Alright, let me ask you a question. How many times have you beaten yourself up because you think your effort wasn't good enough?
Many times? Well you're not alone.
I did a talk about this in front of a business class I was invited to speak before and I can assure you sooo many people suffer from this.
Back in the day, I used to suffer from perfectionism big time too.
It took me 6 hours to finish a 1,000-word article. A post like this used to be 1 to 2 hours' worth or writing. A book? At least a couple of months because I couldn't stand a rogue apostrophe or a misplaced comma.
But you know what? I found out that excellence doesn't work like that after being in business for over 10 years now.
Just take Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as an example.
In his letter to potential investors he wrote:
"Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook."
In other words, "Do the best you can, ship it and learn from it … fast!"
However, getting it done doesn't mean making crap. It just means giving everything you've got a deadline. That also means becoming open to feedback and learn from it.
I have a rule that I follow now. If it's "good enough", just release it. Meaning, it's like a 6 or 7 out of 10. Then, I'll get feedback and revise it until I make it a 10.
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn said it the best: "If you are not embarrassed by the first verison of your product, you've launched too late!"
So the big take-away? Just start dammit!
Many times? Well you're not alone.
I did a talk about this in front of a business class I was invited to speak before and I can assure you sooo many people suffer from this.
Back in the day, I used to suffer from perfectionism big time too.
It took me 6 hours to finish a 1,000-word article. A post like this used to be 1 to 2 hours' worth or writing. A book? At least a couple of months because I couldn't stand a rogue apostrophe or a misplaced comma.
But you know what? I found out that excellence doesn't work like that after being in business for over 10 years now.
Just take Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as an example.
In his letter to potential investors he wrote:
"Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook."
In other words, "Do the best you can, ship it and learn from it … fast!"
However, getting it done doesn't mean making crap. It just means giving everything you've got a deadline. That also means becoming open to feedback and learn from it.
I have a rule that I follow now. If it's "good enough", just release it. Meaning, it's like a 6 or 7 out of 10. Then, I'll get feedback and revise it until I make it a 10.
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn said it the best: "If you are not embarrassed by the first verison of your product, you've launched too late!"
So the big take-away? Just start dammit!
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