Do you struggle with thinking that everything has to be PERFECT and the BEST or not do it at all? I have had this struggle! I just read a note from Dorie Clark, an inspirational entrepreneur, and I HAD TO SHARE it with you!!! It really resonated with me.

Here is her email: 

We all have "business pet peeves" - jargon that drives us ballistic, or corporate policies we find Dilbert-esque. Here's mine: the bromide that "how you do anything is how you do everything."

What you'll discover, if you Google the 2.2 billion results (not joking), is the idea that we need to take deliberate care and effort in every facet of our lives, because each individual action is a microcosm of the whole. Sounds nice, yes?

But - I strongly believe - that push toward perfectionism is actually the last thing most of us need in these busy and overwhelmed times.

If everything has to be done with bonsai-like care, that's a pretty good excuse to never get started writing that manuscript or trying the new thing that you will, almost certainly, be bad at initially.

There are some areas where perfection (or very close to it) is required. Let's think about airlines, surgery, or even your most important client relationships. But that's not true of everything - and it shouldn't be.

Years ago, I became a fan of Frances Frei & Anne Morriss' book Uncommon Service, which is about the retail service industry.

In it, they laid out what I think is a quite profound concept: in order to achieve greatness, you have to decide what to be bad at.

Take that in: the goal isn't to strive for perfection everywhere, because (guess what) it isn't possible.

Instead, you need to make calculated decisions about where to invest time & resources, and where to skimp. The businesses, or individuals, who are willing to make those hard choices are the ones who succeed.

Since then, I've applied that philosophy in my own life, to think carefully about where I need to excel and where I should cut back my efforts. We all recognize, intellectually, that no one can be great at everything - but we're so often unwilling to acknowledge it in practice.

My colleague Constance Dierickx wrote a great piece in Forbes about Frances' philosophy (and quoted me talking about how I apply it to my inbox). You can check it out here and perhaps you, too, will become convinced that "how you do anything is how you do everything" is, in fact, a specious goal.

It's much better to choose what you want to be bad at.

Cheers,

 

Dorie