Procrastination is a major challenge for those who want to improve their productivity at work. This often manifests itself in the feeling that a project or assignment needs to be just a little better.
Some consider this to be a perfection trap, where it’s impossible to achieve perfection, which allows you to constantly chase greatness, yet never reach a satisfactory point of completion.
While I appreciate the desire to make things as good as they can be, constantly chasing excellence can be exhausting, lead to frustration, and ultimately not see you get much work done.
Ever have a generous deadline and find yourself racing against the clock to complete the work? It’s one of the most common forms of perfectionist based procrastination.
In some cases, a task just needs to fulfill functional needs and not require endless adjustments. Good is good enough.
What’s Your Procrastination Trap?
Take for instance, an exit sign. There some rules on where the signs must be placed and that they should have the lettering in either green or red. Otherwise, there is a certain amount of creative freedom that you could take with an exit sign. You could conceivably spend hours trying to make the perfect exit sign.
But would that really make a difference? Sometimes all an exit sign needs to do is just point people toward a door.
While you could conceive of ways to improve it, they won’t make a significant improvement on its functionality.
Procrastination in Your World
In your business, do you allow certain task to be treated like exit signs or do you make every project like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Are you doing things like printing and reprinting documents for minor changes that no one else will notice?
There’s nothing wrong with creating art or spending a few extra minutes on task to make it better. But when you add up all that time and realize that time is a limited resource, then you may want to reprioritize some of the work.
As someone who worked in TV news, I sometimes struggled with this choice. My days where filled with hard deadlines, where your story had to be done by a certain time, in order for it be aired. Being a perfectionist under a deadline can be a recipe for frustration.
While there were lots of stories that I wish I could have improved, I realized that simply getting it done was enough of a victory during a busy day.
You would try your best but respect the limitations that were presented to you. By allowing yourself not to become frustrated or burned out by the daily grind, you would be fresher and more able to access a higher level of performance when it was required.
To be at your best, sometimes you have to be willing to just be good.
Maybe it’s time to bring Ken Okel to your next meeting…
Read any good books lately?
