Perfection Pitfalls

Have you heard the story about the professor that tasked his students with creating the perfect vase? The professor split his class into two teams. Team A and Team B. He told group A to spend the entire week planning and researching how to make one perfect vase. He said team B could make unlimited vases to craft the ideal vase.

The week went on, and in the end, Team B had created so many prototypes that their vase vastly outperformed the vase that team A made. This story illustrates the fact that preparation can only get you so far. No amount of preparation can compensate for action.

I think it’s good to understand that when learning something, you have to be willing to fail until you get it right. Failure and embarrassment is an inherent risk of creation. With any great success, there is, in turn, an equal amount of failure. It’s like an energetic balancing act surrounding creativity.

However, I don’t want to talk about the bravery it takes to be creative or the obvious positive side to action and refinement. Instead, I’d like to discuss when trial and error becomes an unhealthy habit.

I’ve noticed that artists will often use perfection as a means to procrastinate. They will strive for something unobtainable in a never-ending cycle of refinement. It’s not so much that they believe they could craft something perfect. It’s more so that they use refinement as a form of self-sabotage.

But why are so many creatives self-sabotaging? For myself, I fixate on perfection whenever I hold a belief that contradicts the success of what I am creating. That belief may stem from a lack of confidence or feeling invalid. Sometimes, fear also causes us to self-sabotage — the fear of the unknown.

Sometimes artists are afraid of putting work out into the world because of the possibility of success, not failure. Creators are used to trial and error but reaching success with something before giving up is rare. It can be scary not to know the next step, so we keep ourselves from getting there.

This form of self-sabotage can be found everywhere, not just in creative pursuits. Another place that this comes up is in relationships. There is a phrase I recently heard that describes this perfectly — the self-help trap. People will not put themselves out there or avoid genuine connections because they are not yet where they want to be.

Instead of becoming better partners and friends with the people in their lives, they isolate until they feel perfect. The trap is you will always find something to improve while you continue to put off your connection, success, and joy to a nonexistent point in time. You can place conditions on living your life, but time will continue to pass. If you get too caught up in postponing living, you won’t have anything to source from to make art.

I can remember a few times when I did not have the luxury of procrastination through perfectionism. One time that stands out in my mind was my senior year of college. In my last semester of college, I ended up taking 22 credit hours while maintaining two internships and a work-study position. I would be working on projects in the lab until 2 am most nights, and I was lucky even to complete my assignments, let alone make them perfect. You would think that my performance would suffer, but I found that my grades improved. I drove straight As that semester, all because I got out of my way.

Checking in on whether your refinement is fear-based is a significant action creatives need to take. I mean this as a compliment, you’re not perfect, and neither are the people who will enjoy your work. Our imperfections are what makes art relateable. It is what differentiates us from robots. I care less about a perfect circle when compared to the story and depth behind a wiggly oval.

When you think of your favorite creatives, you might find that they aren’t always the best or most impressive in their field. Your favorite artists are usually those who changed you, gave you an aha moment, or made you feel less alone. Whether it’s a film, photo, or painting, for me, the purpose of art is communication and connection, not perfection. Deep down, most artists know when a piece they have created is good, but there is power in knowing when something is good enough.

The next time you find yourself chasing the ghost horse of perfection, ask yourself whether having a nearly perfect piece that the world will never see is better than having a good enough piece that genuinely connects with the viewer.