Do you struggle with being a perfectionist? If so, let’s talk about a strategy that can help you overcome it immediately.

But first, let’s deal with this question: what is perfectionism?

Perfectionism is the tendency to get paralyzed by the idea that your work is never good enough. Perfectionists imagine there is a standard out there and they can never reach it. They have convinced themselves that they will be an utter failure unless they reach that impossible standard. Therefore, they never take action and instead live in a perpetual state of frustration.

Now, for the strategy to help you overcome perfectionism.

If you think of yourself as a perfectionist, you are always shooting for “A-level” work. The problem is that your definition of an “A” is so far above everyone else’s that it’s unreachable.

They key is to have more realistic standards. You need to adjust your standard of perfectionism so that you are shooting for “B-level” work, maybe a “B+” at best. You may think of this as lowering your standards, but remember that your standards are so unrealistically elevated, that your B is everyone else’s A.

So make it your goal to do B-level writing. Most of us don’t have the capacity to be objective about our work anyway, so you must trust that your B is truly an A in everyone else’s eyes.

When you shoot for a B, you can get work done much more quickly, move on, and still be considered excellent in everyone else’s eyes. Plus, you can always improve your writing in the editing process.

Many a great writer has been sidelined because their standards were so high, they never finished that first draft. Don’t let that happen to you.

Question: How could adopting a strategy of doing “B-level” work help you get your first drafts done?

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One of the reasons that writing feels so hard to many people is because their expectation doesn’t match the reality of how a clean draft actually gets written.

Many people have an ideal of sitting down at a computer and just letting the words flow out perfectly. The heavens open up, birds sing outside, and a ray of light descends from above as they post their work, email it, or send it off to the editor.

That, however, is not how good writing actually gets done.

Writing is like mowing your lawn with a push mower. It’s a lot of manual labor, sometimes it’s pretty monotonous, you have to go back and get the spots you missed, and you get pretty messy in the process. While you’re mowing the lawn, you get sweaty and dirty and you can’t see the big picture. But when you’re done, you can stand back and look at your perfectly mowed lawn and appreciate all your hard work.

Good writing is created through hard work, persistence, multiple drafts, editing, and finishing what you started. This is how professionals work, and it’s how you must work, too.

Daily Question: Do you want to write badly enough that you are willing to endure the messy part of writing in order to get to a wonderful final draft?

The post How Writing Actually Gets Done appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.