On being a perfectionist

How to ruin new ideas and procrastinate more

Hi, Chynnerio here!

First of all, I’m sorry for the last post, I sent you a blank newsletter.

And it was intended.

:’D

Sorry for that!

I was trying to save my streak of almost 20 weeks of continuously posting. It was supposed to keep going like that, if not for me keeping procrastinating until Sunday to write. And on Sunday I procrastinate until evening, and eventually found out that I was caught in a meeting for the whole evening and couldn’t write anything. The time keeps moving and I have nothing to post, I decided to just send a blank newsletter, in order to save the streak.

That’s terrible.

But it makes me realise one thing:

I procrastinated because I keep searching for a “great idea” to start with, and indeed, it once came up in my mind, I wrote it down a paper. Later that night, I sat down at the table, staring at the blank page, pushed myself to start writing. Then I remembered a YouTuber I haven’t seen for a long time, so I opened YouTube and watched him. And through recommendation I saw a new video from that YouTuber, and clicked it, and watched it, and another video, and another video.

I know I have to write, but I keep distracting myself so as not to write.

Looking back from now, I realise something: That I have valued perfection so much, that I turn myself into a perfectionist: Either it’s a perfection, or nothing at all. That thinking strips the fun away from writing, because I'm constantly judging if it’s right or wrong, and most of the time it’s wrong, then I feel bad. And I do it with reluctance, and I don’t feel like having fun when writing anymore, but rather, a task to complete.

Being a perfectionist is a curse

Let me tell you another story of it:

I love drawing, drawing makes me feel relived, and I would be so irritated if there is one day in my life that I cannot draw.

Yet, there are times that I didn’t draw for months,… even for a whole year! That was during COVID, and my art class was cancelled. Usually, I drew under the guidance of my teacher, to “perfect” anatomy, “perfect” everything. And when it was COVID, I didn’t have that guidance anymore. Art becomes a daunting thing for me. Whenever I had time, I picked up the pencil and tried to draw a face, and it turned out to be not accurate, and I stopped, cursed it, and waited for a “perfect” moment to draw a “perfect” picture.

Well, it never happened, and it never will.

I finally picked up drawing again in 2022, when I came back to art class again and there was a challenge to draw together.

But here’s the thing: Ther is no perfect moment, perfect idea to do anything. You will need to do it either good or bad.

And it leads me to:

Quantity vs Quality

in Atomic Habits, there keeps me thinkning about the most: It’s where James Clear describes a powerful lesson about quantity vs. quality. This is one of the key examples he uses to illustrate how repeated practice leads to improvement.

Here’s how the experiment goes:

A photography professor at the University of Florida divided his class into two groups.

• One group was graded on the quantity of photos they produced. The professor told them that they just needed to take as many photos as possible. The more photos they took, the higher their grade.

• The other group was graded on the quality of a single image. They were instructed to spend the semester planning and producing one perfect photo.

What happened was surprising: the quantity group ended up producing the best photos. While they were busy taking hundreds of pictures, experimenting, learning from mistakes, and honing their skills through repetition, the quality group got stuck overthinking and overplanning their one photo.

It also applies in finding new ideas, from my old blog Is our creativty dead?, the best way to create new ideas is, first, to record every idea without judging it (divergent thinking). After that, you can filter the idea and find out the most suitable idea to work with (convergent thinking).

The reason I don’t use “The best idea” is because there is no best idea. It’s the way you execute it, finding ways to use the idea to get to your goal, that counts.

There is a quote from Matt Farley from a profile of Matt Farley in The New York Times Magazine that really suits here:

“If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop,” he said. “You just do it and do it and do it, and you sort it out later.” Or, as the case may be, you don’t, but rather send it all out into the abyss, hoping that someday, somebody, somewhere will hear it.

So… Here are some suggestions for you if you want to work more and criticize yourself less:

Create a challenge!

Create something for 100 days. Yes, it’s 100-day challenge! It’s not about creating great idea, but just grab an idea and create something before your 24 hours ran out.

My last project was drawing comic!

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Ok, to conclude, here’s another quote from James Clear in Atomic Habit (I LOVE this book!)

“There is never a perfect idea, but a good one executed today is better than a perfect one delayed indefinitely.”

See you next week!

Love you infinitely

Chynnerio