As a “recovering perfectionist,” host Julie Hood shares what she has done to get past the perfection monster and get stuff done anyway!
As a “recovering perfectionist,” host Julie Hood shares what she has done to get past the perfection monster and get stuff done anyway!
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Start Ugly book by Chris Krimitsos
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
6 Ways to Battle the Perfection Monster
1. Set a deadline.
2. Step back and evaluate – is it bad, good, or good enough? Notice I didn’t say “perfect”. Things are never perfect.
3. Get some outside feedback.
4. Remember that “money loves speed.”
5. Consider the end goal.
6. Hire it out.
7. Start Ugly book.
Be sure to listen in for the story about when I finally shifted away from thinking everything had to be perfect.
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So this weekend, I was in a battle, a battle with the perfection monster. You know, that little voice that just won't shut up. It keeps telling you this isn't good enough and you need to do more. Well, it was in full force. And today I want to tell you all about what I did on this episode. Let's get to it.
Welcome to the course creators, HQ podcast, helping you navigate the latest techniques for creating and marketing online courses. And now here's your host Julie Hood. So let me start by telling you a quick story. When I was a kid, I was that one who overstudied trying to get the assignments. Perfect. I overstudied for the tests. I was very focused on getting perfect grades and it worked for me for awhile.
I had good grades in high school. I graduated valedictorian and I had scholarships to help me pay for college. So all is well, right? Well, not exactly. You see, when my son was born, he was my first baby. He was born in September. So that first Christmas with him was going to be perfect. He was only three months old,
but I was going to make it amazing. He was going to have the perfect presence. We're going to start these perfect Christmas traditions. Since we were now a family of three, we're going to see both sets of grandparents so they could have this wonderful time with the new grandson. Plus they get the best grandparent presence from him. I had it all planned out and worked myself into a frenzy for Christmas that year we raced around for three days to do everything on my list.
And in the end, did we have a perfect Christmas? Nope, not at all. I was so exhausted from nursing him every couple hours from all the celebrating that I didn't have any fun and didn't really enjoy the holiday at all. I was just so tired and that was the start of when I realized that trying to make everything perfect, could just ruin the whole experience.
So ever since then, I've been battling that voice in my head that says, I need to get it perfect. I need to do more. I need to work harder. And instead I'm trying to settle and determine what's good enough. Now notice, I'm not saying I'm settling for something that's bad, bad would create its own set of problems. Instead.
I'm thinking about how I can spend my time well and do really, really good work, but not perfect because perfect is just impossible. And instead of thinking, okay, I'm going to spend hours and hours proofing. Every single email that goes out, you just might get one with a typo or two, but I try to test them and make sure that the links all work because that makes for a good enough email,
broken links would be a bad email. So you're starting to see the pattern here. We have to distinguish between good, good enough and bad. And so I want to get things out there so that I can test them. I want to see what works. I want to see what you like, what you don't like. And then I can very quickly adjust and pivot and improve if necessary,
if something isn't quite good enough. But if I hold back until everything would be perfect, you guys had never see a podcast episode. I'd be constantly editing and editing and going back and redoing, trying to get it perfect. And instead, I'm going to get this out because I think this message is really, really important for those of you who struggle with things needing to be perfect.
Okay. So back to this weekend, we are getting ready to launch the five day topic entitled challenge. And then we're going to invite people to join us for the 24 hour course creator daily program that'sstarting on June 14th. And so this weekend I was putting the finishing touches on the workbook for the challenge. And by the way, if you want my help and you want to jump into the challenge of for helping you figure out what your topic and your title should be for your course,
please be sure to go to either the show notes or you can go to topic and title, challenge.com and get on the list so that you can get all the free training. Okay. So I was hard at work trying to finish this workbook and that perfection monster was a roaring in my head. And I'm sure you can relate to some of the thoughts I was having.
I wrote them down so I could tell you about them. I just don't like how this looks, this design is not working. Oh, this workbook isn't as sharp as that one from the expert I saw last week theirs was really, really good. How the heck do I fix this? Oh, I just can't figure out what needs to change to make this better.
So here are a few things that I did, and maybe you can use some of these ideas if you need to battle your own perfection monster. And hopefully they will help you get your things finished and get them to a good enough place. So the first thing I did was I set a deadline and I was like, you know what? I have to have this workbook done this weekend.
It cannot spill over. So it's going to have to be what it's going to be when I get finished at this weekend. And even if it's not, if it's not perfect, it's still going to be finished this weekend. So setting those deadlines really holds your feet to the fire and helps you make sure you actually get done because there's only so much time that you can spend.
Number two is to step back a bit and evaluate and go back to those three words that I was talking about. The three phrases is this bad. Is this good? And is it good enough? And notice, I didn't say perfect because things never will be perfect. You can tweak and change and update forever, but we want to get to that good,
good enough state. And that's what this workbook is. It's good. It's really going to help the people who are walking through this program. There's lots of places for them to brainstorm and fill things in. So that by the end of the process, they feel like they've got their topic and their title figured out. So that's the part that was important.
