There are a lot of ways in which perfectionism can impact your creative work. I’m convinced that one of the reasons the “shitty first draft” mantra is so popular is that it’s really useful for people who get so paralyzed by their perfectionism that they can’t commit themselves to the first step of creating art.
But what if you have perfectionism about your process? Or about your work habits? One of the assumptions I have running through the whole Be Your Own Manager series is that you want to be more effective or productive with your creative time.
But sometimes, that desire can backfire in a big way. In the same way that your desire to be a Perfect Artist will interfere with your ability to stretch your muscles and improve your art, sometimes your desire to be perfectly productive can interfere with your attempts to create healthy work habits.
And sometimes, like any other form of perfectionism, that drive sneaks in when you’re not expecting it. And let me say this: Perfectionism is a terrible manager. It adds things to your to-do list without considering your existing workload. It doesn’t let you have as many recovery days as you need after an illness, and it scoffs sarcastically in the back of your mind when you tell yourself that you’re having trouble focusing because you’re tired and you need a break.
This form of perfectionism is an old acquaintance of mind, but that doesn’t mean I know how to banish it. It’s got decades of experience at burrowing under my conscious thoughts and torturing me when I’m not paying enough attention.
And this summer, it really got a hold of me. And like any terrible manager, it did a number on my ability to focus on certain kinds of projects.1 That’s why there have been some long pauses between blog entries. And, honestly, why there’s going to be another long pause before I really get back up to speed.
It got me completely demoralized before I even noticed what was happening, and finally took a break to reset some aspects of my bigger picture strategy, as well as the week-by-week plans I have in place.
So – how do I fight this kind of perfectionism? The same way I learned to fight it in the creative work itself. And I think this trick can be useful for anyone.
Every time perfectionism threatens, I remind myself that I am in progress. Just like a story, or a painting, or a song – my LIFE is an exercise. An experiment. One 24-hour practice session after another.
Some aspects of what I was doing before had stopped working, which is where perfectionism got it’s grips on me. But I’m going to try something else, now. And if this doesn’t work, I have other ideas for what to try next.
The real key is that if I’m a work in progress, there’s no point in worrying whether I have everything correct right now. If today’s schedule is just an experiment, it’s not as difficult to give it up and try something else next week. If my goals for this summer were too ambitious, I’ll change them for the fall. Nothing is broken if it’s all trial and error, anyway.
1. Fortunately, it stayed away from my primary writing time. My fiction projects are going as well as can be expected right now, and I have another revision of my manuscript (tweaked based on some feedback I got last winter) ready to go to beta readers.