Hi, I’m Megan and am I an instructional design Imposter? Sometimes, I feel I’m a perfectionist and most often, that nagging voice inside my head says, “it’s not worth doing unless I can do it 100% perfect.” Usually the saying is something more like “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly” … or something like that. At least, that’s what I’m used to hearing from others. 

Inside my cranium, things often churn around a bit differently.

What does “perfect” mean, anyway? That’s where I get stuck. Even if I’ve never done some particular thing before, I will still have at least a vague idea of what quality I want to put into it and what the output should look like. The problem with that is that as I get further into completing something, I find more things to do that could make it better, more things to know if only I had the time, and before long I’ve run in so many circles that it seems like I’ll never be able to get it just right. Then what? I give up. Or, at least, I want to. It ends up becoming some ultimatum in my mind: if I can’t do it exactly how I know it could and should be done, I don’t want to do it at all. 

It is never easy to overcome this feeling, but I’ve learned that I have to or I senselessly limit my own productivity. I’ve learned a few things from others and from my own self-reflection about how to handle this hiccup, and I’d like to share the two biggest ones with you: 

If you can’t do it all right now, at least start it. I used to not start an assignment until I knew for sure I could finish it in one sitting (even if it took me 8 hours to do it). I approach art and other creative endeavors the same way, and it is a toxic mentality to have. It’s almost as if I think I either won’t want to come back to it later to finish it, or I won’t put the same effort into it later if I do. I’ve learned to just start it, whatever it is, and I usually surprise myself with how much I can get done in just a short amount of time.

No one else knows what your version of perfect is. I have to remind myself that no one is ever really going to know how much effort I put into something unless I explicitly tell them, and it is never going to matter to anyone but myself. My own standards for myself are the limiting factor, and it’s not fair to myself to put that metaphorical weighted blanket on my head. 

A middle ground does exist, and it's okay not to always do things 100% correct, even by your own standards. Doing things a little bit at a time is okay. Your best is going to look different from day to day, or week to week. Giving your best at any given time is enough. I've recently been trying to really embrace the whole saying:

I think maybe whoever coined that was on to something.