Being a perfectionist doesn’t mean that I’m perfect at everything I do. Sometimes it just means that I devote hour after hour analyzing a project until it looks like perfection to me – in the hopes that my client will gush over its coolness and be so ultra thankful for hiring me.
I must say that, because of this, many of my lessons have come hard-learned. Yesterday I was informed that I majorly messed up on a very important assignment. Naturally, the perfectionist in me didn’t want to believe it at first. The screw up was completely unintentional. Nonetheless, I did drop the ball, and could not go back to correct the mistake.
For several years, I’ve been searching for challenging work, and I’ve finally found it. Running my magazine and writing stories really means I’m working for myself and have not been pushed to my creative potential. It also means that I haven’t been accustomed to paying for my mistakes. Now that I’ve found challenging work – my ball-dropping affects many people.
On the same token – I have learned more about myself, my business and my writing in the past six months than I think I did all through college. Yesterday’s mishap and the advice my client gave me has already made me better at what I do.
Lately, I’ve joked that this client (who as never complimented my work) was in fact giving me an ulcer. But, he was actually teaching me a needed lesson about toughening up, accepting criticism and cutting back on the perfectionist tendencies. Perfectionism might just be what disables many new business owners.
I’d felt lucky to get this demanding assignment and spent way more time “perfecting” it than I could really afford. I wanted to gain experience and expand my portfolio. I just didn’t intend for the “experience” to be a negative reaction to my work.
I’ve gained more from this than my client, and do feel kind of bad about that. But, I gained from it because I surrounded myself with people who are better at what I do than I am. People who could teach me. I’ve spent years with others who love me and my work, and I’ve been living on this stagnant line of un-improvement.
Everyone loves to be loved and told that they do great work. When you start a new business, it is necessary to form a good base of supporters in the very beginning. But, trust me, you’ll never improve until you surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.
It takes a lot of courage and confidence to enter a situation where you think you might fail. I didn’t think I would fail because I was trying so hard. Another lesson learned – I tried too hard. Had I spent less time on the project, I may have been able to learn lesson #1 a lot sooner, and actually correct the mistake.
Yeah, it’s important to produce quality work. But it’s also important to produce new work. I cannot produce new work if I’m mulling over the same assignment for too long. Each project is a step towards better paying/more important aspects of our businesses.
Nothing is perfect. It’s all a journey.
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