15 Apr 2022 · 23 min
Rob Dial argues perfectionism masks fear of judgment and rejection. He pushes "done is better than perfect" and offers a tactic: write your top three daily priorities on a 3x5 index card, then finish the most important one before anything else. Imperfect action beats waiting for the perfect moment.
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Welcome to today's EP of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host Rob Dial and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive motivational text messages from me directly to your cell phone, text me right now. 512-580-9305 once again, 512-580-9305. Today we're going to talk about why your perfectionism is is ruining your productivity and destroying the dreams that you want to create. And you know, not too long ago I created an episode on perfectionism talk to you about how perfectionism is complete bs. But today I want to talk to you about why your perfectionism is actually killing the productivity that you're trying to create in your life. And you know, I'll give you a quick review of what I talked about in the episode. Perfectionism. It's not real. It doesn't exist. Everybody, pretty much almost everybody thinks that They're a perfectionist. So if you're sitting out there and you're like, well, I think I'm a perfectionist. Well, join the club. We all think that we're perfectionists, but really what it is, perfectionism is a mask that you wear for all of your fears. It's not that you want to be perfect. It's that you're really afraid of being judged. It's not that you want to be perfect. It's that you feel like you're not good enough. It's not that you want to be perfect. It's that you're afraid that, you know, you're going to put your heart out there and do this thing that you truly want to do, and maybe you're going to get rejected. So what you do is you hide behind this feeling or this saying of, well, I'm just a perfectionist. And I'll give you an example. What I mean, my favorite example is if you think of an artist, right? A painter, and you go over to your friend's house and they're this incredible artist, and you find all of these things. It's like a side room. And you're like, holy crap, who did all of these? Did you do all of these? And you're like, yeah. And you're like, why did I never know that you were an artist? And they're like, well, you know, I'm not. Not everything's. It's not perfect yet. And you're like, what if you just. What if you just put all of it online and you just tried to sell it on Etsy? Or what if we did, like, a local show and you could have an art show and people can all come and see the stuff, and they're like, no, no, no, it's not perfect yet. There's still a few things I want to work on. I want to make sure these are perfect before I put it out there. What's happening is it's not that they want to be perfect. What's happening is that they're afraid that if they put their art out there that they'll be judged. Like, they're afraid that maybe they're going to do this art show and then somebody's gonna walk by and be like, oh, that's ugly. And they're gonna overhear it. Or they're afraid that they're gonna, you know, put the prices up there for people to be able to buy, and someone's gonna walk by and say, that's a thousand dollars. I wouldn't pay 50 bucks. For that. And then they get destroyed because of the fact that somebody says that, because they have that rejection, because they hear other people's opinions, because of the fact that they feel like they're not good enough. And someone just proved to them, boom, you're not good enough. And so when you think of the artist in that way, it shows you, oh, it's not perfectionism. That's the actual thing. It is the fear of being judged or rejection or other people's opinions or not being good enough or whatever it is they might be. And the reason why your productivity is being killed by your perfectionism is because you're not starting or you're waiting for the perfect moment, as if the sky's gonna open up and God's gonna be like, hello, John, I've created the perfect moment for you to finally start your business. That's not gonna happen. It doesn't exist. It will never happen. The sky will never part. God won't come down and be like, hey, John, now is the time to start your Etsy store or whatever it is that you want to do, right? So what we do is we say, oh, it's not the right time. Maybe I'll wait till the kids get older. Oh, it's not the right time. I'm still really busy at work, and in six months, I'm gonna have enough time. No, but, you know what happens is we're looking for the perfect moment, or, you know, we're looking for. We're not taking action because it's not the perfect time. And meanwhile, someone else with way less talent and way less skill than you is getting ahead of you because they're simply starting, and they're simply taking action. When you're sitting around in your hands. You don't have to be a genius to be successful. You don't have to be amazing at most things to be successful. I have some people that I've met, if I'm being honest with you, they're extremely successful. And I look at them and I'm like, are they even home? Like, are the lights on? Like, it's kind of like the lights are on, but no one's home. You know, it's like, you realize, man, you don't really have to. If you want success, whatever success means for you, whether that's happiness or love or being just rich as hell or traveling the world or raising amazing children or love or peace or joy, whatever success means to you, if you want success and you want to go and create the life that you want to, you Just have to go and work towards it. And the majority of people who have massive amounts of success usually are not good at many things, and they're actually usually not good at more than a couple things, and they're really good at one thing. And somehow they mastered that one thing, and that turned them into this extremely successful, extremely wealthy person. That's what's really crazy about it. We have this opportunity. I think that one of the things that people sleep on the most is as a human, we have the opportunity to master something. And you can't master many things in your life, but you can dedicate your life to mastering one thing. If you think of, like, the people who were just world changers, if you think of people who, let's take music for an example, people who stand out, who are just completely different, like Jimi Hendrix, for instance. He just found this thing and he was obsessed with it, and he would just play this thing all day long. You know, it was just an obsession. That's what his obsession was, you know? And you look at other people who are just like amazing comedians. For instance, you look at, like, Jerry Seinfeld or you look at, like, you know, Dave Chappelle or whoever it is, that's your favorite comedian. That's someone who just found something, fell in love with