This is one of those things they tell you never to say
during a job interview when they ask you what your
greatest weakness is because it's like a humble brag,
but I struggle with perfectionism.
Like where other people are willing to say things are
good enough, or they quite rightly realize that little,
tiny details in their work are never going to be
noticed by anybody else.
I'm the guy that's like tweaking the position of the
light behind that toy ship, so it makes the
perfect silhouette,
but over the past few years I've learned to deal with
my perfectionism, and at this point,
it doesn't really hinder me that much anymore,
so what I wanna do with this video is share
some of what I've learned for dealing with perfectionism
because as the writer Anne Lamott very poignantly says
in her book Bird by Bird,
perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor,
the enemy of the people.
Now, before we move on,
I do want to say that perfectionism isn't all bad.
In fact, many psychologists will separate perfectionism
into two different categories,
adaptive and maladaptive.
Adaptive perfectionist are motivated by
their high standards.
They pursue their goals without compromising their
self esteem; they're not hypercritical of their work
or themselves, and they invest massive amounts of
time and energy into projects that require a lot of
attention and focus and effort.
Maladaptive perfectionists, on the other hand feel
constant pressure to meet an unrealistic standard.
They procrastinate because things are so hard to get into.
They feel a lot of anxiety and sometimes even depression
because they're holding themselves to an ideal that
can't possibly reach.
Now, I don't believe that these are two binary states.
There's certainly a spectrum between perfectionism of
the adaptive and the maladaptive sorts,
and for you, perfectionism probably has some benefits,
but it probably also brings along some problems,
and personally, the main problems I see with
perfectionism are number one,
it makes tasks seem monumental because you want
to do perfectly on them, so you procrastinate.
Number two, constant tweaking and editing will cause
you to never actually publish and put things out there
and move on because you're always second guessing
your previous decisions.
Number three, your skill development is hampered
because you aren't allowing yourself to make mistakes
which are absolutely critical to the learning process,
and lastly, you have a lot of anxiety and stress
because you're holding yourself to an unrealistic ideal,
and you're constantly worried about your work
being judged.
So how do you overcome perfectionism?
Well, number you need to realize that you're
not perfect, and neither is anybody else,
and I realize the second half of that statement can
be really hard to acknowledge sometimes because
the internet is always presenting us with things
that are finished and polished, like we have so many
connections to so many people,
and they're all presenting a tailored version of
themselves to you.
They're so proud to show off the fruits of their labors,
but they never show off the hours that went into it,
and they never show off the mistakes and the failures
that they had along the way, and these are vital parts
of the learning process.
You can't have success without these mistakes,
so embrace imperfection.
Embrace mistakes, realize it's gonna happen.
Like think back to when you were a kid and you were
learning to ride a bike,
you probably fell off a ton of times,
you probably still have scars on your shoulders that
remind you of those times,
and you weren't worried at all about riding the bike
perfectly that first time.
You just wanted to ride the bike.
You probably wanted to get the training wheels off,
and you tried and tried and tried until you did it.
If it took so many tries to learn to do something as simple
as riding a bike, why do you think you have to be able to
write a paper or give a speech perfectly on the first try?
Number two, just get started and let your work
become a mess.
Work in private and don't worry about the
state of the project on the first pass through.
In his memoir "On Writing", Stephen King advise us to
write with the door closed, and rewrite with the door open.
Don't worry about the state of your project during its
first stage, just get it created in its rough initial form
and then invite feedback and constructive criticism
once you're ready to start shaping the prototype
into something that's truly worthy of being finished.
Number three, work with a deadline.
Now this is the practice that's helped me overcome
my perfectionism the most.
When I first started my YouTube channel,
I had a lot of other influences and creators that
I liked to watch,
and because of that, I had this excellent taste right,
but I'd realized that I was a beginner and if I wanted
to meet that ideal standard with my videos,
I would never be able to do that,
and I would never put anything out there,
so instead, I told myself I'm gonna put out a video
every single week, and I remember after I released
my first video, I was having a conversation with my friend
Matt, and I told him,
a year from now, I want to have at least fifty videos out.
In putting those videos out every single week
as imperfect as they may be,
has helped me progress a lot.
Now I realize that some people say that creating deadlines
and forcing yourself to put things out there in arbitrary
time isn't necessary, and indeed you need time to
meander through your project and try things
and work at your own pace, and if that works for you
and you believe that, that's fine,
but remember that there are differences between
adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism.
If your perfectionism is causing you anxiety and stress,
then I think it's a really good idea to create that deadline
and force yourself to finish.
You need a structure that forces you not to focus on the
minutia of one project for too long.
Number four, focus on getting just a little bit better
each time.
If you improve one percent
each time you make something,
then overtime, that progress compounds,
and before you know it, you've mastered whatever
it is you're learning.
Creating things, putting them out there
and having the imperfections and mistakes pointed out,
these are all parts of the learning process
that have to happen.
Skill and knowledge come through countless iterations,
not through executing perfectly on the first iteration.
The skill that you gain through making the first nine things
will allow you to hold the tenth one to a degree
you didn't even know was possible when you were
making the first one.
And lastly, let your influences inspire you,
but don't measure yourself up against them.
A beginner shouldn't measure their work against
that of a master's.
If you were to start a YouTube channel tomorrow,
and you put out your first video,
you shouldn't compare it against somebody elses
five hundredth video.
That's not a fair comparison.
The only thing you should measure your work against
is your previous work,
and when you're looking at things other people have made,
you can let them inspire you.
You can let them influence you and motivate you to
improve, but don't hold your work up against theirs,
and judge yourself based on that standard,
so this is where I'm gonna end this video,
and to be honest, I feel that it's imperfect.
There's a lot more I'd like to say on this topic.
There's more research I came across, and my brain
keeps throwing up things people are going to bring up
in the comment, counter-arguments, other points,
and I want to cover them all,
but like I said earlier, there's a deadline,
and I just have to finish this, and put it out there.
Is it perfect?
No, but I do think it's useful and that is enough.
Plus as a friend of mine who's a professional speaker
once told me, the audience never knows what you
didn't say.
Hopefully what I did say was helpful to you in some way.
Thanks for watching.
Hey there guys, thanks so much for watching this video,
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and last week's video was about what to do when
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It's one of my best videos ever, so definitely check it out,
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