Progress over perfection. I first really started to focus on that phrase heading into residency 10 of my doctoral program when we were being released into the wild seas of writing a proposal. And finishing this grand adventure at some date in the future.
There is nothing wrong with striving for excellence or wanting to do our best. That’s ingrained into my very being via both nature and nurture. While I knew my parents had high expectations of me, I also knew that they expected my best. Now sometimes we had very different ideas of what that was, and as parents reasonably do, they offered guidance and course correction. But I knew I wasn’t expected – by them – to be perfect.
Perfectionism is a dangerous hill to climb – we are humans, not machines. Doing our best? Having reasonable expectations for excellence? I’m on board with all of that. I exercise that when I manage others, as a professor, and for myself. (Truth be told my puppy is encouraged to do his best while training for agility, but he gets a lot more treats for his hard work than most humans do…)
I’ve seen this in employees and students who are unable to effectively accept and implement feedback. There’s a mindset in our culture that I must be perfect or I am nothing and that’s so very unhealthy for all of us!
This past week and weekend, I practiced what I am preaching here in a few ways that also brought me a lot of joy.
I made a curtain for our custom Sodastream cabinet and the bottom of our dining room shelves that not only function, they’re pretty! And they match the wallpaper already on display in a glass cabinet in the kitchen. I mean, really.
I made bandanas from scraps of fabric for my senior dog and my dad’s dog.
I made a second dopp kit from a class I took at local sewing studio earlier this year.
I continued working on my first hand stitched quilt.
I went to yoga Tuesday night, Friday, and Sunday even though I knew the few weeks I’d been out would make it feel harder.
We biked about 25 miles Saturday and I felt strong and powerful and healthy.
I am far from perfect at any of this or even excellent at some of it. My curtains are not perfect, look closely and you’ll see crooked lines and completely made up measurements. My bandanas don’t look as great as the $20 ones on Etsy but they were made with love and one side is fabric my whole family recognizes as belonging to my mom’s pink robe. Dopp kit? Not even close to perfect, took most of the day, and isn’t quite the way I expected. But also? I love it. My quilt continues to be far from perfect but it’s made with hours and hours of my work and the puppy already burrows under it while I stitch.
Perfection is not necessary or even desired in these moments, really.
The practice of the thing brings me joy.
Learning something new and seeing a zippered bag appear from a pile of fabric and pulled out stitches. Stopping and restarting because I believe the next time I’ll get it right? That’s the wonder of being human and made to work, create, discover, and persist.
Is there value in giving stuff up? 100%. I just put a few DNF books in the pile for Goodwill (did not finish). I went to school for a gazillion years – my pleasure reading time will not be spent feeling like I have to read this thing. If sewing frustration had led me to throwing my machine across the room, I’d consider if I really should keep at it – but the smile on my face just before dinner yesterday when a bag emerged and zipped correctly? That’s not something I can get from giving up because I’m not perfect or even particularly good at a thing yet.
My deepest wish for my students is that they learn to view writing as a practice of progress, not perfection. I mostly teach MBA students and they tend to be very high achieving as one might expect. But the challenge in that is being told something is not quite right or that you’re not immediately the best at something can really be hard. So I keep at my side of the deal by encouraging, offering helpful feedback, and explaining to them how the whole graduate level writing things works.
When I have managed people, I frequently found employees who struggled to hear feedback effectively as “we’ve made good progress, here’s what’s next.” We so often hold ourselves to an impossibly high standard (that – importantly – typically no one else holds us to!) that we cannot hear the “well done” part of the story! I push my students to be the best writers they can be, but not perfect writers. I push employees to contribute, grow, and be a part of success, but not robots who never need to honor their humanity.
I’m not perfect at that as professor or manager. I’m far from perfect at it for my own self! But the more I practice it – the more I try things and see what happens – the more joy I find in the path no matter how winding, filled with pits, or unattainable it might seem.
Reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits in 2019 really altered how I look at productivity and habit-forming behaviors. One of his key ideas is that we best form habits when we believe we are people who X (where X is whatever habit you want to form). I have returned to this idea repeatedly the last 5 years to help me become the person I want to be. For example, during a time I really needed to be a morning person, I told myself “I am a person who gets out of bed early and starts her day.” I am currently telling myself “I am a person who cares for her body well” and “I am a sewist” (sewist is better than sewer, yes?).
Determining who we are helps us get there.
Being a sewist doesn’t imply perfection or holding of allllllll the knowledge. I no longer need to get up quite as early, but I redirect that energy to being a person who allows herself less of a structured schedule.
This idea of progress and becoming the person I want to be in some ways seems obvious. But truly focusing on that with intention has made a world of difference in my ability to accept my own imperfections. As my yoga teacher reminded us on Sunday, we would never speak to a friend the way we speak to ourselves. The harsh tone my head takes about my own body and its imperfections would never so much as emerge to anyone else. So I keep working on that. Progress, not perfection!
