When I was younger my parents used to constantly tell me - "If you are going to do something, do it right".
As I grew into my teenage years I tried to live by this advice, but it came increasingly difficult to do so.
Doing something "right" I found, was a lot more difficult than it sounded.
Not only that, I became very apprehensive about doing anything for fear of not doing the "perfect" job.
This philosophy followed me throughout my years until one day I finally realized that this advice simply didn't work for me.
It may be great for the high and mighty I thought, but for a simple soul such as myself, doing it right meant never getting it done.
This characteristic that my parents tried to invoke and develop within in me is called "perfectionism".
Perfectionism is the idealized view that no matter what you do, it needs to be done perfectly.
Everything else is simply unacceptable.
The problem with this idea of perfection is that it almost ensures that nothing ever gets done.
It sounds like a great concept - whatever you do, do it right - but when push comes to shove, it's an extremely ineffective mindset.
One main reason for this is that perfectionism guarantees procrastination.
Procrastination is often regarded as laziness, the inability to start.
The truth however is that procrastination has nothing to do with laziness.
It has to do with FEAR, and in particular, the fear of imperfection.
When you give yourself the goal of perfection, then you have nowhere to go.
If by some miracle you meet your perfectionist goal, it doesn't mean that much because that is the standard you have set as normal.
If you can't meet perfection then you face failure, and as a species there is nothing worse to us than failure.
The solution that we come up with is never to produce anything, or in other words, we procrastinate.
When you don't have a finished product then you can never be judged.
You don't have to face your perfectionist ideals and therefore you can't fail.
You will start many projects but you will never finish a single one.
Doing it "right" becomes never getting it done.
The only solution to this perfectionism-procrastination problem is to accept imperfection.
We all want to be great, we all want to be admired, but as George Leonard has pointed out, if you want to wear the black belt you must be willing to wear the white.
If you want to be the master, you must first be willing to be the fool.
Don't fall into the perfectionism trap.
Perfection doesn't exist.
What does exist is learning.
Humans learn from doing.
But you will never do and you will never learn if you are always afraid of imperfection.
Beating procrastination is simple.
There is only one rule: Play the fool, they never procrastinate.