Yesterday, I published my latest book, Remember to Remember: Improve Your Recall, Memorize Anything, and Never Forget a Name (the Kindle book is FREE today, by the way!). This is the best book I’ve ever written. I say that about every book I write, because it’s true. I continue to learn the craft of writing and I see myself improving.
My first book took a month to edit because I had so many mistakes to fix. If my editor had been Mrs. White, my high school English teacher, I would have taken ten lashings with a metal ruler. It needed a lot of work. But my new book only took a week to edit. It’s a great feeling to see progress, but one area that I still struggle with when writing is wasting a lot of time trying to make it perfect. It’s called perfectionism and if not kept in check, it can be a fast track to unhappiness.
At times, I’m an extreme perfectionist, 100% focused on any task I decide to concentrate on. Whenever I work on something, I want it to be perfect before I call it done. It’s something I’ve struggled with, even before I started writing.
After college, I took a job in Corporate America. I remember complaining to a coworker about how long it was taking me to finish assignments. What he said next has always stuck with me.
He said, “Ken – are you wasting time trying to be perfect?” I really didn’t know what he meant by that. Of course I was trying to be perfect – I didn’t want to turn in work that I wasn’t proud of. That’s when he explained to me the concept of being good enough. Not in a sloppy kind of way… more like, was I spending time making unnecessary edits before turning in the work that I completed?
I think a better way of putting this is that published is better than perfect.
Author Tim Ferriss calls this the minimum effective dose.
The minimum effective dose is the smallest dose that is needed to produce a desired outcome for any goal we want to accomplish. It’s drawing a line in the sand to know when you’re done.
The thing about the minimum effective dose is that anything beyond what is required is wasteful. Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. You can’t make it more boiled by adding more heat.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go the extra mile. We absolutely should do more than is required, and more than is expected, where it makes sense. But how often is that really necessary?
The struggle is that there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done. And we can fall into the trap of spending more time on things than is necessary or even required if we’re not careful.
My new book is 93 pages long. That’s 30 more pages than my first book. This is the kind of thinking and the perfectionism trap I fall into when I try to outdo myself when writing another book.
My next book has to be longer than the last one. It has to get read by more people. It has to get better and more reviews by readers than the last one.
It’s nonsense.
It took five months to write this book. Two of those months were wasted trying to make it perfect. That’s two months I could have been writing the next book. It’s two months I’ll never get back.
The manuscript for the best book ever written is sitting in someone’s drawer right now. Never to see the light of day. Never to make a difference. Never to change a life. Don’t let that be you.
There’s more dragons to slay. There’s new battles to fight. Whatever project you’re working on, finish it. Get it done. It’s not perfect, but publish it anyway and set out on the next adventure.