Nobody is perfect but there are certain people who are called perfectionists. These are people who triple check their work (even more) before submitting them. These are people you won’t find unprepared. They always give 101% to everything they do. Are you a perfectionist? Do you apply this attitude towards your business? Are you an employee, freelancer, independent contractor who needs to be perfect every single time? Have you ever thought that striving to be perfect every single time can be harming your business? Read these examples and see if you can relate.
You lack time management skills
Because you have to keep editing your work or keep reading your report, you tend to lose track of time and submit your work late. Sure it’s perfect but it’s still late. In business, you have to be fast. If you have a new product, you should launch it as soon as the people around you see it fit. Don’t question yourself with what if’s – “what if I should change the color?”, “what if I make the label smaller?”, “what if I launch too soon?”. This attitude will only delay you even more. You will find yourself with only one finished task at the end of the day.
You start with a carefully organized day but end up cramming
For example, you have some paperwork to do in the morning and attend a meeting after lunch. Because you’ve been too absorbed with your paperwork, you arrive late in the meeting. After that, you return to the office because you still aren’t satisfied with your paper. You go on overtime and ignore other tasks that are due in a few days. Because you keep pushing tasks, you end up cramming at the last minute. This will probably result to one perfect task and several half-baked ones.
You lose clients
This is probably one of the biggest blows of perfectionism. You prepare for a presentation but you fuss too much with small details that really don’t need to be tweaked or given too much attention so you end up late to your own presentation. The client gets turned off and chooses a competitor that has a less than stellar presentation but arrived on time and was able to deliver. You, on the other hand, have a smashing presentation that never saw the light of day because you were too busy ‘fixing it up’ and ‘making it perfect’.
What can you do?
It’s good to strive for perfection but it’s better to strive for excellence instead because let’s face it, nobody is perfect. Someone out there is bound to be better than you so the best that you can do is give it all you’ve got. Give it your best shot. Don’t trust your judgment alone. Ask for the opinions of colleagues and friends. You might think that your work is just good enough but your team and your staff might find it awesome. You cannot please everybody. If you’ve read your paper twice and you found no errors, hit the submit, publish or send button. If you’re doing something that’s trivial, let it go. You don’t have to be perfect every single time. Take some time to assess your tasks by importance. You can put in some extra effort for important tasks. Just remember to stick to your schedule. Asking for help and other people’s thoughts on your work will help you gain more confidence in yourself. Remember, you can’t please everyone.
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