When I first started writing, a short 300-500-word story like this one would take me literal days to write. I was publishing something for people to read, and I wanted to make sure every word was perfect.
Truth be told if I handed someone a copy of what I wrote the first hour I worked on a story and the finished product after a day of revising they probably wouldn’t notice a huge difference. In fact, the 1-hour version was probably even better than the 8-hour one in a lot of cases.
While there are certainly times where “perfect” is something you should strive for, a Fast Company article this week highlighted the fact that something it’s better to strive for “Mostly Fine Decisions,” AKA MFD’s instead.
The concept is pretty simple: Striving for constant perfection slows you down. By shooting instead for “fine” you’re lowering your expectations, and helping yourself move forward and be more productive.
Again, this isn’t something you should apply to all aspects of your life, but if there’s something that you routinely get stuck on or keep avoiding doing because you’re afraid of failing, shooting for fine rather than perfect can help motivate you to get through it.
The idea here is to just make a decision that helps propel you forward. In the case of those stories that took me a day, I should have looked at them and thought about what I thought they needed to reach that “perfect” status. If there wasn’t a good answer, then it’s time to submit it.
The same can go for booking a flight, organising a room, or almost any other task you can think of. If you can’t come up with a concrete answer why something isn’t perfect now, then consider settling for near perfection and moving on.
Shooting for “fine” can be a solid procrastination killer, make you more productive, and maybe eliminate a little stress as well.
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