Perfectionism Kills Your Progress –It’s NOT Worth It!
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Perfectionism is a beast when you're running a business solo. No team to bounce ideas off of, no boss forcing you to hit deadlines, ––just you and your increasingly high standards spinning in an endless loop of "I’m not good enough yet."
I get it, because I live it too. You might not know it from my super-casual, easy-going vibes, but internally—as an Enneagram Six—things are happening in here. 👉🏼🧠 ALL. THE. TIME. My brain is constantly running scenarios, spotting potential problems to solve, and wondering how to make things better.
So how the hell do you overcome perfectionism when there's nobody else to hold you accountable or pull you out of that loop??
That's what I want to discuss today. –Not how to eliminate it completely (because –spoiler alert!– you probably can't), but I CAN tell you how I fight it in ways that actually move my business forward with way less fear, instead of keeping me stuck in that loop. Hopefully this will help pull you out of that loop too!
4 Uncomfortable Truths About Perfection
① Nothing (& No One) Is ‘Perfect’
First things first: nothing is ever perfect. Especially not in the digital business world, where things move at lightning speed.
Case in point: this year I finally gave into buying an annual (vs monthly) Midjourney subscription after it’s been popular for more than a year. Just two weeks ago, I caved & switched from a periodically paused monthly subscription, to annual because I’ve been using it a lot for stock photos & stuff like that. Then BAM—ChatGPT drops their image generator. Suddenly, everyone's like "Midjourney is going to die" and I’m all… 🙄😒
We literally just can’t keep up with everything.
“Perfection” can’t be a thing when the business landscape changes daily, especially now in this AI era. The best we can do is day-to-day management, which requires being agile and flexible—two things perfectionism absolutely destroys.
👉🏼 Oh, and in case you’re wondering what I’m doing about the Midjourney vs ChatGPT issue: the upside for now is that in my free ChatGPT account, the images take forever to load so Midjourney is way faster & generates 4 images at a time, so it’ll be fine to stick with what I have for now. 🤭
② ‘Perfect’ Is Subjective
Beyond that, perfection is entirely subjective. What I see as perfect, you probably don't. What you see as perfect, the next person thinks is missing something crucial that they should’ve noticed. 😂 It's all just different perspectives, which means one singular idea of ‘perfect’ doesn't actually exist. I could argue this point all day (and definitely have, with myself).
Need some examples? I gotchu.
Maybe you’re trying to perfect the thumbnail graphic for your blog post because you want people to pin it, so you make it ‘perfect’ for you but then nobody pins the graphic because your idea of a perfect thumbnail is different than your audience’s and it didn’t catch their attention.
Maybe you’re trying to figure out the perfect pricing for your service packages, but what you think is perfect (ie: pays your bills AND your paychecks) might be “too expensive” for your past clients, so you’re afraid to publish that new number.
Maybe you know you need to hit Publish on your new website, but it doesn’t look as good as Jane’s in your Facebook group, so you keep tweaking it…for another month hoping to finally make it comparable to hers.
All of those are great examples of things I’ve done myself in the past, and they hold us back from moving forward and making progress. The truth is, you’ll never know if the thumbnail graphic you made is clickable/pinnable, or if the pricing is right, or if the website is “good enough” until you do it. Until you publish/share/promote/do those things, you have no data to evaluate other than your own fears.
③ Imperfect People Don’t Make Perfect Stuff
Beyond the fact that no one is perfect, and ‘perfect’ itself is highly subjective, –we ourselves are imperfect which means what we create/do/think/etc is too.
We're flawed human beings with:
Limited attention spans, which dictates what we notice & observe in our day to day lives with distractions EVERYwhere.
A tendency to miss important details, because we’re so easily distracted with #allthethings.
Blind spots we don't even know we have, which limits our awareness –and leads me to my next point.
④ We Can’t Know Everything
This last one's a real kick in the pants. Are you ready for this? 😬🤭
There are absolutely many things I still don't know after running this business for 10 years, and in 10 more years, there will STILL be many things I don’t know. There are even aspects of graphic design I'm unfamiliar with, despite graphic design being my degree program in college, and working in the industry as a professional designer from 2006-2020, before I went full-time freelance.
That's just part of life—we can't know everything.
And because we don't know what we don't know, perfection remains perpetually out of reach.
5 Necessary Mindset Shifts to Fight Perfectionism
If we can't achieve perfection (and I think I’ve just established that we can't), then we need to change how we think about progress, mistakes, and what "good enough" actually means. Here are the 5 mindset shifts that have helped me the most:
① Wrong Isn't Bad
The most common fear I see in new business owners is that they're terrified of making wrong decisions, because it wastes time that time they can't get back. Or maybe they’re afraid of the consequences of that bad decision, whether it makes them look like an obvious amateur, or they’re scared of what their friends/family will think, etc.
