Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done

by Jon Acuff

This is the first lie that perfectionism tells you about goals: Quit if it isn’t perfect.

Second, developing tolerance for imperfection is the key factor in turning chronic starters into consistent finishers.

Imperfection is fast, and when it arrives we usually quit. That’s why the day after perfect is so important. This is the make-or-break day for every goal. This is the day after you skipped the jog. This is the day after you failed to get up early. This is the day after you decided the serving size for a whole box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is one. The day after perfect is what separates finishers from starters.

The problem is that perfectionism magnifies your mistakes and minimizes your progress.

The harder you try to be perfect, the less likely you’ll accomplish your goals.

We’ve now bumped into the second lie of perfectionism: Your goal should be bigger.

Have you ever wondered why 92 percent of people fail at their goals? Because we tend to set goals that are foolishly optimistic. Scientists call this “planning fallacy,” a concept first studied by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. They described this problem as “a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed.”

Some goals are difficult to cut in half. For those, don’t cut them in half; give yourself more time.

Those two approaches, cutting the goal in half or doubling the timeline, can be applied to most goals.

The only way to accomplish a new goal is to feed it your most valuable resource: time. And what we never like to admit is that you don’t just give time to something, you take it from something else. To be good at one thing you have to be bad at something else. Perfectionism’s third lie is: You can do it all. I’m here to tell you that you can’t.

In his book Two Awesome Hours, Josh Davis calls this strategic incompetence. Strategic incompetence is the act of deciding ahead of time that you don’t care about your yard.

The fourth lie it tells you is: Fun doesn’t count.

Fun not only counts, but it’s necessary if you want to beat perfectionism and get to the finish.

“make it fun if you want it done.”

What do they really think is fun?

People who are motivated by a reward have what psychologists call an approach motivation. They are wired to approach the reward that accomplishing a certain goal will generate.

avoidance motivation. People motivated this way are not trying to achieve a desired outcome, they are trying to prevent an undesired outcome. Fear in those cases isn’t a fire-breathing dragon, it’s a cold bucket of water.

Cus D’Amato, Floyd Patterson and Mike Tyson’s trainer during the healthy years, knew the importance of fear. “You must understand fear so you can manipulate it. Fear is like fire. You can make it work for you: it can warm you in the winter, cook your food when you’re hungry, give you light when you are in the dark, and produce energy. Fear is a friend of exceptional people.”

As author Jonathan Fields says, is your goal to push a failure away from yourself or pull a victory toward yourself?

Weird works, and perfectionism absolutely hates it. Of course it would. If it’s opposed to fun, can you imagine how much disregard it has for weirdness? Perfectionism is about conformity, it’s about twisting and molding your performance to some imaginary standard that’s impossible to hit. There’s no room for weird when it comes to perfectionism.

Remember, perfectionism will tell you that fun doesn’t count. Even worse, it will tell you that using rewards or fears as a form of motivation to reach your goal is a crutch. You’re the only one with stupid, fun, weird systems. Only you’re not.

Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion. —Simon Sinek

Cut your goal in half. Choose what you’ll bomb. Make it fun if you want it done.

A hiding place is an activity you focus on instead of your goal. A noble obstacle is a virtuous-sounding reason for not working toward a finish. Both are toxic to your ability to finish.

Is what you’re working on directly in line with what you want to finish, or is it disconnected by a few steps that take some creativity to explain?

Are you overfocusing on your kids because you’re afraid to admit your goals matter, too?

“I wanted health. I wanted to prevent diabetes, heart disease, and everything else my mother was taking medication for. That forced me to be honest about my own health, which then forced me to research how to reverse some damage I had done.”

The middle of any goal is difficult and uncomfortable. How do you know if what you’re experiencing is genuine displeasure because you picked the wrong goal, or just the normal frustration that comes with the middle part of a goal?

Perfectionism uses these shrinking levels of success as proof that things aren’t going well. Remember, in the middle of a goal, perfectionism is trying to convince you that the results aren’t good enough and that you should quit. What better way to discourage you than to point out your glacial progress?

How do I know? Has every worry you’ve ever had come true? Have all the fears and anxieties you’ve had come to fruition? Was it helpful that your brain kept you awake at night thinking about something stupid you said four years ago? Did every failure you were concerned about come to bear on your life? Of course not. In the middle of the night, your emotions got you spinning. Over and over you worked through the reason your boss said she wants to talk to you tomorrow. It’s never a good thing; it’s only dire.

In moments like that, our emotions get riled up and tell us wild stories. Not data. Data cuts through all the noise.

That’s all data is. A gift from yesterday that you receive today to make tomorrow better. To make the most of the data, we need to understand how it can help us, why we hate it, and how to use it.

When things aren’t going well, it’s not time to give up. It’s time to get your bearings and make adjustments. “Adjustments?!” perfectionism screams. “If you need to adjust, you might as well give up!” Don’t listen. It’s time to look at your GPS watch and see how your pace is. It’s time to read the course markers and make sure you’re still headed to the finish line. It’s time to adjust the next few miles based on what you learned about your pace from the first few miles.

Perfectionism doesn’t want you to look at the progress. It might tell you that you don’t need to. Smarter people don’t need maps or measurements or data. Or it might tell you that you’ll be afraid of what you’ll find.

At the most extreme edge of this problem are people who refuse to go to the doctor because they’re afraid to find out they might be seriously sick.

Here are twenty-three things you can keep track of: Time invested

Money earned

Products sold

Pounds lost

Inches

Garbage bags full of stuff

Books sold

Pages or words written

Miles run

Steps

E-mail subscribers

Followers on a social media platform

Is something you’ve already done before trying to inform your next time?

Were there consequences if you didn’t finish it? Consequences cause change. Without them, we lose focus. The last time you tried something, were the consequences of not finishing clear? What were they? Did they motivate you?

The older I get, the more I realize that failure is educational. When I slip, it’s important that I ask a few questions or I am going to slip again.