Aim for Good Enough

Hi,

Our procrastination is often rooted in perfectionism, when we aim for unattainable flawlessness that sounds great in theory but leaves us stuck in practice.

The main way to address this is to aim for good enough instead of perfect. To do this, start by looking for cases where you’re stuck because of perfectionistic standards. Then, adjust your standards to where they actually need to be in order to get you to take the action you should take, and commit to the new standards that you’ve set for yourself.

For example, let’s say you can’t bring yourself to make any progress on writing your book because you want it to be perfect from the start, which is never going to happen. In that case, it will help to realize that a good enough first draft is simply one that’s written down, regardless of quality. Then, once you actually get that draft down on paper, you can adjust what good enough means for the next draft, until you get to something like “if, when I edit, I’m at a point where I’m no longer sure I’m improving the writing, that means it’s good enough to send out to beta readers”.

Aiming for good enough doesn’t mean you need to aim low; when enough is at stake, good enough can be quite high! What’s important though is to figure out how high you should actually aim, especially when aiming too high backfires by leading to paralysis rather than perfection.

I hope you’ll find this helpful.

Have a great week,
Itamar