When Is It Good Enough? A Prescription For Perfectionists

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories, it's about the grit it takes to get there.

Hey everyone, this is Julie. Welcome back to Million Dollar Grit. Today I want to talk to the perfectionists and the overthinkers in the room. What if I told you that your greatest creative advantage is not remembering all the details or noticing all the details, but being able to forget and ignore more. So I'm going to tackle the question: how to know when something is good enough? I think that perfectionists and overthinkers really, really struggle with this because they see so many details and there's always something to improve. And because of that, there becomes like this loop or this cycle of trying to maybe get something better, maybe putting it out there, maybe not, and spinning in circles. So let's talk about the idea of forgetfulness and ignoring, because I think they get a bad rap. And I think that people think that, you know, when you hear the word ignore, you think about someone who's ignoring you, not paying attention to you, right? Like, you know, oblivious. Same thing with forgetfulness. Like, we have a real negative connotation with forgetfulness because it's— it, it seems like you are careless and you're not remembering important details. But believe it or not, uh, there is research to back up that the skill of critical ignoring is not just a helpful skill, it's absolutely essential. And so I looked up some research in the Current Directions in Psychological Science, and they, uh, actually looked at this and realized that The ability to deliberately ignore certain information is crucial for efficient cognitive functioning, and they argue that strategic ignoring is actually not a flaw. It is not laziness. Rather, it is a core competency, and it's a sign of intelligence, because paying attention to everything leads to decision paralysis, cognitive overload, and reduced effectiveness. And never before in the history of the world have we been able to access so much information and have so much noise around us that if you cannot ignore or forget details, then you will be paralyzed, right? So what is critical ignoring? What, what actually is it? So It's really defined as intentionally filtering out distracting information or unimportant details that will allow you to focus on what truly matters. And this shows up all the time in any sort of offer creation or business development because you have a vision in your head, and if you are a visionary, that vision is probably pretty well defined. You can see it in your mind's eye, and there's a really big gap between what you can see as the full picture and where you are today. And so you see all the details and all the steps and all the, you know, the paths forward. And so your brain tells you that it's not good enough, it's not ready enough until you reach that vision, which we always know that with visionaries, the vision always moves, right? The goalpost moves. So it's like you're locked in this cycle. And so perfectionists can actually strengthen a muscle of strategically overlooking minor details, strategically overlooking marginal improvements. And there's a quote by William James back in 1904, pre-internet, pre-electricity probably, and he says, "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." And so the studies and modern psychology strongly support what he understood over a century ago. So, Maybe now I've got your attention, and that we could afford to be a little forgetful and, uh, ignore details that are not important. Okay, so let's think of this now as a superpower. How do we actually start to do this? Okay, number one, it's acknowledging. If you are a perfectionist or an overthinker, overthinker, you want to acknowledge, okay, this is a problem I have now. Most of you are gonna self-identify pretty quickly, but if you're not sure, the biggest like signal that you're a perfectionist or an overthinker is that you have a lot of things that you've never actually launched or you've never put out there, or a lot of ideas that don't seem to make it to paper. And that's usually a sign that you get kind of stuck in the planning, in the circular motion of the brain of like working these details out. So once you can say to yourself, okay, I am a perfectionist, I am an overthinker, We're going to do 3 quick exercises to practice. It's going to be a little tricky, and the way that you will know if you did it right is you will be highly uncomfortable. So the discomfort, and probably also physical pain that you feel, is a sign that you did it right. So just like when you go to the gym and you do reps and your muscles ache the next day, and your trainer says, That's a sign that you did it well. It's the same thing here. Okay, so the first thing is that you're going to set strict time and resource limits. This is very, very important. This is probably the biggest practice you can do. And if you have a coach, really leverage this coach. So for example, let's say you're a perfectionist in copywriting, okay, and you have a sales page to write. Well, if I'm your coach, I'm gonna know you and I'm gonna know what your offer is, and I'm gonna say this copy should take you at most, let's say, 4 4 hours. Okay? At the end of 4 hours, whatever is done has to be launched. Now this, you might even be getting anxiety just thinking about this. It's important to create an accurate time limit. Like, this is not like those, you know, those cooking shows where they give you 30 minutes to like make an 8-course meal and like your adrenaline is going because you're like, nobody can do that in 30 minutes. That's not what this is. We don't want to put your brain and body under immense stress and give you 30 minutes to do something that should take you 4 hours. So it's important that you and/or your coach understand what something actually takes so that you can create a reasonable time or resource limit. We could also do this with money, like you shouldn't spend more than $500 on this, or, you know, something like that. But we don't want to do, this should take you 10 hours, or this should take you 3 days. Okay, so we want to find that nice, like, strict but reasonable time and resource limit, and then you have to launch it whether it's done or not. Um, and again, this is going to feel a little stressful It's gonna feel like, oh my gosh, I'm putting out like shoddy work. And it's not true, right? Remember, the pain and the discomfort is a sign that you did it right. A second thing that we could do is, and so these are like, you can choose the practices, is that you can pick your top 3 elements, right? So let's say you're going into a launch and you see a bajillion details and you know there's a million things to do and you're getting, you're starting to spin out, right? 3 elements. What's the most important? So, I'm just going to give you an example. In Funnel Gorgeous, we have a launch coming up, right? We need the sales page done. We need the webinar presentation done, and we need the webinar funnel running with ads. Those are the 3 most important things. And so those are the elements that I'm going to focus on, and everything else is going to be— if it gets done, great. If it doesn't, everything else is not going to stop the launch, right? The 3 elements, those are the things that have to be done in order for the launch to go off. But if I don't have a Facebook group cover or I don't have Module 3 done "or I don't have, you know, the best social graphics, I'm still going to launch." So that's a second way to do it. And the third way that you can do this is you can use like a percentage slider. Now this is probably the hardest practice. I think the first two that I gave you are really way easier because I feel like sometimes it's our own perspective that's off, but it's a percentage like a ruler, right? So you have a project and you're going to kind of create milestones. What does it look like when it's 50% complete? What does it look like when it's 75% complete? And what does it look like when it's 100% complete? And so it doesn't matter, whatever the project is, you know, 50, 75, and 100. And the goal is that once you identify those 3 milestones, You are going to then do the project, and when you hit 75%, then you have to let it— you have to launch it into the world. And that can be stressful because it can feel like it's unfinished, but again, that's part of the practice. The part of the practice of letting something out of your hand and intentionally ignoring some of those details, and hopefully that will help, and it'll get less painful over time. So as a reminder, ignoring and forgetting are not bad qualities. They can be bad qualities, but in this case, if you are a perfectionist or an overthinker, they're actually critical to your ability to make decisions effectively and get things out the door. And good enough, remember, is not about lowering your standards. It's about knowing what deserves your attention and what deserves to be forgotten. And I think the biggest thing that I will leave you with is this. When you let perfectionism and details rule, you are not paying attention to the opportunity cost of what's not happening, right? When you don't launch that thing, when you push that out, you don't get to see in a parallel universe what it would look like if you just went ahead and did it. And so oftentimes the opportunity cost doesn't really feel that painful because we're like, eh, you know, it's like imaginary. But if we all were able to like look in a looking glass and see what our lives would look like if we dropped the perfectionism and the overthinking and actually got things out the door, you might be shocked at what you're sacrificing and giving up in the name of it has to be perfect. So keep that in mind. I hope this was helpful.

Talk to you soon. And there you have it, folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.