107 - The Perfectionist's Illusion

What this episode covers

Is striving for perfection actually a good thing, or is a fool's game? Music and links from this episode Dark Hearted by White Visor The queen rat. by Coin Locker Kid We Waste Time by Ugh God Line-by-line notes INTRO Hi My name’s Craig And I’ve got a problem It’s a problem that plagues in my professional life And my every day life Every time I try and do something This problem rears it’s head Over and over It gnaws at my psyche And grinds at my creations My problem is perfection Or rather, the relentless pursuit of it This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess PLAY MID SONG I can hear you laughing I sound like those people in job interviews Who admit their biggest weakness is being a perfectionist That perfection, or striving to be perfect Is not a problem at all It doesn’t do you any harm Or cause you any ill will But that’s just not true As anybody will tell you in the creative game Striving for perfection is the fastest way to ruin Or the slowest way, depending on how you look at it Seeking perfection is a fool’s game It’s an impossible errand that can never be completed But nobody tells you that When you first start out I think there’s 2 people in this world The people who are happy with their lot and happy to accept things And the other people, the people who constantly strive for perfect You often see CEOs of large organisations fall into the second category They’re classic type A personalities The kind of people you don’t like And the type of people that are often called Sociopaths Most creatives pursue perfection Especially on personal projects This is the exact reason why I’ve never managed to make myself a design portfolio Because I want it to be perfect And I can’t figure out what perfect looks like Because it doesn’t exist I see this same kind of thinking in designs students And young people They want to keep tweaking things, and changing things Because they’re never happy with how it looks The thing they produce never looks like the thing they imagined in their brain And then perfection gets mistaken for indecisiveness Perfection is an illusion When you make something And you look back at it the week after You always see ways you could have improved it And you’re never happy with the previous things you’ve made But actually, that’s a REALLY GOOD THING It means you’ve improved It means you’ve got better, even within a week And it means you didn’t try to perfect it endlessly, until you went in a gigantic circle The truth about perfection is this Perfection isn’t real It isn’t possible by anybody Perfection is an abstract noun One person’s definition of perfection directly contradicts somebody else's  Anything you create can never be perfect And the second you start trying to make it perfect Is when it never gets made or finished Perfection is all ego And actually getting stuff done is what really matters Let me leave you with a quote from Salvador Dali Have no fear of perfection Because you’ll never achieve it. OUTRO  This was AADA. I’m Craig Burgess. Music featured in this episode was Dark Hearted by White Visor The queen rat. by Coin Locker Kid We Waste Time by Ugh God For a line-by-line run down of this episode, go to askadesignernaything.com/ep107 I’m back tomorrow for another episode of Ask a Designer Anything Support Ask a Designer Anything Ask a Designer Anything Website Twitter (@craigburgess) Ask a Designer Anything on Facebook Leave me a review on iTunes