| Proof copy #2 arrived in the post this morning. It looks ok at first glance. The images (the problem that delayed matters for another 10 days) are ok. Not as good as they were with CreateSpace, but I suspect nobody but me (and now that I’ve pointed it out, you) would notice, so after a final read-through to check no glaring mistakes have crept in, this project might be complete this week. (Hopefully that assertion won’t jinx things!) I would love to get the images up to the quality they were with CreateSpace, but as I suspect this will mean starting again from scratch and probably take another 3 months, I’m not going to do it right now. I’m going with good enough. I’m going with the Buddhist notion that the imperfections are what makes a creation perfect, rather than driving myself batty with perfectionism. I could go there. I could easily decide that it needs to be perfect. I could do yet another edit. I could mess with a sentence or 67 to make it better. I could re-draw, re-photograph, re-touch-up the images to make them crisp and clear and perfect. But if I did this, would it ever be done? This weekend, I went on a spa weekend (bliss!) with a good friend who’s in HR and we were talking about interview questions and what the most common answers were to “What is your worst quality?”. She tells me most people answer this with “I’m a perfectionist”, because they think it’s a positive worst quality. I don’t think it is. I would not want to hire a perfectionist. Someone who wishes to be excellent, to do their best, to improve and grow – yes, I’d want them on my team. But a perfectionist? Someone who cannot let a project go until it is deemed perfect? No, they’d never be done. Because nothing is ever perfect. Perfectionism can be an excuse for procrastination, finding more and more ways to delay the release of a project. It can be a form of self-sabotage (which is usually because of buried fear) or self-flagellation (nothing I do is ever good enough). Whatever the reasons behind the perfectionism, it isn’t a positive quality if you want to complete anything. As with so many things, there’s a continuum: on one side slap-dash, incomplete, poor output. On the other, perfectionism. In the middle of the continuum is good enough. You can go a little to the side of good enough and go for excellence and quality. I try to. But just don’t slip into the rabbit hole of perfectionism. You may never get out. And if you’re holding onto something because it’s not yet perfect, decide if it is good enough. In my case I suspect no one would notice (if I hadn’t pointed it out) that the pictures in my book weren’t crisp, clear, super high-res. And let’s be clear here, we’re talking about stick drawings, not intricate photography with delicate detail. It’s good enough to release. If for no other reason than because I have another book to be getting on with and if I keep tinkering with this one, it’ll be 2025 before I get back to that one. You can strive for excellence, you can do your very best, but please don’t succumb to perfectionism – it’s a quality that masquerades as a good thing, but it’s an insidious form of torture, and you deserve better. |
