subjective.

Attention to detail

Attention to detail is important but not when it creates unnecessary stress, delays, doubts & the fear of failure. 

We add a swirl of cream over a bowl of pumpkin soup and sprinkle roasted pumpkin seeds to bring depth to a photo. The attention to detail is there but we stop stressing over every pumpkin seed and its placement. As long as it looks natural and aesthetically pleasing, go ahead. Don’t spend hours trying to work on an image that no matter how much you work on, there might still be a situation where one seed is out of place and it’ll make you feel like it’s not ‘perfect’. 

Instead, ask, does that effort really make or break the photo? And if it doesn’t just go with it. Use that time to create something new or hone a new skill. And also, if that one seed is not how you wanted it to be, don’t hold back from sharing that photo only because you think it’s not perfect. It’s probably perfect for everyone else. 

Progress over perfection

We cannot get better without doing the amount of work that it takes. They say you become better at your craft only after putting in the first 10,000 hours on it. Imagine if half of that was spent fiddling with pumpkin seeds? Would you ever be able to grow? 

If you want to launch a course or a photography book and spend too much time worrying about the colour of fonts, or borders for example, trying to make it ‘perfect’, then you’re taking away from the time it could actually be out in the world helping other Creatives. 

Instead, do the best you can. Make sure your content is powerful and just go because once your course or book is in the world, there will be so many learnings from it. You will learn so much from that one experience but it will only happen if it is out and launched. 

As creatives we cannot hold back. We cannot strive for perfection because perfection does not exist. 

Learn. Create. Publish. Repeat. 

We have to stop trying to strive for a state of perfection. 

We create, put it out in the world, learn from it, then we create again, put it out there and the cycle continues. We do it scrappy, we do it imperfectly, we do what we can, but we do not hold back. Because we only improve by doing something and putting in the work. Stop focusing on what’s holding you back, controlling what doesn’t really matter and trying to fit into an ideal world where the idea of ideal is subjective. 

The next time someone calls you a perfectionist, think for a minute, is that perfection holding you back or moving you forward?