Sometimes you just need to half-ass things.
Could people liken it to failure? Sure.
I’d probably just say it’s some sort of survival mechanism in the creative and human sense.
I know this goes against everything we’ve been taught about excellence and giving 110% and all that motivational poster bullshit.
But perfectionism isn’t a virtue, it just ends up killing your productivity.
You know what happens when you try to make everything perfect? Nothing gets finished.
You spend three hours agonising over a single paragraph that nobody will remember next week. (I do this with single sentences sometimes and it annoys the shit out of me)
Or maybe you rewrite emails seventeen times for clarity that was already there in draft number two.
Or you research endlessly instead of starting, because starting means accepting that your work might be imperfect.
Meanwhile, the person who ships decent work or things consistently is lapping you.
Some things deserve your complete attention. Most things don’t. Learning to tell the difference is what separates productive people from burned out perfectionists.
That presentation for your biggest client? Give it everything.
That internal status update email? Write it, spell check it, send it.
Don’t spend forty minutes crafting prose poetry about quarterly targets, fuck that noise.
The blog post that’s been sitting in your drafts for three months because it’s “not quite right”? Publish the damn thing.
It’s better for an imperfect idea to exist in the world than for a perfect one to die in your head.
I’ve found burnout doesn’t come from working too much, it actually comes from caring too much about things that don’t matter enough.
When everything feels equally important, nothing actually is.
Your energy is finite. Your attention is limited. Your time is not renewable. Spending all three on making everything perfect means you’ll perfect yourself right into exhaustion and accomplish nothing meaningful in the process.
Good enough is often exactly enough. Sometimes half-ass is full success.
The people getting things done aren’t the ones agonising over every detail. They’re the ones who know when to stop polishing and start shipping.
Stephen Walker.