Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Perfectionism

Take this Quiz and Find Out if You’re a Perfectionist

By Leave a Comment

Take this Quiz and Find Out if You're a Perfectionist Wondering if you have a perfectionist mindset? Take this quiz and begin your self-discovery journey:

  • Are you always striving to be the absolute best in everything you do?
  • Does the idea of settling for second place make you uncomfortable?
  • Do you fear making mistakes, even small ones?
  • Is seeking validation from others a big part of your life?
  • When you make a mistake, do you believe you deserve criticism?
  • Do you often feel like nothing you do is quite good enough?
  • Do you frequently feel let down by those around you?
  • Do you believe there’s a future point where you’ll magically achieve success, happiness, and peace?
  • Do you struggle to finish projects you start?
  • Does delegating tasks make you uneasy?
  • Can you adapt to change and handle unexpected challenges with ease?

While perfectionism can drive many achievements, it can also bring stress, anxiety, and a constant fear of falling short. Revealing your inner perfectionist can be a transformative journey toward finding a healthier balance in life.

Recognize that overcoming perfectionism might take time, as it can be deeply rooted. What’s required is a consistent effort and plenty of self-compassion to let go of perfectionism and embrace a more balanced perspective on life.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist
  2. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  3. Personal Energy: How to Manage It and Get More Done // Summary of ‘The Power of Full Engagement’
  4. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus
  5. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost

Build, Then Optimize

By Leave a Comment

Build, Then Optimize Startups often emphasize the importance of optimization, which can lead to significant gains, but only if your business is already functioning well.

Focusing on anything other than garnering interest for your product or service is pointless if no one is genuinely interested. Premature optimization wastes time and resources.

Idea for Impact: Get the basics right, then optimize. Prioritize getting the basics right before becoming fixated on optimization. In fact, avoid targeting incremental improvements when a step change is what you really need.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Creativity by Imitation: How to Steal Others’ Ideas and Innovate
  2. The Myth of the First-Mover Advantage
  3. You Can’t Develop Solutions Unless You Realize You Got Problems: Problem Finding is an Undervalued Skill
  4. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head
  5. Turning a Minus Into a Plus … Constraints are Catalysts for Innovation

Why Settle?

By Leave a Comment

We often believe we deserve so much better, but along the way, we settle. We settle for something not quite right.

It’s a choice we get to make every day. We settle one step at a time—because we don’t take the time to find “the one,” especially, or at least, only, when the stakes are big enough.

Yes, perfectionism is the enemy of ‘done.’ But not all perfectionism is detrimental … only obsessive, maladaptive perfectionism is. Haven’t our perfectionist efforts yielded the most good & satisfaction?

Idea for Impact: Learn to listen to your voice and live life on your own terms. Be very selective when pushing yourself to the max. Don’t settle for less than what you deserve, especially when your effort is wholly justified. Be more or less perfectionistic as required.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The #1 Hack to Build Healthy Habits in the New Year
  2. Don’t Over-Deliver
  3. Small Steps, Big Revolutions: The Kaizen Way // Summary of Robert Maurer’s ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life’
  4. How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist
  5. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’

Separate the Job of Creating and Improving

By Leave a Comment

You can’t write and edit, engrave and buff, or create and analyze simultaneously. If you try to do so, the editor will hinder the creator’s progress.

Don’t let the evaluator’s biases and entrenched behaviors get in the way of the maker’s creative process. Keep the niggling editor from creeping up during the initial draft.

Idea for Impact: In the early stages, the creator’s mind should be free from any judgment. Revising your way into a cut above is far more effective than trying to conjure brilliance out of thin air.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist
  2. Five Ways … You Could Stop Procrastinating
  3. Use Friction to Make or Break Habits
  4. Small Steps, Big Revolutions: The Kaizen Way // Summary of Robert Maurer’s ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life’
  5. The #1 Hack to Build Healthy Habits in the New Year

The 5 Habits of Highly Organized People

By Leave a Comment

Discover the recipes to productivity and peace of mind by adopting the habits of highly organized people:

  1. Instead of obsessing over perfection, embrace imperfection. Remember the 80/20 Principle, and focus your A-level efforts on the most critical projects. Don’t stress about every minor detail that doesn’t require your attention.
  2. Start with small steps to declutter your space. Set aside time for short decluttering sessions, whether five minutes after lunch to tackle a messy Tupperware drawer or a 15-minute nightly kitchen tidy-up routine. These micro-habits can save you a lot of time on the weekends or during deep-cleaning days.
  3. Avoid problems by anticipating them in advance. Don’t wait until something becomes urgent to take action. Be proactive and plan for contingencies, such as bringing an umbrella on an overcast day. The best time to change is when you want to, not when you’re forced to.
  4. Develop a plan, commit to it, but also be willing to adjust it when necessary. Avoid excessive planning and rigidly sticking to a plan that may no longer work. Stay open to change and be flexible when circumstances require it.
  5. Drop unnecessary work. Examine rituals that can be improved or eliminated. Work with colleagues to streamline decision-making if your workplace has too many rules, approvals, and forms. Take a fresh look at things and find ways to simplify your work processes.

