Is This Belief Killing Your Success?

As entrepreneurs, solo-preneurs and executives we’re always thinking about success, taking it to the next level, and beating last year’s number. After all our success is up to us, we drive it. And rightly so we believe a number of things can aid our success such as taking high pay-off actions, advancing key skills, partnering with others and business & personal coaching. All true and positive stuff.

Today it’s time for a reminder of one of the opposites, one of the big beliefs that could be killing your success. It’s the false belief that perfection is possible and a worthy goal to shoot for.

Let’s look at this belief briefly and define it for what it really is. Firstly, perfection is a myth. A myth that says you can always tweak a project, report or job one more time – add one more change and it will be perfect. The problem is that three hours from now you may change your mind based on new information and begin to tweak again…and again. As most of us know from experience, this can go on and on.

Secondly, you have to ask yourself my favorite question, Why? Why do you want to tweak and change a project or speech or bid again? Sometimes there is a legitimate reason and you can make it better. But after a certain point, the time you spend ‘perfecting’ something is not worth the payoff. It’s the law of diminishing returns that we all know about but find easy to ignore.

So why do we ignore it? Many times trying for perfection is related to fear – the understandable fear that your work isn’t good enough to win, inspire, or make a profit. However, if you’ve done your best on a project, then continuing to obsess on it is killing your success – both for that project and everything else you’ve got in the funnel.

Seth Godin is famous for saying: 70% and ship it. To some that may be sacrilege but there are at least three good reasons why you should adopt a similar attitude.

1) Completion – by doing your best, checking it and then getting it out the door you get into the most highly productive habit of finishing. That alone sets you apart from a great majority of competitors.

2) Momentum – there’s that word again. It’s an entrepreneurs’s secret weapon. It’s hard to stop a man on a roll, or a business that keeps shipping products and delivering service. Momentum also contains the added mental benefit of firing off endorphins that produce good feelings – this is critical for keeping you out of the black hole of overwhelm that especially solo-preneurs have to guard against.

3) Feedback – by putting your service out there you get feedback on it. It sells or doesn’t. It may even fail miserably, but that’s information you need. It’s no use sitting in your secret lab tweaking your great invention over and over, hoping it will work. Time is passing so get it into the hands of the consumer. They’ll tell you with their wallets whether they need it or like it. And if they don’t need it or like it, that’s when you take it back to the drawing board because now you have more information to work with.

So to wrap this up, know at the start of your workday that perfection exists in nature but not in your projects. And knowing that perfection is impossible, then all you owe your work is to do your very best and move on. That’s what success looks like.

That also makes your calendar one of your most important tools. Use your calendar, set deadlines for yourself and respect them. Your productivity will rise and your successes will follow. Cheers, Michael

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