Should You Strive For Perfection?

If there is one thing I learned growing up, it is to give any endeavor my all and to strive for perfection. I think one of my greatest fears is to merely live life in the low gears and then look back only to see mediocrity. Scary, huh?

When it comes to my writing, I pretty much see things in the same way. I know I can churn out posts and other writing jobs faster than how I am doing it now. Yet I also know that by doing so, I would probably come up with mediocre work. Then again, when I think about it, I know I have had less than perfect work – many times. Am I being mediocre?

I guess my focus for this post is this: when writing entries for your blog, should you always strive for perfection?

Why not? Perfect work always yields good results, right? Yet I do know that often times, when you start out with the idea that everything should be perfect with your work, what happens is that you get entangled in that idea. You can’t seem to write properly for fear of not being perfect. Your ideas can’t seem to flow naturally for fear of presenting them in the “not perfect” way. Do you get what I am trying to portray?

My take is this – do not strive for perfection if it is hindering you from coming up with something. Just because you cannot be the best writer there is does not mean that you cannot produce quality output. Don’t be too hard on yourself – just write and then polish it later to get closer to perfection!

Originally posted on February 1, 2008 @ 2:25 am