Why Chase Perfection? This Other Pursuit Serves You Best

20 lessons from Rob Moore — Playing for the long-run

In this life, things don't just happen. You work to make them happen. Sure, you already know that.

We well captured this one of life’s often inconvenient truths in nursery class — "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." Indeed, if merely wishing could make things happen, then even the poorest and idle people will always have what they wanted.

Career-weeks are annual events in many schools. There, students stage-act their future chosen professions.

Aspiring engineers wear hard-hats and sized-to-fit work clothes. Doctors and nurses "to-be" don white hospital uniforms with stethoscopes slung around their necks. Similarly, other students use profession-specific tools to dramatize their future career aspirations.

So enthused, we learned that those who failed to plan and prepare are inexorably planning and preparing to fail.

Unfortunately, many of these aspirants get stuck in the preparation stage.

Why do underachievers often get stuck in paralysis through analysis? Discouragement will immobilize you if all you do is compare your present starting phase to your future dreamed-of self.

From self-assessment, an underachiever perceives the gap between his starting stage and his future ideal state to be insurmountable. As a result, he often self-sabotage his desired success. How? He stops taking those one-at-a-time steps needed to take him to his ultimate goals.

Indecision and the fear of failures often checkmate people from taking those necessary first steps towards worthwhile goals. Author Rob Moore, in his book Start Now Get Perfect Later addresses this issue. He itemized those small daily, consistent big and small moves that can help you achieve set goals.

Here, I’m sharing with you some of my major takeaways.

1. Most likely, you already know what you ought to do. Start doing it. Decisiveness will help to get you forward from your stuck state. Moreover, you can take your decisiveness in one area into another area of your life.

2. Have the courage to ask for help when you need it. Asking for help when you need it is not weakness, but a sign of strength.

3. Instead of jumping from task to task, commit to one or very few. Go narrow and deep, not shallow and wide.

4. If you are stuck or overwhelmed, decide your way out of it, small decisions by small decision.

5. Most of our worries and anxieties never come to pass.

Worry is an imagined future that has a high probability of being wrong, that can significantly affect or ruin the here and now.

6. Stop dwelling on the past. The past doesn't determine the future, unless, of course, you allow it.

7. When you are true to yourself, you attract the right people who accept and like you for who you are.

Be yourself. You’re the very best at being you. Everyone else is taken.

8. Putting off a decision because the future is unknown oftentimes becomes the worst decision. Don’t waste your life by wasting time looking at the downside of what you didn't do instead of the upside of what you should do.

Decisiveness is the (leadership) trait that gives you:

• The ability to make decisions quickly and effectively. (Dictionary.com)
• The ability to ‘draw heavily on past experiences to influence how it (the current decision) is implemented’ (earlbreon.com)
• The spark that ignites action. The courageous facing of issues, knowing that if they are not faced, problems will remain forever unanswered’ (Wilferd A. Peterson)

Seven Don’ts

• Don’t take the advice or listen to the opinions of too many people or leaders.
• Don’t say yes to every opportunity that comes your way.
• Don’t have too many apps or browsers open at any one time.
• Don’t give yourself too many choices, even in social or mundane situations.
• Don’t have unrealistic expectations that you can do everything yourself.
• Don’t feel you need to have all your ducks in a row before you start.
• When you are in flow, do not allow yourself to be interrupted until a break

9. In high-pressure situations, simply focus on the task at hand. If you’re so busy worrying about how you’re going to perform, you’ll waste essential brain power.

10. Don't fake it until you make it. "Be it till you see it." After all, you’re a person of integrity. Get very clear about what you want. Visualize consciously and unconsciously. Then act ‘as if’ you are already there: being, doing and having it. Not as a fake, but as an authentic person moving towards your goal. ‘Be it till you see it’. Practise, don’t pretend.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

~ Albert Einstein.

11. Think big, start small. Yes, you already know that cliche. But to know and not to do is not to know.

12. Let go of control. Yo can't control everything. Neither can you control every body. Focus on what give you results and let go what drains you. Major only your KRAs and IGTs (Key Results Areas and Income Generating Tasks)

13. Learn from everyone. Listen more and talk less.

14. Get comfortable with the unknown. Stop reinforcing this biggest lie, that you need to have or know everything ready before you start.

The paradoxical void many people get stuck in is the void between the comfortable known and the uncomfortable unknown. The comfortable known is safe, but all resourcefulness and creativity is latent and suppressed.

The uncomfortable unknown is a bit scary, you don’t feel ready, it’s daunting, but that’s where all your untapped infinite resources are stored ready and waiting.

15. The more disciplined you are, the more effective you'll be

Discipline is ‘doing what you know you should be doing even when you don’t feel like it.

Simple Steps to Improving Your Self-discipline

• Give yourself rewards along the way, not all at the end.
• Work out your strongest pleasure and pain motivations.
• Have a very clear picture of your vision and goals.

16. You can never be 100% ready before you start. Strive for perfection but settle on excellence. Overcome the disease of "death by due dilligence". Preparation prevents poor performance, but it can also keep you stucked in the planning stage.

17. Do what is most right, kind and caring for the most people involved

18. Decisions are better made and then stuck to, if you fully commit. Making and sticking to your commitments help others to trust you.

It takes just as much energy to commit as it does to give up. It takes as much energy to stop and start and stop and start as it does to push through some challenges and stay committed.

19. Your word is a measure of your worth. Take it seriously.

20. If you don’t fill your life with your priorities, other people will fill you with theirs.

Final Word

Stop waiting to be perfect before you start. In the long-run, you are best served by your willingness to learn and grow. Continuous learning leads to growth, excellence, and success.

There, you have it. All.

Now, go, start now, get perfect later.

Source

Copyright by © Rob Moore, Start Now Get Perfect Later; John Murray Learning, 2018

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