He'd built a better database system. It had every feature you could possibly want —highly searchable, customizable options and intuitive to use. To fund his work on his masterpiece, he'd mortgaged his home twice, rented out every spare room and borrowed money from friends and family. All for the sake of his database.Which he never shipped. Because it was never quite right, never quite done. There was always something more to add or a feature to tweak. Seven long years later, the perfectionism which had spurred my former associate to create a truly amazing system had generated a bloated mess and landed him in deep debt.
I confess. I too am a perfectionist. Sweating over the small details to ensure they're just right is all part of my work day. It drives many of my team members mental and has given me more than a few sleepless nights. Yet, I would never trade it.
I experienced a moment of awareness about my borderline neurotic perfectionism when a colleague, Ian, and I were making a spoof video about our workplace for an end of year celebration. I was obsessing with a snippet of music that I wanted to fade out in sync with the fade to black on the screen. After about ten minutes of playing the sequence, rewinding, nudging the clip forward, playing it again, nudging it back, I heard Ian, standing behind me, suck in his breath. "For Chrissake!" he said. "It's fine. Leave it!"
His frustration caught me by surprise. It seemed only natural to me that we'd tweak the clip until it was looking and sounding just as we'd imagined. But, for him, it was good enough. It wouldn't even be noticed. So let's move on.
I told him to hold, trimmed a quarter second of video and nudged the clip back and forth for another minute until I felt it was perfect. The fade out ended at precisely the moment a new scene began. It was a small thing, but for me, it was everything.
That kind of detailed perfectionism pervades all of my work. I've sat and played with the positioning of images on landing pages, repositioning them a millimetre to the left and then back. I've changed words in copy, deleted everything, then put it all back. I've sat for ten minutes trying to match the precise colour to an image.
It might take me a bit longer to complete a project, but I KNOW the extra time and care is worth it. Perfectionism is really code for doing exceptional work. It means taking the time to do the job right, sweat the details and create work that stands out. That's why I'm proud of my perfectionism streak and I admire others who have it in them. You don't find perfectionists very often, but when you do, find a way to get them on your team fast.
Get It Out The Door
The downside of perfectionism is when it becomes obsessive and prevents you from making things happen.
Too many people, and count me in on this, get hung up on making their project absolutely flawless, unwilling to release it until it's the magnum opus they always dreamt it would be. Deadlines get missed. You hear excuses such as, "It's not quite right" or "It needs a bit more time to get it where I want it." Allowed to run unfettered, an obsessive perfectionist streak will consume everything and everyone around it and become an endless spiralling quest in search of the impossible. And nothing gets done.
The great fear of the perfectionist is not receiving approval and acclaim for their efforts, but instead, painful criticism that would indicate a failure. The need for approval drives a perfectionist streak — the fear of failure often keeps the work from being completed. The effective perfectionist rides that powerful wave of internal motivation to make something great and still has the courage to ship it out the door on time, knowing their efforts may be rejected.
To manage that precarious balancing act, it's important to recognize perfection for what it is — elusive, lightning in a glass that defies containment. Perfection is seized in drafts and stages and the true art comes in sensing when to delay a project because it should be much better and knowing when to say "it's perfect enough for now" and work on making it flawless in the subsequent revisions that will come later.
Apple releases great products that are above average, where the details have been carefully nurtured and many revisions produced. But, they're far from perfect. Perfection draws closer with version 2.0, generation 3 and the iPad 4. The Apple team keeps revising and moving the bar, revising some more and moving the bar again. Then they release the next version and immediately begin to refine and prepare another version, moving one step closer towards a perfect product.
This stages and drafts approach is key. Instead of setting an unobtainable goal, set a "close enough to perfect" goal and get there. Be ruthless—cut and prioritize to reach your deadline. Ensure the most vital aspect of the project meets your impossibly high standards and let the smaller pieces be just good enough. Then ship, take a break, reevaluate, and go at it again. Move the bar one step closer to perfect. Repeat.
Stand tall, perfectionists. Your obsessive compulsion to aim and hit the mark is greatly needed. And once you're done taking in the applause, double check that you've come to a mutual arrangement with perfection and it's not overtaking your work. Tame the beast, sit beside it and share the same space. But, don't try to hang onto it. If possible, begin to embrace the beauty that also lies in imperfection.
If you're not a perfectionist, no harm done. Your role is to be the rational balance for the perfectionists on your team — whom you'll want to hire and put in key positions. Do the work of managing all those perfectionist streaks, obtaining exemplary heights in stages, and it'll pay off with accolades and quality work for years to come.