it, and they went, this is what I want to dedicate my life to. This is what I want to master. What is the thing that you want to dedicate your life to that's just so interesting to you that you're like, I want to go and work on that thing, because there's never going to be a perfect time to start it. Right now is the perfect time. Every single second that you've been listening to this podcast is the perfect time to start whatever it is you want to start. Every single second from now until the minute that you die will be the perfect time to start. There will never be a golden second where it pops up. Every single one of them is better. And here's the thing. All you have to do is start. And then you don't strive for perfection. You strive for progress. Just trying to get a little bit better today. All you have to do is just ask yourself, hey, did I get better today? Before you go and you put your head on that pillow, did I get better today at this thing? Did I get better at it? What's that thing that you want to get better at? If you want to start that business, you're not going to learn how to be a great business owner until after you run your business, that's for sure. Like if I could go back to Rob six years ago when I started my business, we'd be completely different people and I could give him a whole lot of tips. But it isn't things that I've learned from reading in books, it's things I've learned from actually going out and doing it. It's the same way for every single thing that you do that you want to do no matter what it is. And getting something done. Once again, you got to strive for progress, not perfection. Just get a little bit better every single day. Getting something done is better than continuing to work on it because it's not perfect. Done is better than perfect. At the beginning of the year, we tend to think more about our habits and reflect on things we do every day. One area that often comes into focus is food. How much is actually consumed, how much gets wasted, and how easily money can slip away. That's where Too Good To Go comes in. For anyone unfamiliar, Too Good to Go is a food surplus saving app where local cafes, bakeries and restaurants sell their perfectly good surplus food at half the original price or even less. I've been using Too Good to Go for a while now and it's amazing. You just go on every single day and you see what people have. You can get a massive discount and you get amazing food for half the price. Download the Too Good to Go app and just grab one bag a week to make a big impact this year. 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dial One of my, one of my first mentors used to always. She used to, she used to have literally behind her desk, she had a sign that said done is better than perfect. And with people who work with me, what I always say to them is, I don't want anything to be perfect. I don't care if anything's perfect. If it's 90% done, it's done. Because what happens is you can spend, you know, if, if you're, you're working on something, let's say that someone's working on, you know, editing something for us to put on Instagram, right? We could get it to 90% done, which is pretty much done, but not like perfect perfect. There's a few extra little teeny tiny things. And it might take an hour to get one thing done to 90%, but it might take another two hours to get it, quote, unquote, 100% done. A hundred percent perfect. What's better? I would rather have somebody create one piece of content in an hour and then two more over the next two hours versus spend three hours trying to get something to a hundred percent done is better than perfect. That little extra 10% will take you a long time. If I'm being honest with you, some people, that extra 10% will take you the rest of your life. Where you're like, oh, this painting that I've created, it's good, but it's not perfect. I could still get the changes and a little bit different. Just get it out. Just finish the painting, throw that shit on a wall and try to sell it to somebody, right? Just whatever it is you gotta do. And that's the beautiful thing about art. You know, there's some people that are like perfectionists and artists and there's some people that are some of the greatest artists that have ever existed. And there's so many imperfections in the music that they make, in the paintings that they have, but the beauty of what they do is actually in the imperfections and they know that. And it's the, you know, it's the difference in life of trying to get your entire to do list done versus just checking off the number one most important thing. Hey. Today's program is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the health and wellness company that makes comprehensive daily nutrition really, really simple. AG1 by Athletic Greens is a category leading superfood product that bring comprehensive and convenient daily nutrition to everybody. Because keeping up with the research, knowing what to do and taking a bunch of pills and capsules is hard on the stomach and hard to keep up with and help each of us be at our best. They simplify the path to better nutrition by giving you the one thing with all of the best things. I literally take AG1 every single morning. 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So start hiring right now with a $75 sponsored job credit. To upgrade your posts at Indeed.com dial offer valid through April 30, go to Indeed.com dial for your $75 credit. Before April 30 Indeed.com dial terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Like what really matters? Trying to finish the entire to do list or checking off the most important thing every single day? If you want me to be honest with you, what matters is the number one most important thing every single day. Imagine if every single day you just got the most important thing done, whatever that thing is. If you're trying to start a business, what's the most important thing that has to be done today to move the needle? And you want to think of it like needle moving activities. I was researching this because I was curious of like, where did needle moving come from? Because I always say, like, what's going to move the needle today? What actually comes from is when you look at a speedometer and you look at how fast you're going to when you're going zero miles an hour, the needle's not moving. But when you go two miles an hour, at least the needle's moving. When you're going 90 miles an hour, at least the needle is moving, right? As long as you're not going zero miles an hour. If you're just going two miles an hour, it's needle moving. It's a needle moving thing. But there's some things that just move the needle a whole lot more than other things. And so what's the most important thing that has to be done today? Can you just check that off every single day? One of the tips that I give people you may have heard this if you've been listening to podcasts for a long