Give Up Perfection!

I wanted to write about that topic for weeks or maybe even months. But I never started. Until now! Something was holding me back from writing this article. It was almost like a fear. Maybe the fear of not being good enough. I was not sure what exactly to write down and how to write it. I didn’t even come up with a good title for that article and without a great title I didn’t want to start writing at all. The title has to be short and crispy. It has to catch the reader’s attention! It has to seem relevant to search engines. It has to be as perfect as the whole content of the article.

This desire for perfection is the reason why I have never published this article. It is the reason why instead of an interesting blog post, that could have inspired at least a few people, I have released nothing. But today all of a sudden it became crystal clear to me! There is no perfection. Life is so complex, there are so many possible solutions for every problem. What I like somebody else might hate and what I don’t like could be a life-changing inspiration for somebody else.

I don’t want to strive for perfection anymore. I want to actually get stuff done. I want to sing out loud even if I’m not a perfect singer. I want to release that feature to the customers even if it is not perfect, yet. I want to tell my opinion even if not everybody at the table will agree. And I finally want to publish this blog post even if it is not perfect.

I didn’t want to release the last article I wrote without letting a native English speaking friend of me having a look on it. I was afraid that there might be a grammar mistake in my text. That would be fatal because it would make the whole blog post imperfect! People might think that I’m not a professional! Bullshit! Maybe some people would realize that I’m not a native speaker of the English language but does that make me any less reliable on the topic I write about? I don’t think so! In fact, there are professionals who’s native language is obviously not English and I still look up to them and admire them for being so professional.

I guess there are certain areas where perfection would indeed be a desirable goal. Like in nuclear power stations, in space missions or in certain medical fields. But for writing a blog post? Come on! Seriously, the important thing in a blog post is the basic idea behind it. Not that every word is perfect. And I think that this applies to most things in life. The ideas are important. The messages you want to tell. The feelings that you want to share and the actual things that are important to you.

Perfection is a nice direction but it’s not a goal that must be reached. It can motivate you to get better but you should never let you pull down by the unachievable illusion that everything must be perfect.

Someone once told me that the perfect blog post has about 1500 words. That would mean that I have about 1000 words to go. Guess what? This will be the last paragraph and it feels great! I will stop here and just call this article „Give Up Perfection!“. Even if this article is not perfect I hope that I could make my message clear. There is no perfection and even if there was something like that we usually wouldn’t need it. Instead we should concentrate on the really important stuff and just do it!