Why You Should Never Aim for Perfection

Rather focus on the crucial part: getting started

“One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.”

This is the first sentence of Joseph Grand’s novel. In “The Plague”, by Albert Camus, Grand devotes all his evenings to writing his book. Except, he isn’t writing a book. He’s been focusing on the first sentence for months now.

Joseph Grand aims for perfection. He wants his first sentence — and each of the following as well — to be flawless. To encapsulate exactly the image he has in mind.

He keeps switching words in a torturing quest. And his book isn’t getting anywhere.

First, focus on getting started…

I’ve been working on my freelance website lately. Several times, the temptation has been great to drop everything. I wanted each page, each image, each text to be perfect.

After several days and many hours, I only had two pages — and not the most important ones.

I was trying to optimize before I even started. Until I realized that only what is already there can be improved. Better starting simple, so I have something tangible and usable and improving over time. It’s a process. Perfection right from the start is not a reachable goal.

The crucial step is to start. It’s often the most difficult one. Then comes momentum. From that moment on, it becomes more difficult to stop than to continue.

If you want to write a book, just write the first sentences. Even if you end up rewriting everything and not keeping a single word. What you want is a foundation. A building base. Just throw all your ideas on paper. Then, and only then, you can start making it better. Sentence after sentence, page after page.

… and optimize along the way

Improvement is a process. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as follows:

Improvement /ɪmˈpruːv.mənt/ noun — an occasion when something gets better or when you make it better

“When something gets better”. How could you make better something that doesn’t even exist?

If you aim for perfection right away, you get stuck. The project starts looking like a mountain. An impassable summit. What you want is a starting point. Something concrete. Something achievable. Once you have it, time and work will do the rest.

Learn to trust the process.

Once you get your mind off version 1, you’ll see version 2 more clearly. Time and reflection will shed new light on it. Once you’ve uncovered version 2, version 3 will appear on its own. That’s the process. Step by step, you’ll get closer and closer to what you could call “perfection”. Let’s step out of our immediacy society for a minute. Things take time.

That’s the beauty of a project. Starting. Having a mess in front of you. Then, over time, tidying it, beautifying it, improving it, building it, polishing it.

Making it grow.

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