You Thought Multitasking Was a Curse
Have you got an inner editor telling you what you write has to be perfect? Perfectionism is a problem that can hurt you. Here are a few light reasons why you should give up trying to create perfect work. — Sometimes fun talk can combat a serious problem.
I don’t write perfectly. You don’t either. No one does. Leonard Cohen hasn’t gotten there — much as I love him. Nope, he hasn’t. Neither has Toni Morrison, nor any other living writer. You can forget Mark Twain, Shakespeare, and the rest of the dead ones too.
There’s no such thing as perfect writing.
Tell the editor in your ear to take a hike on the whole idea. Trying to write perfectly could cause an alien invasion.
10 + 1 Reasons to Write Well, but not Perfect-ley
If you’re striving for perfect writing, you’re aiming at something that no one can do. It’s a shame to frustrate yourself that way. You could be writing the same piece for days, or weeks, or forever . . . Even if you could get it perfect, I can give you 10 + 1 reasons why you really need to reconsider trying.
1. Kids everywhere would hate you. Teachers would be constantly showing them samples of your work, making them diagram sentences, having them try to write just like you — perfectly. Imagine yourself as everyone’s most dreaded homework.
2. The tabloid press would name you Ms. or Mr. Perfect and follow you everywhere, waiting for you to make one writing error.
3. Most folks would decide you live a perfect life, with a perfect family, with a perfect house, and a perfect dog. They’d expect perfection from you.
4. Others would try to prove that you made a mistake in something you wrote. They’d hold great symposiums of copyeditors to go over every thing in great detail to find one tiny typographical error. You’d live your life under a microscope.
5. The rest of the world would think you were a hoax — a person who took credit for something written by a computer. They’d go as high as the Supreme Court to get warrants to search until they found how you did it.
6. No publisher or reader ever would buy your work. It would make the rest of the work they publish or read look inferior. Who wants their experience with the written word ruined forever?
7. If folks knew you wrote perfect work once, they’d expect it from then on.
8. You’d never get to thank an editor.
9. No one would really know, because no one has ever seen perfect writing.
10. Being superhuman gets lonely. No one would ever want to play with you, talk to you, be friends with, or marry you. You’d make us all feel insignificant and not good enough, just by the fact that you did something perfectly.
PLUS ONE: Aliens from another planet would eventually find out. They would want to study you. They’d abduct you to improve their alien gene pool, and we’d probably let them just to re-establish the balance here on Earth. We would be sad for you. Ah, but worse, if they found that you really wrote perfectly, they might return to find more like you. There would be an alien invasion!
Why not avoid the possibly serious consequences of perfectionism — illness, stress, bad relationships — and adjust your expectations to write well, clearly, and with passion? That little change could make your life so much better, strengthen your brand, and possibly save the world.
I like you well and on this planet. . . . Besides, I don’t know what to wear to an alien invasion.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think Liz can help with a problem you’re having with your writing, check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.
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Well, I think you should be just yourself. Being perfect doesn’t mean “being perfect” to me…it means, doing the best you can. I’ve seen some really lousy writing just because people don’t want to try harder or they are so much wrapped in the comfy zone of mediocrity that anything meticulous seems snobbish to them.
But you are right, we shouldn’t get obsessed with being perfect. Perfection, I think , is very perceptual as a concept.
Exactly, Amrit!
Writing should be a skill and a passion. But not go so far as to be an obssession. 🙂
Hi Liz, Hello, Amrit, Good morning!!
Also perfection is a moving target — what seems perfect this morning needs a little tweaking by this afternoon and a total revision by tomorrow.
I had a friend (a million years ago) who wanted to start a band. But before he did anything he had to write a complete catalog of all perfect songs and buy all the best equipment and assemble the best musicians in town to be in his band. In all the years I knew him, he never finished a song to his satisfaction, never found just the write band members and could never afford the perfect equipment.
Who knows what he could have done if he’d been willing to start small and simple? Or just start period.
arghhhh — how did I write ‘write’ instead of ‘right’ ? What was I thinking? And I dare discuss perfection? I don’t have a clue!
Did you konw taht it dseon’t metatr how leettrs in a wrod are oedrred, jsut taht the frsit and lsat ltteers are in the cerorct palecs?
So I guess a few mistakes won’t destroy readability. 🙂
On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with striving for perfection. Since no one is perfect, we’ll never get there. But it doesn’t hurt to try, since even small improvements are better than none.
However, an obssession with perfectionism, as with Katie’s musical friend, is another matter entirely. You won’t get anywhere near “perfect” unless you start doing. Besides, if you started as perfect, there’d be nowhere to go but down.
Well, I think Scorpia hits the nail on the head with this one.
All humour aside, this post really drives home, I think, one of the cardinal sins of the entrepreneur (or blogger, or anyone who has something to do) — and that is PROCRASTINATION.
Who else has held doing that clearly has a great payoff — for reasons that aren’t really clear … dubious in fact. In some cases, sheer laziness.
Well, I have.
And, I know that sometimes the reasons for that can be in justifying in terms of perfection.
“Well, in order for me to start, I need to have X, Y, Z …”
“I can’t publish that article until I’ve linked to EVERY single article on the topic … ”
“Maybe that post should be worded a different way; what will people think of my diction?”
… and so on.
MIcrosoft, I think, provides a wonderful example of why PERFECTION shouldn’t be the goal — but just getting it out of the door should be.
THEN, churn, baby, churn that product — iteratively, recursively, until you have something that you’re proud of.
There’s a reason why Microsoft is ahead of apple after all. 😉 [Read any one of Guy Kawasaki’s books for more details on that ]
Sorry for the long post … but interesting topic.
Cheers
t @ dji
Yeah, you guys, there really are serious downsides to perfection. It can play with your head. It can cause you to procrastinate like Rico makes fun of too.
People have problems with perfectionism have eating disorders. So let’s just go for our best work without errors. Okay?