I've never liked doing anything half ass. Actually, if I can't do something to the best of my ability, I'd rather not even bother. I'm not a a perfectionist by definition, since I lack the patience required to make anything perfect. For instance, I took up painting at a late age, but I've only painted with acrylic paint. Why? Because it's less messy and dries quickly.
I admire all of the beautiful oil paintings, but the fact that one has to wait for the paint to dry before adding additional layers, or worse, the entire painting could be ruined because of improper blending and color bleeding. Not with acrylic! Nope, acrylic is oil's efficient step-sister! It's effective, yet often overlooked! You can paint something, wait a few minutes, and then, if you change your mind, you can simply paint over it and no one would ever be the wiser (unless of course, you become a super duper famous painter and hundreds of years later your masterpiece is getting ready to be hung in the Louvre, to which they "discover" that you actually re-used a canvas since they find some cadmium blue hidden under that crimson red. )
When I used to work in corporate America, I used to get easily bored. I changed projects and took on completely new roles every couple of years. I hated feeling comfortable. I hated feeling "stuck", so I always tried keeping things fresh. The issue was that I never mastered anything. Every time I got really good at something, say being a business analyst, I started to lose interest. I would start procrastinating. Instead of further honing in on my new found skillsets, I would pivot. I could've easily made a career, and a lucrative one for that matter, if I would've stayed the course. The repetitiveness. The stability. The ease. I started to think that the reason it was easy, was because it must've not been challenging enough. Instead of realizing that no, maybe I had just gotten really, really good at it. Thankfully, surgeons and other doctoral professions aren't like me and don't just pivot when they become a specialist. Otherwise, we'd have a lot more botched jobs out there! (Although I do appreciate the banter between Dr. Nassif & Dr. Dubrow! Thanks E! for quality television.)
A couple of weeks ago, I introduced a new product line. A frozen gelato inspired version of KLADO's brigadeiros, which we've called Brigato. The husband and I had thrown out the idea of trying to figure out how to transform our brigadeiros into some sort of frozen option to help boost sales in the summer months. As someone who isn't big into planning (me), I decided we should go full steam ahead. Let's do this! Let's make some sort of frozen dessert. The issue was that neither of us had ever made ice-cream or even gelato before. But good ol' naive me thought "how hard could this be?" The answer, little did I know was, "Hard!"
I researched hundreds of recipes. Read countless articles on the science of creating ice-cream, how to prevent crystallization and the importance of fat content and viscosity. I looked at numerous ice-cream machines and watched a ton of Youtube videos on which machines were best and how to operate one.
After a few days, I felt confident we could make something tasty. I Frankensteined our first Brigato recipe and it was good! I made some minor tweaks and after eating and analyzing each batch we finally settled on the "perfect" recipe. Great! We were ready to go to market!
I promptly order 20,000 custom ice-cream cups, a commercial ice-cream machine and freezer. I was super excited, but then something happened... I started to question if this was even a good idea after all. What if nobody liked Brigato? What if our recipe was wrong? What if this whole thing was a bust? What if I read the market wrong? What if I ordered the wrong machine? What if the freezer broke? What if the air-conditioner stopped working in the store? What if the cups leaked? What if I was abducted by aliens? My mind had started to wander and instead of just trusting myself and going with my gut, I started to procrastinate.
Since I wasn't 100% confident, I started to find excuses as to why I couldn't launch Brigato yet. My excuses ranged from blaming the weather God's (it's going to rain next weekend) to "I need to paint our living room white." I kept finding reasons why today or tomorrow wouldn't work. That I had more pressing things to deal with. That some outside force was calling me to install overhead pendant lights in the apartment. Why? Why? Why? Why couldn't I just go ahead with the original plan? Why were there so many other things I "needed" to do? The reason was, that I was afraid of failing. Instead of going with my gut, I kept procrastinating until I found the "right" time. Until I felt as though everything was "perfect". The problem was that perfection would take an eternity and if I didn't "woman up" soon, I would miss the entire summer and goodbye ice-cream season!
So, after over a month long delay and inner battle between my perfectionist self and my undying desire to procrastinate, we finally launched Brigato in our store! And guess what? Everything turned out fine! Of course, there were some hiccups on launch day, but our brigadeiro gelato is now alive and ready to be consumed by happy bellies!
So, if you're procrastinating on doing something because you don't think its perfect, stop! No, seriously! I mean it. STOP! Take a deep breath and remember that there is no better time than now!
The perfect time doesn't exists. The perfect thing is light years away. Perfectionism is just a social construct to hold us back, to stop us from fulfilling our greatness. Perfectionism is what fuels doubt. It's the cornerstone of fear. There is no better time than the present! There is no better time than now!
Don't keep waiting for the perfect time, the perfect moment, the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect idea. Instead, see them as building blocks. As something that can be improved (if improvement is even needed). Maybe, what you have is already perfect, but you'll never know, unless you go for it!
So whatever your Brigato moment is, own it! Go out there and share it with the world! You never know what will happen, but one thing you can be certain of is that you'll finally be able to stop wondering, "what if"?! You'll stop procrastinating. You'll stop being a perfectionist. You'll start trusting your instincts. You'll start believing in you! You're in the perfect moment right now! So go out there and seize it! Julius Caesar it! Even if they assassinate you five years later, it'll have been one hell of a ride!
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