Per­fec­tion Hurts

Magi­cians tend to over-eval­u­ate the import­ance of per­fec­tion. They try to achieve per­fec­tion in their tricks and moves, and most of the times some­thing oth­er very import­ant (present­a­tion) falls behind. Ever since Dai Ver­non brought that ›per­fec­tion‹ to the atten­tion of magi­cians, this mys­ter­i­ous thing cir­cu­lated around the magic circles …

There is a very good say­ing: ›Per­fec­tion is for begin­ners. Good enough is what the real pros aim for.‹

I learned this les­son only after years of strug­gling in magic. How many times did I try to come up with a valu­able and per­fect trick, routine or gim­mick. How many times had I built some­thing, tried to improve it and then thrown it away, because of all the atten­tion to the little details that should make the per­fec­tion actu­ally ruined everything.

Worst of all the feel­ings that were left in me: being a looser, not being able to fin­ish it per­fectly, and so on.

Why per­fec­tion is bad most of the times

»A true per­fec­tion­ist is always look­ing to get bet­ter but real­izes that per­fec­tion is unattainable.«

The Prin­ciple That »Done« Is Bet­ter Than »Per­fect and Nev­er Completed«.

Recently I found an art­icle on the inter­net about ‘tips on per­fec­tion’ (I don’t remem­ber the source, unfor­tu­nately). I will give these 11 points as a food for thought:

1. Per­fec­tion­ism doesn’t have to con­flict with »sweat­ing the details«. It’s nat­ur­al to assume that just giv­ing up on per­fec­tion­ism means you’ll no longer have any atten­tion to detail. But that’s absurd. There’s a dif­fer­ence between aware­ness of detail and expect­ing per­fec­tion in order to fin­ish some­thing. It’s still pos­sible – in fact desir­able – to stay on top of things to the level in which you need to in order to ensure a high-qual­ity out­put, but this doesn’t mean you get to be unreas­on­able with respect to the over­all outcome.

2. Striv­ing for per­fec­tion means you’ll only do 10% of the things you want to do. When you focus on fin­ish­ing one thing before you can start anoth­er, you’re bound­ing your cre­ativ­ity and pro­ductiv­ity. If you spend too much time »per­fect­ing« some­thing, you’re likely doing it at the expense of mov­ing on to the next thing.

3. Per­fec­tion­ists have high­er blood pres­sure, anxi­ety, and men­tal health prob­lems. This almost goes without say­ing and has been backed up in numer­ous stud­ies, but if you expect per­fec­tion, you’re going to have high­er stress levels which will affect your over­all men­tal and phys­ic­al health. Relax­a­tion, med­it­a­tion, and »slow days« are hard to come by for people who are always push­ing to make everything perfect.

4. Just doing some­thing over noth­ing puts you in an élite group of people. In so many cases, just doing some­thing is enough. Sign­ing up for a class even if it’s not the per­fect time, turn­ing in an assign­ment even though you know you could have done more, etc. There are hun­dreds of examples where the major­ity of people will agon­ize until things are per­fect and nev­er do any­thing at all, while you can get some­thing »good enough« out for the world to see.

5. Per­fect is the enemy of good. I love this Voltaire quote and use it in soft­ware devel­op­ment all the time. It’s too easy to strive for per­fec­tion and lose sight of the fact that you’re, in many cases, doing this at a huge over­all cost.

6. Fail­ing fast can shorten your learn­ing cycle. Some­times it’s best to take an iter­at­ive approach and ignore per­fec­tion as a means to learn. »Fail fast« is a fam­ous Sil­ic­on Val­ley max­im when it comes to new busi­nesses, because if you’re going to fail, it’s best to do it early at a time when you have the resources to turn it around. If you’re striv­ing to be per­fect, you could fail when it’s too late to anything.

7. Focus­ing on per­fec­tion­ism takes your focus away from the things that really mat­ter. If you’re doing any­thing you can to per­fec­tion, you could be miss­ing out on your top three focus areas com­pletely. Bal­ance is a good thing.

8. Just doing some­thing will start to expose shal­low fears. Sim­il­ar to fail­ing fast, you may not know what you fear until you give some­thing a shot. You thought you were afraid to fail, but maybe you’re really afraid to suc­ceed. The soon­er you can identi­fy your fears you can put meas­ures in place to work through them.

9. Col­lab­or­a­tion and per­fec­tion don’t mix. Have you ever tried to work with oth­er people on some­thing but first deman­ded your con­tri­bu­tion to be »per­fect«? That’s a sure-fire way to a failed part­ner­ship. Col­lab­or­a­tion requires iter­a­tion and being open to feed­back in both dir­ec­tions – if you’re shoot­ing to be per­fect, or if you believe you are, you’re not going to play well with others.

10. It isn’t what you do all or some of the time, it’s what you do most of the time. Some­thing I live by which I first read in Body for Life by Bill Phil­lips. There’s nev­er a »per­fect time«, and you can nev­er execute some­thing »per­fectly«. But if you’re able to per­form well most of the time, it can make up for the times when you’re not »per­fect«. Per­fec­tion isn’t pos­sible, but spend­ing more of your time doing some­thing well is.

11. Per­fec­tion is impossible. Every phys­ic­al thing is in a con­stant state of change, so even if you think something’s per­fect, it won’t be per­fect for long. Give it up.

Pass it on!