time. It's super simple. Life is simple. We make it so damn hard. And it's really not hard. It's just like, hey, what do you want in your life, Decide what it is. Okay. What do you have to do to get it done? Okay, just do it. Stop thinking about it. Just do it. And so one of the things that really helps people make it super simple. Write out your to do list every single day. And then take a three by five card, you know, an index card. There's, you know, three by five cards, cue cards, whatever those things are called. And what you do is you write down, this is my most important thing for the day, and you write that thing down. And then you say, this is my second most important thing for the day, and you write down and this is my third most important thing for the day, and you write down number one, number two, and number three. That's it. I don't care about anything else in your to do list. What's number one? What's number two? What's number three? And you take your to do list and you just leave it on your desk or put it somewhere else, put inside of the drawer. Then you take that, that index card, the three by five card, and you put in your back pocket and you bring it with you. And your goal for the day, all you have to do, get the first thing done. That's it. I'm not worried about number two. I'm not worried about number three. I'm worried about number one. And then once number one is done and it is crossed off of your list, now move on to number two. Don't go to number three. Don't try to work on all two of them at once or three of them at once. Work on one at a time until the first one is done and then the second one is done and the third one is done. What it really comes down to is you have to just have a GSD attitude. Get shit done. You just got to stop thinking and start doing. Too many people are just sitting around and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking. It's just like digging a hole in your backyard. You can work really hard at, you know, thinking, but in the end of the day, you just have a hole in your backyard that's not going to do anything for anybody. You'll never be fully ready for anything. And you don't even have to hit the like. The beautiful thing about taking action, you don't even have to fucking believe in yourself at all. Like, you don't have to believe that you can do it. And actually you don't have to believe that you'd be a massive success to just start taking action right now. You don't have to believe in yourself. When I used to have sales reps that worked in my office 15 years ago and I was training them, they were like, I don't know if I'm going to make sales. I'm like, it doesn't matter if you're going to make sales. All you have to do is just pick up the phone and push some buttons, and eventually someone's going to answer the phone and just read what's in front of you and see if they want to buy it. That's it. You don't have to believe in yourself in order to take action. I'm aware of this idea of, well, I don't believe in myself yet, so I don't need to. I can't take action. That has nothing to do with anything. You know, you have to be fully aware that you're going to mess up. You're going to. You have to be okay with messing up. I'm fully aware that I'm going to screw up most things throughout the day. The creator of Honda said that success is 99% failure. Well, that's pretty cool because all you got to do is just go, hey, let me go mess up today. Because you mess up and you figure out what doesn't work. And when you figure out what doesn't work, you cross it off the list of something that you'll never do again. And then you cross the next thing off the list of things you never do again. And eventually you just figure out what works and you just mess up every day, multiple times a day. You know, people want to avoid messing up each day. No, you want to get to the messing up each day because then you can figure out how to do it right. And if we're being 100% honest, you know, like 100% honest perfectionism is usually just a case of a frail ego. That's it. It's usually just a case of a frail ego. I don't want someone to judge me. I don't want someone to reject me. I don't want someone to tell me that I'm not good enough or that my product sucks or that my paintings are not great or that my music sounds like claws on a chalkboard, right? Nothing is going to be perfect. Who cares what other people think of you? As long as you're just doing that thing that you want to do? That's all that really matters. Because nothing in this world is ever perfect. There's no such thing as perfection. To try to strive for perfection is ridiculous. When you walk out, walk Outside of your house, go look at all the trees around you and identify where the perfect tree is. It doesn't exist. There's no perfect tree. There's trees that have branches coming out a little bit too far. There's trees that are a little bit too fat. There's trees a little bit too skinny. There's trees that are a little bit crooked. Right? What is perfection is they are perfect in their imperfections. So go mess it up. Like, go fuck it up, buttercup. That's all you have to do. That's the only way that you can prove go fuck it up, buttercup. And you'll figure out how to get better from there. Incorrect action is better than no action at all. Doing something wrong is better than doing nothing, because incorrect action will eventually uncover what needs to change to create correct action. Think about that for a second. Most people are afraid of going out and messing up. No. I would much rather you go out and mess up and mess up and mess up and mess up. Because incorrect action is better than no action at all. So what do you have to do then? You have to get up. You have to get off the couch. You have to stop looking at Instagram. You have to stop telling yourself you're not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough. Whatever it is you're saying to yourself, you have to stop listening to this podcast episode. Stop listening to me, turn it off, go out there and just get some shit done. Because that's what really, actually truly matters. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R the only way that this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So I greatly, greatly appreciate it every single time you share it. I greatly appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. And if you listen to me on Spotify or itunes, Apple podcasts, do me a favor, give us a rating and review. It helps more than you could possibly imagine. The more positive rating your reviews that we get, the more they actually start to show this to other people. And this can be found organically. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. It'll take you like 15 to 30 seconds. So other than that, I'm gonna leave the same way leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.
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