I’ve been a bit hypocritical lately.
I’ve been not taking my own advice.
Quite happy to tell others, but I haven’t been following it myself.
Perfectionism is something that can really cause you to grind to a halt if you’re not careful. Let’s have a talk about that today.
I’ve got this hanging on the wall up there in front of me and I have not been paying attention to it at all.
I’ve had a list of things to talk about and things keep coming up as I’m talking with clients, and I notice things happening around it’s like, “Oh, I could do a video on that or I could do a video on that.”
And I jot it down, but then the effort required to set up the lighting and the audio and all that kind of stuff, I’m just not getting to it.
So I was thinking about this driving back here today after having a meeting with somebody. And so I’m just recording this video off the cuff. I haven’t really rehearsed it or made some notes or anything. This is about as imperfect as a video that I could probably make. I haven’t set up any lights. I’m just using the natural light out the window, microphone sitting on top of the camera. I haven’t done anything fancy there.
But in the same way that I give this advice to other people, I’m giving it to myself: That’s not what’s important.
In waiting for the right time and to get the lights and everything set up and sit down and make some notes about what I wanted to say and think about what the thumbnail might be and the title, all of that stuff is preventing me from actually getting anything out.
Now, you might be looking at this thinking, Jason, this is rubbish, you should have waited until you did it properly. Maybe. But I think it’s far more important to get your views out there, get your advice out there. If you’ve got some thoughts, get them out there.
If you’re waiting for it to be perfect, like what’s happened to me over the last month or two, nothing happens. Everything just grinds to a halt. And ultimately, you end up being a much harsher critic of what you produce than anybody else, generally speaking.
So if I hadn’t pointed out the lighting and the sound and the lack of script, you might have noticed, but chances are you probably wouldn’t have, or wouldn’t even care. So that’s my thought for the day, my lesson for the day, don’t let perfection get in the way of getting stuff done, because done is beautiful.
Just get it out there, make it happen.
