Perfectionism Hack
Stop perfectionism with one simple trick.
Hi, all - I had to travel out of town for a short series of Adobe demos, so I missed the normal Friday delivery date for The Accidental Expert. I’m still writing that issue and as I mentioned last week, it will cover the approach I took with KyleBrush freebies to quickly grow my audience and quadruple sales in a very short period of time. Look for it in a couple of days. Meanwhile, I wanted to share a quick trick with you as a follow up to last week’s issue on the topic of perfectionism.
Regarding the suggestion from last week, I realize it can take a while for you to shift your thinking to notice (and draw attention to) the little moments of perfection in your work. This is perfectly natural.
And so, in the meantime, I would like to recommend a simple trick that I have used for years to conquer my own perfectionist tendencies when working on, quite literally, anything.
Here it is:
Set a hard deadline.
Once this deadline is fixed, your one and only mission is to meet it. To do otherwise is to fail, utterly!
We all know deadlines help combat procrastination, but they are surprisingly effective tools to fight perfectionism, as well. Try this with small tasks at first and then quickly move up to more important stuff. You will find that you are able to focus your attention on the essentials, work with real purpose, and bring everything to a finished state with far greater success when you know that you have no choice but to deliver on the date you have set. You will trim the fat, as well. And the only details you will notice will be those that elevate the overall quality of the work; the others will fall away and lose their power to distract you.
This may seem far too obvious, but few people actually set deadlines when working on personal projects or when answering to no one but themselves. Perfectionism is free to run wild and destroy your productivity when there is no set timeline for completion of one’s work. Deadlines give you the helping hand you need to resist the temptation to fixate on trivialities.
For larger projects, set up a schedule with smaller deadlines for completion of various stages and stick to them at all costs. Writing a novel? Chapter deadlines and/or total word-count-per-day deadlines will have you celebrating your progress every week. Making Photoshop brushes? Set a number for the total unique brush count for a set and then finish it in two weeks. You get the picture.
It sounds simple. It is. And it works, if you accept the one and only rule: you must respect the deadline.
In the comments, I’d love to know how you all use deadlines to keep yourselves moving forward with your work, especially if you have a tendency to get caught up in perfectionism. Have any tips? Please share them with us. Thanks.
I’ll have more for you in a few days.
Until then, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, remember to be kind, and I’ll say,
Ciao for now.
Kyle