How to Overcome Perfectionism and Get More Done
Almost everyone wishes there were more hours in the day, and that goes double for entrepreneurs and small business owners. When you’re trying to build a business from the ground up, there are so many things you have to put in place and different aspects of your business you have to juggle that getting everything done can feel like an impossible task. Yet I still see a lot of small business owners sabotaging their work by insisting they can’t start until everything is in place, or they can’t launch a new program until it’s perfect. Nothing is ever perfect, so why do we insist on setting impossibly high goals for ourselves in our business and refuse to move forward until those goals are met?
For some reason, perfectionism seems to go hand in hand with entrepreneurship. Only certain people tend to catch the entrepreneurial “bug”, and while not all of them are perfectionists, there does seem to be a lot of crossover between the two. Maybe it’s because, as entrepreneurs, our identities are almost indistinguishable from our businesses. That can make us afraid to release anything for our business that isn’t just right because if it fails, we tend to take it very personally.
But guess what? If you never launch that program. If you never publish that book. Then you’ve chosen the certainty of failure over the possibility of failure. That can feel safer, but it’s also holding you back, so let’s talk about how to overcome perfectionism so you can get more done.
Give Yourself a Deadline to Get More Done
Remember when you were in school and you had to turn in your projects by a certain date and time, even if it wasn’t done quite as well as you would have liked? While being our own bosses can be incredibly liberating, sometimes we can hold ourselves back by indulging our worst tendencies, including procrastination and perfectionism.
Instead, show yourself some tough love by giving yourself a deadline to finish your next project (or your current project) and do whatever you need to do to stick to that deadline. Promise yourself you’ll launch it at a certain date and time no matter what. Not only will that motivate you to work on the project instead of procrastinating, it will also force you to overcome perfectionism and launch it instead of reviewing it a thousand times.
Get an Accountability Partner to Get More Done
If you’re not sure you can force yourself to launch your project when you say you will, get someone who will hold you accountable to that deadline. It might be a business partner, a coach, or even a friend or family member. You can even make it interesting by promising to take them out to dinner if you don’t reach your goal. Or give them your phone and don’t let them give it back until you’ve achieved a certain amount. The point is to get them to help motivate you to get more done.
Identify Your Perfectionist Tendencies to Get More Done
Many of us have been perfectionists for so long that we don’t even realize anymore when those perfectionist tendencies are taking over our behavior, which can make it harder to know how to overcome perfectionism if we’re not even aware we’re doing it. Take some time to think about some of your most recent projects you launched (or still have yet to launch) where your perfectionism got in the way of finishing the project. What types of behavior did you exhibit in all of those scenarios? What steps could have been eliminated to get more done in less time? Once you’ve identified the perfectionist tendencies that are holding you back, you can start to notice when you fall into those bad habits and stop yourself in the act.
Identify What Scares You
Many times we put off launching something because we’re afraid of success. It might not be a conscious fear, which makes it so much more sneaky. Taking some time to really dig into what’s holding you back can help you get at the root cause of why you’re self sabotaging. Once you do that, eliminating the perfectionist habits will be that much easier.
Whether you need an accountability partner to help keep you on track, someone to help you come up with a strategy for creating and launching your next project, I can help. You can schedule your FREE clarity call now to get started.