The way it looked not as important. Number three is to get some outside feedback. So I had a designer that I know, take a quick look at the, the workbook. And I said, Hey, can you tell me what you think? There's something not right here. Can you give me a quick update on what you think I should do?
And they did. And they were like, you know what? Those three colored bars that you put on the pages take those off because they're just distracting and they're not helpful. And once I did that, then I was much happier with how the workbook looked. Number four is to remember that money loves speed. And I don't remember, it was years ago when I first heard that comment,
that money loves speed. But if your goal really is to earn profits from your courses, from the things you're doing, the speedier you are at getting them out there and getting them live the better you're going to be. And the quicker you'll get to that revenue side of things. And so I remember years and years and years ago, I had signed up for this paper newsletter.
So you can see how old this was, and it was all about marketing, but the person who did it did not have any design experience at all. Apparently because number one, they use this really ugly, hard to read font. And then I think they were trying to save money on paper. So they would cram everything together on the page. There was not enough white space for your eyes to rest in anything you designed.
Remember you do need some white space here and there so that people have a place where they can rest their eyes. And if, and if it's all crammed together, it just gives people a headache. And that's what this newsletter did. And so it was in that category of bad because it was so frustrating and annoying for me. So that's not something I'm telling you to release or put out into the world.
Don't share things that are bad. We, we have to get them to good and good enough. And so he needed a designer who could have spruced it up and made it easy on the eyes to read, and it would have been even better. So yes, he was able to get it out probably quickly, but he lost money that on that because I unsubscribed it was so painful.
I unsubscribed. So finding that balance is where battling your perfection monster comes in because you're going to want to strive for that perfection, which is going to take too long. But then you also don't want to swing to the other end of the pendulum to just throwing something out there that's bad that will hurt your business. So finding that good middle ground where it's really,
really good and it's good enough, it's may not be perfection in your eyes, but it's good enough. That's where you want to play because that's where you're getting really good information out to your audience. And then number five is to consider the goal. We've talked about this a little bit already, but I want people to have a really fantastic experience during this challenge.
So that at the end of it, they feel like they've moved the needle forward on figuring out an online course. They can see what their good topic should be. There'll be able to see at least a preliminary title and they can start to feel that course coming together in their minds. They can see it. And so that goal really with any kind of workbook that had some good exercises in it will work.
It does not, the goal is not tied to how good the workbook looks. So even an ugly one can do that for them. And then number six is another idea. If you're planning ahead enough, think about hiring it out for the things that you really want to get done a certain way. So if I had hired a professional designer to do this workbook,
I probably would have been a lot happier with it. And if I'd had more time on and pulled this together sooner, I may have done that, but we're starting next week. So I needed to get this done and not have it hanging out with a designer. So, but that's an idea for you. Maybe hire it out. If you're really struggling with it being the way you want it to be and getting it to look closer to that perfection state.
And then my number seven tip is a book from Chris Krimitsos and it's called Start Ugly. And I will put the link in the show notes for you. And if you need a little extra inspiration to get started with whatever you have with whatever state it's in this book will help you as you're walking through this. So those are just a few other steps that can help you.
I'll run through them real quickly again. So you can jot down the ones that would be helpful. Number one, setting a deadline. So that ties you to a time when you have to get finished. Number two, step back and evaluate, is this bad? Is this good? Or is it good enough? Where do you land on the scale?
Things are never going to be perfect. Number three, get some outside feedback from someone else. So you're not the only one telling you this is good enough. Number four, remember that money loves speed. So get to that good enough place and get it out there so that you can get the revenue coming in. Number five, consider your ultimate goal.
So what is it you want to happen with whatever it is you're working on and can what you have get you there. So even my ugly workbook will be fantastic. Number six, hire it out. If you plan ahead enough, that's a really good way to get a different level of expertise and number seven, check out the book, start ugly. If you need a little more motivation to get started.
So, you know, this perfection thing is so much less of a hassle than it used to be 20 years ago when my son was born, but sometimes it still gets in the way. And for example, I'll start cleaning the house and then it project just keeps expanding and expanding cause I need to get it all perfect. And I haven't completely conquered the perfection monster,
but I will say it has a lot less hold over me now than it used to. So I recommend that you work on these things, see what you can do. See if you can get a little bit further and get something out there that maybe you wouldn't have it in the past. I hope this has been helpful. And you've got a good idea of something that you can do if you also struggle with that perfection monster.
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for reviewing the podcast. And I really, really hope you can join us on June the seventh, 2021 for the topic and title challenge. We're going to have a great five days of brainstorming. So jump in the links in the show notes. Come talk to me next week and tell me about what you've got going on and the ideas that you are working on.
I love brainstorming online courses, so it can't wait to work with you have a, a fantastic week and we will talk to you next time. Thanks again.