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Perfection is a Killer to Momentum

Ok, I’m going to let you into my dirty little secret.

I’m not perfect. Ok, I know your all shocked.

We all have good intentions when we start a project it’s going to be perfect.

Perfection is good to aim for. But in reality, it’s not possible to achieve.

As my daughters were growing up watching Masterchef. When I cooked dinner, they would rate the meal. Even when I thought I’d knocked it out of the park, they would rate my dinner only a 9. 

I’d ask why didn’t get a 10. “We have to leave you with room for improvement. If we ranked it perfect, you’re not going to make it better.”

I have worked with Major building projects around Australia.

No Building is Ever Perfect

Let me tell you they never reach Perfection. That’s why they have a defect list they work through.

The building industry works with the concept by having a  5% Building Retention builtin into their contracts retained by the client.

The retention ensures the contractor properly completes the activities required of them under the contract.

The 5% Retention still does not create Perfection, but at least the contractors finish e to a satisfied standard.

Just because you can’t reach Perfection does not mean you serve up crap.

My real beef with trying reach perfection is nothing happens.

Over the years I’ve had clients, who think it a badge of honour to be called a perfectionist.

The trouble with these people they become paralysed trying to reach Perfection, so they never release or finish anything.

I remember listening to an interview by a famous writer ( I think it was Michael Connoly)  “He tells an amusing story at a Book Launch. Someone calls out from the audience ‘Do you know there’s a spelling mistake on page 67.’  ‘Sorry I was too busy writing & selling more books’….”

Perfection Makes It Impossible To Make a Decision

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Let me share a couple of stories from Perfectionist that nearly drove me crazy.

I had a client who every couple of days she would insist we should change the fonts on her website because they just didn’t quite catch the look she was looking for.

So I did it a couple of times to please her.

This would take about 30 minutes to change all the fonts in the theme & test it each time.

After the fourth time, she asked me to do this. I said, “No, you’re just wasting your time. Your customers don’t care what font you use, as long as they can read it.”

She was so wrapped up in the image.  She suffered from looking good but spinning her wheels, going nowhere.

She wanted to try every Google font to see if she would find the magic look she wanted.

We tried Gloria Hallelujah Font

It almost won til she changed her mind.

Don’t get me wrong fonts are essential, I get it I started my working life as a Signmaker.

Once I’ve found an easy to Read Font, I would prefer to spend my time on my sales copy, which will help to increase my Sales conversions.

3 months crawled by & she was still in a dither on her website looked. Think of lost opportunities of having a website that converts.

Even though she kept paying for all these changes. For Sanity reasons, I had to apply the Mercy Rule and hand her website over to another website Developer, who had more patience than me.

Her quest for Perfection cost a fortune & it wasn’t generating any revenue.  

The Perfection Delusion Killed a Website

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Here’s another painful experience of being trapped by the perfection delusion

In September last year, we were referred to a new customer because their website was dated, slow to load & was not mobile responsive.

This website had over 100 pages built in Dreamweaver. It used a lot of Flash relied on outdated Javascript to make it work.

So we have to do a complete rebuild in WordPress

So we ported all the content over to new fast hosting.

We finished the website as per the brief within 2 weeks.

We spent another week working with their designer to get a modern, vibrant looking website, to match their new corporate makeover.

This where the website goes off the rails.

Now the Owner decides he wants to get involved in the process & make some suggested changes.

No problem. We always expect to do some tweaking.

The Owner proudly told me he was a perfectionist, so it must be right.

So we made the changes, then doubt started creeping in.

He started second guessing himself.

“Can we make the buttons a clear colour, so they don’t scream at people.”

“Can you remove the border from the Menu.”

“Is it possible to make Price smaller so it doesn’t seem so salesy, as it might offend somebody.”

And the list went on and on an on…

Every time we made these cosmetic changes were comprising the function of the site.

Of course, your website needs to look good, but not if it affects the website function.

This E-commerce Website is now just a glorified brochure. You get yourself a Coffe before this bad boy website loads.

Heres the tragic news July just ticked over, and this new website is still not live.

So now we have 2  useless websites. The first one on the verge of extinction & new website still striving for Perfection.

So Perfection means the death of activity.

No one can ever be wrong because you never finish anything.

Get over trying to be Perfect, Just do it.

It’s time to stop using Perfection as an excuse for taking no action.

Perfection just masks procrastination.

It’s seem easier to make no decision because then you can’t be wrong.

So whats happens if nothing, which much worst cause now you’re going backwards.

Perfection is a killer to Momentum