If you don’t make it bad, you can’t make it better

It wasn’t until I wrote Permission To Screw Up that I learned I was a perfectionist.

(A little ironic, huh?!)

Writing magnified my perfectionism in a big way. Each chapter took me months to write because I wanted every word and sentence to be perfect. I remember spending a whole day on one sentence. I can’t even remember what the sentence was now, but I do remember obsessing over every detail and wanting it to be just right. And also, I was scared of judgment. I feared that people wouldn’t like what I was writing, and that fear kept me in a pattern of overthinking and procrastinating.

My editor noticed my tendency to hold onto chapters, and she pointed out that I only gave them to her when I felt they were near-perfect on my end (which is no fun for an editor because, hello, they want to edit!). I will never forget the feedback she gave me: “Kristen, you just have to make it bad. If you make it bad and you send it to me, then we can make it better together. But if you don't send me anything, there’s nothing we can do together.” She encouraged me to rename the chapters I was working on “Crappy First Draft of Chapter 1,” “Crappy First Draft of Chapter 2,” and so on and so forth.

While that advice wasn’t the magic fix for my perfectionism, there was something really powerful about renaming each chapter and giving myself permission to turn in something less than perfect. It’s the only reason I was able to make any momentum. From then on, my mentality was to get the chapters to 70%, and then send them to my editor, knowing that we could collaborate on the rest together.

. . . and then came Chapter 7.

On this particular day, the manuscript was due. I had written every chapter in the book except for the last one. No matter what, I needed to submit the manuscript—Chapter 7 included—by noon that day or the book would be pushed until the next publishing cycle (which would not have been good).

It was morning, which meant I only had a few hours to write it. What did I do?

I can tell you what I didn’t do. I didn’t have time to overthink it. I didn’t have time to allow the fear of judgment to take over. I didn’t have time to obsess over words and sentences.

I only had time to do one thing: write from my heart.

In a matter of hours, I wrote the whole chapter and turned in the complete manuscript before the deadline.

What’s meaningful to me about this story is that Chapter 7 is my favorite chapter of Permission To Screw Up. It was also the easiest one to write. Why? Because it’s authentic. I didn’t hold myself to the standard of perfection. In many ways, it was the culmination of learning all of the lessons in my own book. Chapter 7 is when I truly embraced letting go of my perfectionism and gave myself permission to be human.

Since I wrote that book, I’ve taken the time to ask myself how I can approach more things in my life like I approached Chapter 7. How can I make sure that fear doesn’t keep me stuck? How can I put something out there without worrying about whether it’s perfect? How can I show up more authentically? How can I “make it bad” so that my team and I can make it better together?

So now, I want to ask you: How often are you “making it bad”? How often are you letting perfectionism prevent you from making progress?

Fear is often the root of perfectionism. It can be fear of failure or fear of judgment from others. It can also be fear of success. I don’t think people talk about that one enough, but fear of success is very real, and it showed up for me, too. The book was so hard to write that I was actually worried about what would happen if it did well. I thought, what if people actually like the book, and then I have to write another one? Could I even do that? It kept me frozen.

Any time you feel stuck or you’re procrastinating or you’re struggling with taking the next step on something, I encourage you to try to pinpoint what is really going on. What is holding you back? What are you afraid of? What would happen if you put your most authentic self out there? What would happen if you just “made it bad”?

We’ve got this, friends. Here’s to facing fear, letting go of impossible standards, and rockin’ a Chapter 7 mentality! 

Hugs,

Kristen

P.S. If you notice fear coming up for you and if you notice yourself procrastinating, you might enjoy reading The Now Habit. It’s about procrastination and the underlying causes of it, which are often based in fear: of failure, of judgment, of rejection, of success. It was huge for me!