For years, I was a real perfectionist.  Not just a weekend perfectionist mind you, a full-blown “I won’t do it unless it can be perfect” kind of perfectionist.  In fact, with a number of things I still exhibit some pretty nasty perfectionist tendencies which I’m working on eradicating. 

The reason I started this project (Refocuser) in 2009 instead of 1999 when I first had the idea is because I spent 10 years fighting with myself about how to make it perfect, all the way down to how I’d organize the site’s content on my hard drive.  Ugh!

Naturally, striving for your best work isn’t a bad thing… most people would never want to swing to the other extreme where quality and pride in the work are void, because that’s a real slippery slope to mediocrity.  But I’ve found that for me, that’s pretty much a non-option given my personality.  Keeping my perfectionist tendencies in check doesn’t have to mean that the quality of my output is going to suffer.

What I focus on instead of perfection is doing enough to get the most out of my efforts.  The second I start trending towards the familiar “over-focusing”, I force myself to stop in my tracks and self-evaluate.  More time spent on an activity very rarely equals higher quality in the kinds of projects I do – in fact, many times, it ends up being counter-productive – so not being a perfectionist can actually improve my work.

More is lost through indecision than wrong decision – Carmela Soprano

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