But here's the thing: in business, it’s much harder to make a wrong decision than you think, because every "wrong" choice is also a learning experience and an opportunity to avoid that in the future. The lesson is the valuable part, not the mistake itself.
👉🏼 the takeaway:
Sometimes what feels “wrong” is just our amygdala (ie: our survival-focused part of the brain). If you’re trying to make “the right” decision & you’re not sure what to do, take notice of what your fears are around that decision. Are you’re worried about being judged & what people will think about you? Are you worried about looking like the amateur that you are? Write them down, then ask yourself: what’s really the worst that could happen? And if it did, would you actually die of shame or fear? Probably not. Okay, so… what might actually happen if you did it anyway? 🤷♀️
Going from vague to specific disengages your survival-mode fears, because your brain can’t reason the logic chain of causation & causality of what’s going to happen next in the chain of events. Getting into the specifics of it, all of a sudden the fears seem less horrible/scary. To go deeper down this rabbit hole, watch this interview with Alex Hormozi & Steven Barlett on the Diary of A CEO podcast, at timestamp 00:14:15 where Alex talks about fear vs. logic and how to play it out in your head to help combat your fear, because the fears come from being vague.
② Failures Are Valuable Lessons
Everything you choose to do –even if it turns out to be the "wrong" decision– teaches you something that helps you do better next time. As long as you're applying those lessons going forward, that "wrong" decision was actually worth making, because of what you learned from it.
It took me a somewhat grueling five years before I saw any real traction in my business. Five. Years. It didn't have to take that long, but it did because I had never built a business before, didn’t know what I didn’t know, and struggled massively with perfectionism so it took much longer to learn from my failures & mistakes.
I'd think, "Wow, I'm bad at that" after trying it once for a short time, getting no/undesirable results, and then try something completely different instead. But that's not the lesson!
The real lesson is usually more specific. For example:
that particular approach didn't work for my audience, but maybe that’s because I didn’t try it long enough to give it a chance to work (things often take longer than you think),
that price point didn't match my client’s budget, so I need to find different people with a different budget,
that marketing channel wasn't working because that’s not where my people hang out, not that the method is wrong/bad.
When you find the actual lesson in each ‘failure’ or mistake, it's never a waste of time. Think of it like learning as a kid—when you touch something hot and you get burned, you learn very quickly not to do that again so getting the burn wasn’t a waste!
I grew up on a small hobby farm with horses, cows, goats, dogs, cats, etc. In middle & high school, my chore was to feed the horses in the afternoons when I got home. One time, while lazily sliding into the open space between fence boards rather than using the gate, I accidentally touched our electric fence wire with the big metal feed scoop on my way out to the barn to feed the horses. After that jolt, you better believe I never made that mistake again! 🤣 The lesson was of course crystal clear: don't touch the electric fence with anything, –especially not metal objects– and be much more careful when I’m around it.
👉🏼 the takeaway:
Learn from failures, bad decisions, wasted time & money, and mistakes. And as long as you're learning something from them, it's time/money well spent that will actually HELP you do it differently/better next time.
③ Perfect Is Boring
Being ‘perfect’ isn't relatable because it's not achievable. Or, it's not achievable because it's not relatable. —Either way, perfection creates distance rather than connection. The more perfect you try to make things, the less your audience will be able to relate to you & your business.
I can't stress this enough: perfect things become boring pretty quickly. I think that’s why people who seem to have the perfect life, often find a way to screw it up & create some drama/interest, whether it’s quit & change careers, have an affair, cut all their hair off or dye it pink, sell their house & buy a van #travellife. Whatever it is, –we all have our own way of keeping things interesting, because…
Not only is perfect ‘boring’, there’s also something about perfection that feels inauthentic and totally unachievable anyway.
When people like Oprah Winfrey or Marie Forleo say "you can do this too," ––to the not-quite-six-figure-entrepreneurs, it feels completely unrealistic without them also following up with “Trust me, –I’m not perfect either!” They’re making a point to remind us that they are NOT perfect & they still fuck things up sometimes.
Why? Because they’re aware that to us, they appear to have ‘perfect’ businesses. We only see what they want us to see: their lifestyle, their film sets, pretty rooms in their houses, their pictures of extravagant vacations, their curated Instagram feed, their extensive websites, their teams, their marketing, their income, etc. They have to interrupt that stream of ‘perfection’ to remind us that even though they’ve achieved more than we have, they still have a lot to learn & make mistakes too.
