Dealing with my reflexive perfectionism

Sometimes I just find it so HARD to get started on a side project (e.g. this site).

For whatever reason, I feel like it’s just a mountain of work in front of me, and what if people don’t like my stuff, why am I even doing this, there’s a ton of technical/logistical hassle involved that I really don’t want to deal with…I don’t lack in excuses.

The way I’ve been trying to deal with this lately is, trying to accept that my stuff doesn’t have to be perfect. Yes I know (and we all know) that perfectionism is bad – but whatever, even though I know it’s bad, I’ve still been practically struggling with it. It’s a recurring theme.

Practically, what was immediately holding me back from working on the site was I thought my content was going to be garbage. And truthfully, now that’s its written, I know it’s not that great. However, I’m working on reasoning with myself that, publishing a few short articles is way better than publishing zero great articles.

Again, I logically knew that it’s way better to write something than nothing, but I just…couldn’t get myself to do it. Me forcing myself to consciously think through the repercussions of perfectionism has been helpful in this case (e.g. this short article actually exists now).

Seriously, I was ready to start writing/publishing months ago, but this wall of effective perfectionism is what what holding me back. I’m not saying I have it all figured out (yeah I completely don’t), but at least in this case I was able to get myself over a hump.

2 thoughts on “Dealing with my reflexive perfectionism

Leave a Reply to Josh Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *