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Welcome to Day 6 of 7 Days To Better Productivity & Time Management.
Today’s task will take about 1 hour.
There are 2 nasty self-sabotage demons that undermine our best efforts at being productive and getting stuff done: perfectionism and procrastination.
Today let’s slay perfectionism.
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Yes! I see! I couldn’t stop doing a thing until I finish or think that is perfect. I lose time and energy because I spend my energy until I see I can not think anymore. That is sad. If I have to come back , I resist because my brain understand it will be hard. I must have to obey the time I put for that task AND once it’s done, Think ” that is the most perfect I could make with the time I have ” then, breath and move on ! Shake out!
AND be thankful!
🙂 It comes down to being kind to yourself and knowing your limits.
Accepting you’ll do your best in the timeframe you have, and then move on. This is great!
Kylie, Community Manager
I thought I wasn’t a perfectionist at all, but reading this and doing the exercises made me think about why I actually never start tasks. Nearly always it’s because I want the situation to be perfect before I even begin. So If I have a letter to print out, the desk has to be perfectly organised and the whole room clean and tidy. I always fall at the first hurdle and the task gets put on the someday list, even if it is something important. This is really tough for me, but gave me the idea that I can achieve lots of things without the environment being perfect to do them in. Lets see if I can put this into practice.
This was the toughest assignment so far. I thought since I’ve learned to do housework less than perfectly and I let many other little things go that I must be over my perfectionism. But one of my projects is a quilt that needs a section to be redone, AND I can’t get what I need to finish hand quilting it perfectly. Then I also realized that I expect more out of my college age son than he is able to give right now. *sigh* I will work on letting go, maybe a little more each day.
I just made an iPad support, imperfectly …. It is so hard to not redo the last seam! My granddaughter just saw the imperfect project and thinks it is really cool. She wants one! Hmmmmm .,,. Learning to live with that last seam
I am definitely a perfectionist. I have noticed it immobilizes me in a number of ways for which I have taken time today to write a long list. I couldn’t write a list of the things I like to do perfectly, I want to do everything perfectly. Instead I tried to write a list of the things I don’t want to do perfectly – it was blank. So I moved on to doing some things imperfectly:
1. I let go that I haven’t done this course perfectly on the days I committed to – I am still doing it, but that is OK as I haven’t given up.
2. I ticked off some of the mundane household chores I have on my daily list without them being perfectly done. It felt like I was cheating in doing that, but the reality is that the house is in a better state than when I started even if they were not perfectly done.
3. I did day 5 of this course today too, but didn’t do a magic activity as part of the DSSN tasks for every one of my 6 priorities – only some. Again still making progress so I should accept that.
4. I recalled last time I did this course that I didn’t brush my teeth all the way until the electric toothbrush said I should stop, well today it had no charge at all, so I used it like a normal toothbrush. I imagine my teeth will still be there in the morning!
I just noticed I typed this up in Word first and then copied it over – yet another form of perfectionism so I have a ways to go yet!
I would never describe myself as being a perfectionist, but when I read through all those lurking indicators, I thought bingo….there I am. It seems to take me forever to get started on something, because I didn’t have the perfect tools to get started. The project I did today was not perfect. Normally I would have handled every Christmas decoration and decided why I should keep it. But today I glanced through some bags, making sure no real treasure was in them, and threw them out to just get the project done. Honestly, I felt better and it took less time to get through the amount of stuff I had.
This is one I let go of long ago. I even remember the day. After watching colleagues try to make each weekly event perfectly for several years, I had to fill in while recovering from surgery. The RN thought I would be fine, I was NOT, light headed & shaky. My goal was to get thru it without passing out. As the event was winding down, the assistant told me how much he liked working with me, I was so relaxed about it. I looked at him, opened my mouth & uttered a statement I try to carry into every event, “whether we do the most perfect event or we trip up, we will be back here next week to do it again.” Doesn’t mean we don’t do our best each time, but puts life into perspective…and takes a lot of the stress off.
I let go of perfectionism a long time ago but it does rear it’s ugly head every so often. yes, very much so , that voice in your head.. but for me, it’s growing up with the mentality of what others think as i have been mocked and teased when i’ve failed but adored when i came up a winner. not a good place to be in either as one hurts , the other is short term feel good. of course it’s always good to aim for your best and challenge yourself but really, there’s no such thing as perfect as everyone has their own idea of what perfect is. acceptable is a pretty good starting point and my life has definitely turned around for the better when i let go of my perfectionism and what others think of my decisions, housekeeping, lifestyle, etc. i make me happy now , i consider my needs and life brings in all I need at the right time and place.
Perfectionism is much more of a big monster than I realized. Has held me back from starting many things. After completing tasks imperfectly I felt relieved and a sense of accomplishment just to have them done. I will be happy to lower my standards. I will have to continue to make conscienous choice to let perfectionism go for I find it very subtle.
I gave this habit up. I’m good with the ” good enough”.
Ah yes….my good friend perfectionism needs to take a hike. Which is really hard because she has been staying with me my whole life. Time to kick her out of the guest bedroom and really start living! Perfectionism has held me back from starting on a lot of projects because they are not quite perfectly planned out and the timing is not right. I vow to work on my horribly disorganized loft this weekend in a clumsy not perfect way. I will just jump in somewhere to get the project started. Anywhere is way better than nowhere! I have also just realized after reading someone else’s post that I need to be careful of projecting my perfectionism onto others. I expect people to have the same standards as me and that is not true or fair to those people.
Ah yes….my good friend perfectionism needs to take a hike. Which is really hard because she has been staying with me my whole life. Time to kick her out of the guest bedroom and really start living! Perfectionism has held me back from starting on a lot of projects because they are not quite perfectly planned out and the timing is not right. I vow to work on my horribly disorganized loft this weekend in a clumsy not perfect way. I will just jump in somewhere to get the project started. Anywhere is way better than nowhere! I have also just realized after reading someone else’s post that I need to be careful of projecting my perfectionism onto others. I expect people to have the same standards as me and that is not true or fair to those people.
This is my biggest issue. I exhibit at least half of the lurking perfectionist tendencies. Some might argue more. I have finally been able to delegate more work to the staff at the bank. I try extremely hard to just make certain that the work gets accomplished by the due date and that it is acceptable. I’ve had to let go of managing how they get from A to Z as long as they get there.