Michael J. Fox once said, “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.” Those words rang true as soon as I read them.
Early in my career I was a graphic designer for a local university. I was responsible for creating text books and classroom materials for the International College of Dentistry - super exciting work by the way :). Like any job I had deadlines to meet with the editors, publishers, printers, etc… One day I caught myself going back to tweak the layout for a certain book. That particular book was printed six months earlier and currently in use in Dental Schools throughout the Middle East. But here I was futzing with margins, font spacing and the like.
Something made me stop and think about what I was doing. Why in the world was I messing with a text book that would never be reprinted? I had other things to work on, but internally I was going nuts because I knew I could do a better job than I had originally. Mind you, there was nothing wrong with the final published book. It was great. Everyone signed off on my designs and loved it. Not to mention that it was a critical component of actually training and producing dentists. It was working.
And in that moment I realized that I was a “tweaker”. My edits had nothing to do with my audience. They were strictly for my own benefit and justification. I wanted better margins simply because it was the right thing to do in my mind. Tweaking was a constant thread in my professional life for years. And to this day I still fight the urge to pull up a logo I designed nine months ago, or a strategic plan that I helped write with a client and make a few tweaks. It’s just a part of who I am.
But a few years ago I realized that tweaking was just for me - not my clients - most of the time they never saw my tweaks anyway. When I did bring my revised files to a client, they would look at me like I just handed them a moon rock. You could see it in their eyes, “What is this? Why are you bringing this to me now?”
After more than a few of those interactions, I decided that perfectionism doesn’t work for me. In fact, it was actually hurting my client relationships. They had moved on. I was obsessing. I was the crazy consultant or designer that couldn’t let go. So today, I actively strive for excellence.
Excellence is something completely different than perfection. And it took me a long time to fully understand how powerful and good simply being excellent was. For me, perfection was the top. It was it. Anything else seemed like failure. I look back now and realize how silly I was to think that being excellent meant failure.
And here’s the funny thing that all perfectionists know - perfection isn’t possible. If it isn’t possible, why keep killing ourselves to reach it? If it isn’t possible, why even think and act like it is? Why assume that nothing else will suffice? Why do we set ourselves up for a letdown?
Being excellent is attainable. It’s not always easy, but it is doable. Excellence doesn’t mean that you’re sacrificing your soul. It doesn’t mean anything other than excellent. And how can that be a bad thing?
When you strive for perfection, you shoot yourself in the foot right from the start. You’ve given yourself a goal that’s unreachable. You will never be satisfied with the end result and that creates a type of myopia. You cannot see past perfection. Perfection holds you back from reaching your true potential. It’s a constrictive way of being. Perfection costs you more than you realize.
And here’s the kicker - no one expects you to be perfect. People expect you to strive for excellence. Excellence is what people pay for. It’s what people really want from you.
Being recognized as excellent in your field is the key to success. So I encourage all of you perfectionist out there to take a few minutes and look at how your never-ending quest for perfection affects your life and relationships. Is it helping or hurting you? Are you getting what you want?
If you’re open to looking at it from another angle, ask yourself these two questions:
- If it were impossible to be perfect who would I prefer to be?
- If I could be the new way, what would things be like? What would happen?
If you’re like me, you’ll find that the new way of being is much better than the current constrictive way. Once you come to that realization, life and work take on a whole new meaning.
Like I said, I still fight the urge to tweak, but recognizing how it affects me and actively striving for excellence has allowed me to be more productive, more effective and happier. And that’s something that most New Year’s resolutions can’t beat.
BTW, There are probably spelling and/or grammar mistakes in this blog post. And that’s okay. I’ve spell checked it and I’ve re-read it and now I’m sending it. I want it to be right, but I also know that I can spend hours obsessing over every detail and it won’t go out until tomorrow or the next day. Hopefully a few grammatical errors (if you catch them) won’t keep you from thinking about what I’ve said. So here goes…
Hey Nick. Great post. I’ve actually always felt as if you’ve done a pretty good job balancing high-achieving with available resources, but I guess we all have room for improvement.
I think that your post is particularly relevant when you consider the sheer amount of content and information that is being produced every second. Realistically, whatever we produce serves is purpose, and then is seldom revisited again (unless, of course, you’ve penned the great American novel). I can definitely understand the urge to waste time tweaking that last thing - paragraph, graphic, etc.- forever. But as you’ve said, when you can instead focus on being excellent at everything you do rather than perfect at the singular task in front of you, something more meaningful is possible.
Well said.
Nick,
Thank you for the excellent post. very thoughtful and inspired words that are very timely.
This article is very helpful,and it’s amazing how you can talk about yourself and we learn so mouch from your personal life.