Strive for Excellence not Perfection
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How often do we freeze up and can’t go forward, because something we have created isn’t good enough – isn’t perfect? Way too often. I have spent so many hours trying to perfect something. Our goal is often completion, or perfection. Reaching the 100%. It seems like it is always escaping us. I want to challenge the idea of perfection. We should strive for excellence. Doing something not for 100% perfection, but rather to a 90% excellence. Perfection keeps your thinking flat, stuck, and small. You focus on details. Excellence understands that there is no 100%. Instead, Excellence strives to be great. Excellence is focused on impact, how can you get the 100% impact with great details. This still means doing your job well. It just also means to keep going – when something is effectively done. I recently heard the story: For a shoot in a movie, they had to build the structure. One side broke during the travel. The perfectionists would focus on the detail of the broken side. While the excellence would realize that this side at best was showing up in the shot. It doesn’t affect the movie. So you can move into the next thing. Perfection suggests finding great results in doing one thing to perfection. Excellence suggests getting great results you need to take massive action and the sum of many tries will be bigger than one try pushed to perfection. Excellence sees failures as part of the journey, while perfection sees failures as reason to quit. Keep trying, my brother! Your Jowi |
