How Aiming For Imperfect Can Improve Your Life

Whether you’re an avid resolution-maker or not, January finds many of us thinking about what we hope to be better at or how we’d like to adjust the sails.

I’ve written before about my tendency to want to do something perfectly or just not do it, and about how good I am at finding legitimate-seeming loopholes for avoiding real action. Both of these qualities can come in remarkably unhelpful when making fresh starts.

Photo Credit: iulia Pironea, Creative Commons

The overachiever in me says “something is only valuable if it’s flawless” and the bare-minimum-finder says “well…technically you can get by without x, y, and even z, and here are six thoughtful-sounding reasons why that’s okay.”

Most often, this bare-minimum voice pipes up when I feel like I’ve missed the boat on “perfect”.

So, lately—when I’m trying to challenge the places where I tend to be lazy and trying to give a break to the places where I want (and/or think I’m supposed) to look impressive—I’ve found it helpful to remind myself that there are only two ways progress gets made in the world: imperfectly, or not at all.

From stumbling through how to approach problems that face our communities to figuring out how to just make myself go on a run, the elusive and mystical “perfect” option can be an enticing distraction.

Deep down, we know this.

We Pinterest-pin and set our phone screens with images reminding us that opportunity is “dressed in overalls and looks like work” and that we shouldn’t “let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” and the like.

Yet that ideal set of actions lurks in my imagination and often hinders me from going ahead and getting started on “imperfect, but at least it’s something.”

Granted, “imperfectly” is different from dishonestly, half-heartedly, or carelessly.

And this idea of aiming for imperfect may not be motivating to everyone.

But for me, someone who sees anything less than the impeccable as a tempting opportunity to throw in the towel, disciplining myself to think like this has been a helpful tool. Eliminating the elusive “perfect” option from the list of possible choices relieves enough pressure for me to scoot forward and applies enough pressure for me to see it’s up to me to do so.

When I start to feel myself slacking off or getting hung up because I (theoretically) ran 2.5 miles instead of 3, or because I scrolled through six cities’ ten day forecasts on my phone instead of hopping straight out of bed, I’m resolving to believe that plodding forward happens imperfectly or not at all, imperfectly or not at all, imperfectly or not at all.