The constant changes (ups & downs, straightaways & curveballs) in this journey are what keeps entrepreneurship interesting. I definitely have seasons where I’m working way more hours now than I ever did at my 9-5. The difference is that it’s my choice, I love the work, it typically doesn’t feel like hard work, and sometimes as a solopreneur you have to work harder than others. It’s a balancing act!
When you reply to one of my newsletters with, "Hey, have you heard of Webvizio?" because I'm talking about doing a Markup video on what the best alternatives might be, and then I go down a rabbit hole and end up meeting the co-founder? That's fun for me! Even if that rabbit hole totally upset my entire YouTube content schedule to be able to insert that extra video/blog post.
That's life, and that's what makes this work exciting. The unexpected turns and the constant evolution –the fact that it ISN’T perfect– are what make entrepreneurship worth it, even with all the uncertainty and imperfection.
👉🏼 the takeaway:
No one notices those details you spent countless hours on –in any of your projects/tasks, so you’ll save yourself boatloads of time if you stopped trying to make everything perfect all the time. Write this on a sticky note & stick it to your computer: “Done is better than perfect.” 👈🏼 That’s your new motto!
④ Being Flawed Is Relatable & Authentic
If we accept that nothing's perfect and wrong decisions are just learning opportunities, then being flawed becomes your superpower. It makes you relatable. It makes you authentic.
The reason you probably connect well with me, is precisely because I'm not perfect. I’m just being myself, however flawed & quirky that may be.
I have awkward introverted tendencies, a few OCD quirks, and battle perfectionist hangups every damn day. I'm detail-oriented to a fault and definitely too long-winded (still reading? bless you 😂). And yet you're still here, engaging, thanking me, and asking for more.
Why? Because seeing someone else's flaws and how they navigate them gives you permission to be imperfect too.
Being yourself—whatever that looks like—is what draws people to you. We recognize & relate to the flaws!
👉🏼 the takeaway:
Practice being brave enough to be your damn self. Being you is SO much more authentic for your audience, and you’ll come off less robotic & weird.
⑤ Your Best Is Enough (Yes, Really)
In the book, Four Thousand Weeks* by Oliver Burkeman, he says something profound:
“It can’t be the case that you MUST do more than you CAN do.
You’ll do what you can,
you won’t do what you can’t, and
the tyrannical inner voice insisting that you must do everything is simply mistaken.”
Your time is limited. Doing your best is enough because that's LITerally all you can do. If perfection isn't achievable, the next best thing is "good enough for right now"—and that's okay.
People aren't expecting perfection all the time, especially if your audience doesn't know as much as you do about your subject. To them, your "good enough" might seem incredible because they can't do what you’re doing yet (or have no desire to).
For example, if you're new to business and I've been doing this for 10 years, my version of "good enough" might seem perfect to you because you haven’t been able to achieve that level yet, but I can help you get there by giving you my "good enough" right now.
Put yourself in your audience's shoes—your "good enough" might be the perfect thing for somebody else. Which means, … that you’re “enough” is okay! Our output is supposed to change and improve over time! Each iteration gets better with practice, and that constant improvement is what makes this journey worthwhile.
👉🏼 the takeaway:
If you struggle with “good enough”, limit your goals/projects to just 1-3 at any given time. You can start other stuff, but ONLY when you’ve closed the loop on of the active 3. Stop constantly opening new jars & then abandoning them when you see a ‘better’ more interesting jar; stuff’s going bad/stale/wasted in every jar you open, and then abandon!
Moving Forward with "Good Enough"
These are the thoughts that fill my brain when I get stuck in my perfectionistic mode, and they help me push past it in my business life. (Let's be real—there are definitely areas in my personal life where I still struggle with this, because again, ––flawed human here! 🙋🏻♀️)
Perfectionism never goes away completely if it's your natural tendency, but you can learn to recognize it, name it, challenge it, and get past it each time with these alternative perspectives or mantras.
Remember:
Nothing is ever perfect, especially in business
Perfection is subjective and constantly changing
Your "wrong" decisions are valuable learning opportunities
Perfect is boring and not relatable
Being flawed makes you authentic and builds connections
Your failures contain specific, useful lessons
Your best is enough because that's all anyone can do
The next time you find yourself stuck in a perfectionism loop, unable to launch that (damn) thing, publish that post, or send that email, come back to these reminders. Your business needs movement more than it needs perfection, and your audience needs your unique voice—imperfections and all.
You are not alone in this struggle. We're all figuring it out as we go, learning from our mistakes, and doing our best with the knowledge we have right now. And that's not just good enough—it's exactly as it should be.
So what are you going to work on today, even if it's not perfect? 🤨😃
