Perfection vs. Excellence – The case for doing your best
I really ran myself into the ground last prep. I had a lot going on in my personal life, sure. And prep in its nature is taxing. But I was more than exhausted at the end.
I’d hit the ground running HARD at the beginning of the year and by October, I had nowhere left to dig.
When I looked back and reflected on any mistakes I made and what I could learn from them, I realised I was focusing on the wrong things.
I’d become pretty obsessed with the subject of ’habits’ (the obsession continues as I’ve just finished reading The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg and Atomic Habits by James Clear, both of which I highly recommend. I’m also about to start Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Seriously, I’m obsessed). I’d finally discovered how I could make my goals work for me, by breaking them down into actionable behaviours each day that were small, which compounded, gave me more instant reward while I delayed gratification in pursuit of a long term goal and most importantly, were measurable.
I had created a checklist of things I needed to do each day in order to reach my goal, which was stuck on my wall and before bed at night I would tick them off. This was a great exercise in keeping me accountable and for the most part a great way of offering perspective for me. I told myself that if I didn’t hit all 15 (!) habits for the day it was OK because the chart would show me that I’d been doing pretty well for the last few weeks and one or two days were not going to affect anything.
The problem was, I forgot to listen to my own (sage) advice and soon I was becoming frustrated when I didn’t see 15, perfect ticks next to all of my 15 habits.
Which brings me to the moral of this story: Always listen to me… Just kidding. Moral of the story is: I was seeking perfection. A perfect tally of 15 habits every single day. Which, when you think about it logically, for most people is unachievable at best and silly at worst.
I was focusing on perfect outcomes, rather than excelling in my processes. It wasn’t the habits that were my downfall or the systems I was putting in place. It was this pursuit of perfection, rather than focusing on doing my best and, ultimately, setting myself up for failure.
And that’s when I realised that we should aim for – EXCELLENCE rather than PERFECTION.
Perfection vs. Excellence
When I first set out to write this, I wanted to talk about the merits of ‘doing your best’ (as evidenced in my headline). But sadly, ‘your best’ isn’t viewed as optimal. It sounds like a cop out. “Oh, at least you did your best” or “I tried my best”, which really leaves the door wide open for excuses.
So, when I say ‘your best’ I mean it. Your best will always be good enough, as long as it truly is your best.
To me, ‘your best’ means you did everything in your power to achieve a certain result - which translates easily to the pursuit of excellence.
Seeking perfection is futile. Chasing excellence is not. Here’s why...
End goal vs. journey: Seeking excellence keeps us present and in the moment, while perfection keeps our mind set on the future. Perfection is focusing on the end goal, the finished product, whereas, excellence brings us back to the process and the journey. What are we doing in our day to day to maximise our potential? In my case I was focusing on 15 perfect ‘ticks’ on my habit tracker instead of excelling in the habits themselves, I had inadvertently made myself achievement-based rather than performance-based.
All or nothing vs. flexible mentality: Perfection hunting can lead to fatigue and burnout. By constantly seeking perfection we are adopting an ‘all or nothing’ mentality in that if it isn’t ‘perfect’ it isn’t worth it. You’re allowing for nothing except 100%, which we all know isn’t feasible. What ‘your best’ looks like on a daily basis is not a fixed point or a linear journey, so by seeking excellence instead of perfection, we open ourselves up to being more flexible and allow for fluctuations day-to-day. Some days your best looks like 100% and that’s great. But some days it doesn’t. It looks like the best you could do with the given situation. If you’re feeling flat and your training session sucked, it’s easy to get deflated. And that’s where perfection can derail you and make you feel like a failure. A bad session is still better than no session at all. You were tired. That’s OK. You still showed up. You still put in the work and you did the best you could today. Tomorrow is a new day.
Blame vs. ownership: Perfection doesn’t allow for extraneous variables (that Psych degree finally paying off if I’m using words like that, thanks Mum). You do your absolute best with the factors at play that day. ‘Your best’ means focusing on your controllable actions in the face of adversity, in the face of uncontrollable variables. And that’s where the ownership comes in. By pursuing excellence, you are taking ownership over your actions and outcomes. One of my daily mantras is ‘you can’t control what happens to you, only how you react to it.’ Your train is late. Your supermarket has sold out of the food you needed to buy (or, if you're in Australia right now, toilet paper). A client is being a giant pain in the arse. These are all things completely out of your control. There might have been a fault on the lines. The supermarket might have run out of stock (or the impending doom of a global pandemic has made people go loco). Your client may be under pressure from their boss. Nothing I’ve listed there is within your power to do anything. But our emotional response, and whether or not we choose to let it sidetrack us, is.
External recognition vs. internal satisfaction: We’re all perfectionists to some degree in the sense that external recognition feels good. You’re lying if you say it doesn’t. But where the difference is, is the level of internal satisfaction derived from tasks. If you’re seeking perfection are you still working when no one is patting you on the back? Those that grind day in and day out don’t do it for external recognition. They are not concerned with what others think or receive praise. They do it for the internal satisfaction that pushing themselves to be their most excellent self brings. In my case, the external recognition came from my habit tracker and being able to tick it off each day, when really the internal satisfaction of completing the tasks to the best of my ability should have been driving me.
Idealistic vs. realistic: By seeking perfection you’re creating an ideal in your head. An ideal of a perfect outcome – which of course doesn’t exist. This means nothing will ever match up and you’re inherently setting yourself up for disappointment. Perfection means nothing is ever good enough. It's realistic to expect yourself to achieve your absolute best with the tools and environment available to you. It is not realistic to believe that you will be perfect at everything all of the time. An ideal is something hypothetic in the future as opposed to something tangible in the present.
Procrastination vs. action: How often have you been too focused on everything being perfect before starting something? I 100% know I have. The fear of being unable to achieve something (often an unrealistic standard we have set ourselves) can be enough to cause us to completely avoid the task altogether. If we focus on perfection, we are essentially afraid of making mistakes. Whereas, productivity is inherent in the pursuit of excellence. By doing your best you are at least DOING. That is the first step to accomplishing anything in life. All elite bodybuilders started out as the new kids in the gym. All skateboarders had to fall on their arse/face a thousand times (I’m still in the falling stage). All professional chefs had to burn a few pies first (I’m also still in the burning stage). Fear of failure is hands down the most limiting factor to becoming great at anything. But pushing through it, is a one way ticket to being fucking awesome.
I still catch myself doing it now. We beat ourselves up when things don’t go to plan or we struggle to start something because we want to get it right. I think we all do and I think it’s unrealistic to think once we make the switch to being ‘excellence-based’ that we won’t flip back every now and then.
However, in those times it’s important to remember to just be the person that just turns up. Everyday. In whatever you do. Simply turn up and do your absolute best. And when you fall down, assess it, learn from it, and grow. If we can’t evaluate where we can improve, we can’t grow. We can’t become excellent!
Robyn xxx