5 ways to let go of perfectionism and be more productive.
If you are a perfectionist, you can relate to this:
have started and not finished many projects
taking twice or thrice as long to finish something
keep double-checking, changing and re-editing your work. (Till it never gets completed.)
If you want to feel more relaxed and less anxious during your perfectionism moments, you can download my Pause Perfectionism & Feel Relaxed cheat sheet below.
My perfectionist streak is something which annoys me to no end.
That’s because it slows down my progress work-wise.
It has something to do with self doubt, self-worth and confidence.
We are doubting ourselves and our work quality too much.
Wait till you spot someone who has half your experience and no qualifications being ballsy enough to do something you want to do. (Such as launching a business and charging sky-high amounts for their work.)
Then we get frustrated with ourselves.
And wondering why on earth we didn’t overcome our perfectionism, pursue our dream (and stick to it) one year ago.
I have 5 small, beginner strategies to help us all overcome perfectionism in our daily lives.
Perfectionism needs a mindset shift. But mindset shifts take time.
So I’ll share practical, everyday strategies to manage our perfectionism in this blog post.
So you can start overcoming your perfectionism and being more productive today.
If you learn better through videos, I have created one video for this blog post. (full volume needed!)
If you prefer reading, let’s start!
Advice #1: Work within time limits!
Doing work at cafes is great because many of us get bored sitting in one place for hours.
So we have no choice but to whip out our laptops and start working away.
If we know that we get bored after 2 hours, we know that we have 2 hours to finish our work in that sitting.
My favourite trick is to do work on my laptop (and leave my charger at home).
My laptop battery dies after 1.5 hours, so I’ll have no choice but to produce something high-quality within 1.5 hours.
I’ll start working and researching at the speed of light.
Trust me, you’ll be surprised to see the type of quality work you can produce if you are under time pressure.
Some people swear by this free productivity and time management app.
It buzzes off every 25 minutes so we are forced to focus for 25 minutes. It worked for me, but makes me a tad anxious. I prefer longer time limits such as 1.5 hours.
Also…if you are a perfectionist, chances are your work is always a little better quality than non-perfectionists (don’t shoot me!).
Because perfectionists are naturally self-critical and hardwired to produce half-decent work, anytime and anywhere. (Again, please don’t shoot me.)
Advice #2: Stick to your decision
If you are the type who changes her mind multiple times in the middle of a project, it helps to stick to one decision.
Yes, better ideas will hit us along the way.
Yes, our project will be ten times better if we add X,Y and Z to it.
But if we follow our every whim and every urge to improve our project, it won’t be done!
And we add unnecessary stress on ourselves.
Right now, I’m in the middle of writing A Beautiful Mindset ebook to transform women from being self-critical to self-loving.
I wanted to add 101 mindset strategies to this ebook. I have too many ideas.
But if I add all these strategies, I will never be productive and never finish writing this book.
So you can try being satisfied with a modest - but solid - project.
Advice #3: Put Yourself Out There
This is scary but works for us.
Put ourselves out there. Tell people that your project, business, presentation will be done by “31st October” or some other specific date.
Announce it on social media (if it’s relevant to you).
We will be hard-pressed to finish it by its deadline to avoid embarrassment.
If we have to scale down our project to hit the deadline, so be it. At least we are productive and the work gets done!
We can always create another project another time.
Once we finish one project, we will be motivated to finish another one.
Instead of planning one big project after another, we can start by planning and pulling through a couple of small projects first.
Advice #4: Mistakes are not life-threatening
“Many of us live so cautiously just to arrive at death safely.”
I don’t remember where I got the above quote from, but it hits home doesn’t it?
This is my favourite but most difficult mindset shift.
“Mistakes are not fatal.”
“Mistakes are part of life.”
“Mistakes are learning lessons.”
“If we don’t make mistakes, we’ll never learn.”
We’ve all heard the 4 phrases above before.
If you are a perfectionist, the idea of making mistakes makes our skin crawl.
(Making mistakes is for weaklings - that’s the first thought that pops in my mind. Oops)
The only way to embrace mistakes is to make as many mistakes as possible.
Try a new approach.
If we screw up, oh well. Take a couple of days to recover from our embarrassment and try something else.
The most successful people in the world make more mistakes than the average person.
Advice #5: Remember your little successes
I have written a blog post about this before.
Create a success log for yourself.
The idea is to write our most meaningful successes on paper.
Nothing boosts our self-esteem faster than that.
You can download a template for creating your own Success Log here.
My last thoughts on overcoming perfectionism and remaining productive.
Perfectionism needs mindset shifts.
Perfectionists link our self-worth with our ability to avoid mistakes.
Don’t hold off starting or completing a project because it’s ‘not perfect enough’.
There are many other people with half your talent and half your skills enjoying much success doing what you want to do.
Let’s accept that we are all valuable yet imperfect human beings.
If you want to feel relaxed and less anxious during your perfectionism moments, you can download my Pause Perfectionism & Feel Relaxed worksheet below.
See you in my next post!
Shikah
Featured in this post:
A Beautiful Mindset eBook - From Self-critical to Self-loving
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