The Problem with Perfectionism

Or why we all need to get over it and publish a shitty first draft.

Oct 10, 2023

Creating consistently requires developing a habit. That can be hard; especially when (like me) you pour a lot of your creativity into your day-to-day work. But this discipline is necessary, and enjoyable when executed on.

Your content doesn’t need to be perfect

Yes, I mean you too. I know—particularly when you’re creating content in public, it’s hard to truly believe this. Yet the truth is, creating content and publishing it, then iterating on feedback from that content, is immensely powerful: that practice is how you improve.

Fighting too hard to create perfect content from the start simply creates a blocker to you iterating and learning by doing. It’s why MrBeast famously tells creators who ask for his advice to go create 100 videos and then get back to him:

“When I was a smaller channel, the videos I was making sucked,” Donaldson (aka MrBeast) admitted. “When I meet smaller creators, my advice is just to make 100 videos and improve one thing each video.” Basically, the king of YouTube argues that good content will rise to the top.

It’s also why top startup founders will tell you not to over strategize else you risk analysis paralysis. Building your MVP, and trying to acquire customers will help you find a better path than thousands of hours spent obsessing over your pitch deck.

I absolutely fell into this trap in 2023. Coming into the year, I told myself I’d be sending this email out 1-2 times a month. Instead, the last

Test Lab

I sent was.. January 17th. Not only did I break my writing habit, I also limited my upside.

Publishing has unlimited upside

You’ve probably heard of the 1% rule: a common rule of thumb that suggests that about 1% of users create content, 9% engage with it (for example likes - which you should do to this post 😉), and 90% are lurkers who observe.

Yes, this varies from platform to platform and user to user, but it’s broadly true. Just by publishing you’re putting yourself in the 1% of people with major upside from online content.

Don’t underestimate the value of that upside. Take Zoe Sugg for example:

Zoe is a multiple-time founder, author, and internet personality who got her start on YouTube where she amassed nearly 5M subscribers—she’s also grown across other platforms including more than 9 million followers on Instagram.

How did she build such an incredible audience?

She posted. Zoe was an ordinary young woman with a passion for beauty and fashion who started creating lifestyle, makeup, and fashion content from her bedroom to post on YouTube. She learned, and she kept at it.

Today, she’s a globally recognized name in her space who has also branched out to write a series of young adult novels that broke sales records, as well as founding multiple apps for digital templates and photo editing.

She turned her passion into a thriving career by leveraging the opportunities provided by the internet, and she’s far from alone.

Beauty or business, posting lets you grow

Look at

Not Boring by Packy McCormick

Packy McCormick

is one of my favorite writers on the internet with more than 212,000 subscribers on Substack. He and his brother Dan have spun out companies, a VC fund, and much more, all from writing on the internet.

How did it happen?

While unemployed with a kid on the way, Packy chose to write a free newsletter for 400 subscribers over finding a job with benefits and a salary. Three years later, Packy's newsletter 'Not Boring' is the #1 Business newsletter on Substack with 187,000 subscribers. And his success doesn't end there.

Consistency drives quality

The act of being consistent at your chosen craft, whether that’s coding, writing, video creation, or anything else, is a massive unlock.

It’s the #1 piece of advice I hear from incredible writers I’ve talked to: set aside time daily to just write, no distractions. Build the habit. Build the space in your life.

Not only do you practice and hone your skill, but if you’re doing so in public (ie by publishing) you’re creating the opportunity for feedback which can be used to iterate and hone your skill.

Stop worrying about perfection. Getting over that fear, and posting, increases your output, and therefore your capacity to get closer to perfection.

Losing the habit is easy

If you’re still reading, you’ve probably gotten the idea: practice more, publish more, and oh yeah—I didn’t do a good job of that thus far in 2023.

Building habits can be hard, but losing them is often easy. It was easy for me to go ‘oh you’re busy with work and you lost weeks of being able to type due to shoulder surgery’ and kill the habit. We all need to be intentional about carving out time for creativity, it’s good for us.

So make sure that you’re not only reminding yourself of why you’re doing what you’re doing but also removing friction from the habit. If you want to get really serious, build in cues and rewards to encourage the habit.

Why am I writing?

I’ll be honest, I’m writing to help me think through the world. Of course, I love that 656 of you find value in my writing enough to subscribe and follow along, but I write because I enjoy it and want to hone my craft: the connections made and the conversations started are a side benefit.

So if like many of us you let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I implore you: go publish your draft.

Shout out to

Adrienne Shulman

for reminding me last week at DevOps Enterprise Summit that it’s okay to not always be perfectly happy with what I’m putting out—and that writing doesn’t have to feel like a scary chore. I see she wrote something similar in
Some of the Things
this week 👀

Know someone else who needs to hear the same advice? Share this post with them.

What else is going on?

2023 has been a whirlwind so far—shoulder surgery in February and the resulting PT have been a journey, and I’ve been busily recording podcasts and writing articles for

Dev Interrupted

, in between spending time on the road at conferences. I was also honored to be named one of 67 CTO Influencers You Should Follow by Lemon.io.

Events

I recently joined the Gradle team at DPE Summit in SF, and had a chance to sit down with their CTO Justin Reock to talk about McKinsey’s Developer Productivity framework, and why it has major issues 👇

Last week I was in Las Vegas for DevOps Enterprise Summit and had the opportunity to record 15 interviews for
Dev Interrupted
from the convention floor, including a session with Google’s DORA team, a chat with Accelerate co-author Gene Kim, GitHub’s Deputy CSO, and more - look for those to come out over the next few months.

Interviewing Google’s Nathen Harvey about their new 2023 State of DevOps Research Report at DOES 2023

We’ll also be recording at LeadDev West Coast in Oakland October 16th-17th and LeadingEng on the 18th so if you’ll be in the bay next week, let me know! I’d love to meet up.