Hi everyone!
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
Today we’re going to talk about why done is better than perfect.
I’m going to tell a little story.
In 2013 I came out with my first album.
It was called “Honestly”.
The way it came together was,
I actually gave myself a challenge to create a birthday mixtape that year
because I just wanted to create a set of original songs
plus remixes and give it out for free on my birthday just to see
if I could push myself to create a lot of new music.
I gave myself a couple months to work on all this music.
I was cranking it out like crazy and I did meet my deadline.
I released a birthday mixtape on my birthday in October and I thought to myself,
“I already have some original songs.
Why not write a couple more to make a full album?”
So that’s what I did: I came out with an album a month after I did my birthday mixtape.
Although it was great and I was really proud of it,
I felt like I kind of rushed through it and I didn’t give it my best work.
I mean I did the best I could do in that given time but it wasn’t perfect.
I knew that if I gave myself more time, it could’ve been better.
So after that I told myself, “Alright, I want to create a second album,
one where I could really give myself as much time as I needed to get it done.”
I wanted enough time to really tinker with the music and really perfect it
and make it amazing and see how great this album can be.
Spoiler alert: the second album never happened.
It never came out
because I just spent so many months playing with ideas and tinkering
and really not finishing anything because I just had such high expectations for myself.
I set the standard so high like, “Alright, I’m going to give myself as much time
to create amazing work,” and I think I gave myself too much time and it was never finished.
The lesson here is: Done is better than perfect.
It was better for me to give myself a set, strict schedule and hard deadline
to really finish a piece of work than to give myself as much time as I needed to get it
done.
There’s something called Parkinson’s Law that I shared in a very old video of mine.
Basically what it states is that your work will expand
according to the time you allow it to be completed.
For example: if you give yourself two weeks to complete something,
it will take two weeks to do it.
If you give yourself two years to do the same exact thing,
then that work will expand to fill up that two years of time to complete.
Really, the lesson here is: set strict deadlines,
set a specific timeline for yourself to get things done.
This time around when I was working on my workbook, I did the same exact thing:
I had that mindset because I learned that done is better than perfect.
I had the idea to create my 2017 Artist of Life Workbook in around October,
and I knew that it had to be out by mid-December to prepare for the new year,
so I had that set amount of time to get it done.
I procrastinated for like the first month so I really worked on it for one month.
When I made that announcement video that I was coming out with a workbook,
I actually hadn’t finished the workbook.
I basically started it before I was ready.
I announced it before it was done.
Just the fact that I announced it before it was done
it really gave me a lot of motivation to finish it
because so many people were depending on me to get this done.
I was starting to take pre-orders.
Same thing for the print workbook.
I basically put out pre-orders for the print workbook
because I wanted to see how many people were interested
and I was getting pre-orders before I even knew how I was going to get this workbook
made.
Starting before you’re ready, putting it out there into the world, announcing it, making
it public,
those are things that can really put a fire under your ass
and motivate you to finish what you set out to finish.
Moving forward in 2017, my big goal this year is to finish writing my book
and honestly I’ve had this goal for a while.
I think last year I wanted to write the book.
I didn’t do it.
I basically came up with a table of contents and that’s it.
This year I’m probably scrapping that and starting from fresh.
Basically my goal is to just finish the book this year.
It doesn’t have to be good.
All this book needs to be is done, because in my eyes
if you have such high expectations for yourself, if you want to make things perfect,
it’s never going to be finished.
You’re going to give yourself too much time.
You’re going to care too much, when in reality it’s better to just do the work,
get it done even if it’s not perfect, even if you’re not ready.
Just do it.
I know a lot of you have a goal this year that you want to finish:
some sort of project or maybe you want to start a blog or whatever it may be,
listen to this advice: done is better than perfect.
It’s better to finish it first and then you can tweak and improve it later.
Even if your project is something that when you release it
you can’t tweak it or improve it because it’s already out there, that’s okay.
Take that as a learning experience.
You’ve had that experience of working on something
and finishing it, and the next time that you start another project
you can apply what you’ve learned and improve it there
and then you just have to keep doing that, keep improving in little increments.
But the most important thing is to just finish your work.
Done is better than perfect.
Alright I hope you guys liked today’s video.
Let me know what you think in the comments,
and also: I want to know what is the one project that you want to finish this year?
Post that in the comments below and I know that just posting it, making it real,
that will push you to actually finish that project even more.
Good luck with all your endeavors this year.
I hope you have a beautiful day.
I’ll see you next time in my next video.
Bye!