Every time I waited until I thought it was perfect — to take action, publish, launch, or ship — it never turned out to be perfect anyway :/

Even worse, I missed valuable opportunities because I was wasting time.

All the extra time I spent going from “good enough” to (what I thought was) “perfect” only made it marginally better, and sometimes made it worse.

Like, if it took 20 units of time to get it to 85% good, it would take 100 more units of time before it was 100% good. That extra 15% improvement was never worth the extra 100 units of time. It would’ve been better to ship first and then improve it later in future iterations, calibrating on feedback from the outside world.

The marginal improvements beyond “good enough” are rarely worth the extra time required.

The billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and Paypal, Reid Hoffman, put it well: “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

It can be scary to put your work out there. It can be scary to put yourself out there. It is often frightening to make yourself vulnerable to critique or rejection from others.

But if you want any real success in life, you’re going to have to get used to facing this fear and the uncertainty.

In fact, the more comfortable you are with putting yourself and your work out there while it’s still a little raw and makes you kinda nervous, the more success you’ll enjoy down the line.

Killing this tendency to perfectionism is something every achiever struggles with. I know because I do, too. That’s part of what makes us achievers. We aim for perfection.

But instead of waiting until it’s “perfect,” get better at knowing when it’s “good enough,” and just ship!

If you’re waiting for the time to feel it’s “just right,” don’t. The best time to act is always when you feel a little bit unprepared.

Train yourself to live at the edge of your comfort zone… because that’s where the zone of success is.

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10 January 2018