This is my biggest weakness… wanting everything to be perfect before releasing it to the world.
It’s great to take pride in your work and want to give the best you have to offer, but at the same time you can’t take too long to do things or you’ll never get anything done.
One way to get around this is to give yourself deadlines. But make them real deadlines.
For example, not long ago I agreed to do a live workshop about publishing content to Kindle. When I agreed to it I didn’t have the material for the presentation…
… and I had never before done a live workshop on the topic!
Was I nervous about it? Oh yeah!
But being who I am, I left it to the last minute to get the presentation ready. I never worked so hard in my life.
I wanted it to really deliver great content, to really help the attendees get the most out of the time they would take out of their day to learn about this opportunity.
Did I get the presentation done on time and deliver the workshop? You bet I did!
Did the workshop attendees get a lot out of the workshop? They sure did! In fact, they loved it.
Could I have done a better job with the presentation? Oh yes!
Did that bother me? Not at all. Next time I’ll do it better.
What I realized from this whole experience was that if I had never set that deadline for myself, I would never have come up with that presentation. My time would have just filled up with other ‘stuff’.
I also learned that it didn’t matter that my presentation wasn’t as perfect as I would have liked it to be. It delivered great content, and the attendees loved it.
Back in Austria in the 1960s there was a man who had a dream. Arnold Schwarzenegger dreamed of a better life. A life of plenty in the U.S..
He had a simple plan; become Mr Universe and make Hollywood movies.
Did Arnold let the fact that he had a heavy accent and that he couldn’t act to save himself stop him? We all know the answer to that question!
No. He made movies anyway.
I still remember the first time I watched ‘Conan the Barbarian’. His acting was sooo bad, but he had a great bod.
Over the years he’s gotten better at acting, but he’s nowhere near a perfect actor.
Don’t be concerned about getting things done perfectly because that’s never going to happen. Just get things done!
What strategy do you use when you want to get something done? Leave a comment below.