Overcoming perfectionism in your business

Looking for tips in overcoming perfectionism in your business? Don’t worry you aren’t alone. When it comes to running our businesses one of the biggest ways we can cause problems for ourselves is through our pursuit of perfection.

Sometimes we can let perfectionism anxiety stop us from even getting started! Which is why so many of us in business are either already recovering perfectionists or are starting on their journey to overcome their habit of perfectionism.

Therefore I thought it would be a great idea to share some of my favourite hints and tips for overcoming perfectionism in your business. These are tips that have worked well for me and that I think could make a huge difference in how to deal with perfectionism in your own business going forward.

5 Tips for overcoming perfectionism in your business

Tip 1: Aim for 80% perfect

For those of us with a tendency for perfectionism, it’s not easy to just turn that off, so one of the easiest ways to deal with it is to just turn it down a notch.

Instead of aiming for 100% perfection, what if we dropped that by a fraction to 80% perfection.

Look at all the things on your perfectionists’ to-do list and see which ones NEED to be done at this stage and which ones are more wants than needs.

At the end of the day done at 80% perfect and available to your audience is better than hidden away while you strive for that elusive 100% perfect target.

There is a reason so many will tell you that done is better than perfect. So pick your priorities, list the vital things that need to be done before you will be happy to launch and then just go for it!

Tip 2: Give yourself a deadline

Write it down, put it on a vision board or even better share it with someone who will help keep you accountable to that date.

Tell yourself that when that date comes around you will not let your perfectionism get in the way and you will launch that website, promote those products, email out that offer.

Working towards a definite date will help keep you focused and mean that you don’t just stay in the “creation” phase a lot longer than you actually need to.

Tip 3: Reality check – will anyone care?

I know having it perfect feels so important to you, but in reality, will anyone even know it isn’t exactly how you wanted it? More to the point will they even care?

I’ve never looked at someone’s website, or new product and thought about all the things they wanted to put in there but haven’t.

We start off with so many ideas and must-have’s but the truth is the only person that perfect vision actually matters to is us.

The reality is no one else will care about how perfect it is as much as you, so we are just as well choosing to let go of the desire for perfection and get on with allowing what we have to offer make an impact on our target audience.

Tip 4: How will you feel if this doesn’t get done?

Really allow yourself to explore those questions and answer honestly. More often than not question 1 makes us feel a whole lot worse than question 2.

OK, so you may end up feeling a little frustrated or maybe even disappointed if you don’t have it done exactly as you wanted, but can imagine how terrible it will feel if you don’t get it done at all while you strive for ever-elusive perfection?

Tip 5: It’s selfish not to share when you could offer someone real value

It can’t help them though if they can’t get access to it while you are working to make it perfect.

In reality, the sooner you get your offering out there the more people you can help.

Which of course, in turn, means the longer you take to launch, the more chance there is that you risk not offering value to someone at a time when they really need it.

Your strive for perfection is really for you, not for your ideal customer. What will benefit them more is getting access to what you have to offer as soon as they possibly can.

Which means it’s selfish not to share it as soon as it’s good enough to share.

I hope you find these 5 tips for overcoming perfectionism in your business useful, if you have any others to add to the conversation then pop them in the comments section below and don’t forget to share this post to help more people join the conversation!