Bonus: Don’t touch anything twice. Put every object in its proper place. Don’t sit on decisions.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Dear Hoarder, Learn to Let Go
  2. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’
  3. Mise En Place Your Life: How This Culinary Concept Can Boost Your Productivity
  4. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  5. A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset

Book Summary of ‘Yeah, No. Not Happening’: Karen Karbo on Rejecting the Pursuit of Perfection’s Snare

By Leave a Comment

'Yeah No Not Happening' by Karen Karbo (ISBN 0062945548) Karen Karbo’s book Yeah, No. Not Happening (2020) is titled after a powerful mantra she uses to break free from the relentless pursuit of getting better. Karbo calls attention to a significant tragedy of our time: we spend most of our lives striving for self-improvement and setting ourselves up for failure when, in reality, we are often content just as we are.

We don’t need to constantly chase ambitious goals or sacrifice our inner peace for an unattainable ideal. It’s essential to allow ourselves a break—a deliberate act of self-care. While we naturally care for others out of responsibility, necessity, and habit, we overlook extending the same care to ourselves.

Karbo encourages us to embrace being okay rather than relentlessly pursuing an impossible perfection, even when we give our best effort. Being okay does not mean carrying regrets; it means being human, embracing every aspect of ourselves. In our flaws and scars, resilience blooms.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  2. Don’t Over-Deliver
  3. A Key to Changing Your Perfectionist Mindset
  4. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’
  5. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’

Mise En Place Your Life: How This Culinary Concept Can Boost Your Productivity

By Leave a Comment

“Mise en place” may sound like a highfalutin term, but it is a French phrase that means “set in place.” In the culinary world, it refers to the practice of preparing all ingredients and equipment in advance of cooking. This means tasks such as chopping vegetables, measuring ingredients, preheating ovens, and organizing equipment are taken care of before cooking begins. The benefit of this preparation is that cooks can concentrate entirely on cooking during service, free from the need to stop and gather or prepare ingredients. Mise en place is an essential aspect of professional cooking and symbolizes a well-organized and efficient kitchen.

When it comes to exceptional cooking, chefs take their craft seriously. Mise en place isn’t just a time-saving technique; it’s a way of life. Messing with it is like kicking a hornet’s nest, as Anthony Bourdain, the culinary world’s travel documentarian, underscored in his bestselling book, Kitchen Confidential (2000): “Mise en place is the religion of all good line cooks.” Everything from their station to their tools, supplies, and backups should be arranged with military precision, and disturbing this sacred set-up is like throwing the universe off balance. Things can quickly spiral out of control, and anyone in the restaurant is advised not to mess with a line cook’s “meez” unless they want to face their wrath!

The same concept can be applied to any project or task. Pre-planning and careful preparation reduce the risk of interruptions and distractions. Take time to plan ahead, gather the necessary resources, and know your goal before starting. Keep the mundane concerns from keeping you focused on the job you’re there to do.

Think of it as a personal mise en place. Sit down and plan out what you need to succeed, including the necessary skills, resources, and people. Doing so allows you to channel your full attention to the task at hand, avoiding distractions and increasing your overall effectiveness.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The 5 Habits of Highly Organized People
  2. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  3. Perfect—Or Perfectly Miserable?
  4. Dear Hoarder, Learn to Let Go
  5. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’

Why Your Hobbies Don’t Need to Be Perfect

By Leave a Comment

In a captivating op-ed, Columbia law professor Tim Wu explores how the pursuit of perfection has infiltrated and corrupted the realm of leisure.

If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon. If you’re a painter, you are no longer passing a pleasant afternoon, just you, your watercolors and your water lilies; you are trying to land a gallery show or at least garner a respectable social media following.

Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it … alien values like “the pursuit of excellence” have crept into and corrupted what was once the realm of leisure, leaving little room for the true amateur.

The demands of modern life and the pressure to be constantly productive have turned hobbies into serious endeavors. The pursuit of excellence, Wu argues, is at odds with true freedom and can lead to feelings of self-judgment and inadequacy. “Demanding excellence in all that we do steals from us one of life’s greatest rewards—the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy.”

Idea for Impact: Abandon the desire to excel and fully embrace the pure delight that hobbies bring. Let them be the sanctuary where the soul can sustain itself.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’
  2. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  3. Why You Can’t Relax on Your Next Vacation
  4. Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness
  5. Mottainai: The Japanese Idea That’s Bringing More Balance to Busy Lives Everywhere

How to … Stop That Inner Worrywart

By Leave a Comment

I’m one of those incessant worrywarts. Risk mitigation is a significant facet of my work. Thus, I worry about the prospect of non-optimal results; I worry about the unintended side effects of my decisions, and I worry about what people aren’t telling me. I even worry that I worry too much (now, that worry is entirely unfounded.)

If, like many people, you’d like to worry less, perhaps you may find the following approaches helpful. Most of my over-worrying comes from thinking ahead, but after a reasonable effort to understand risks and make plans to adapt more flexibly to developing situations, I’ll just let up. I’ll self-talk as though I’m addressing a team, “Not everything is within our control. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let’s deal with it as it appears and course-correct.” Beyond that, I’ll get really busy with something else that keeps me too occupied to fret about the previous thing that worried me.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  2. Dear Hoarder, Learn to Let Go
  3. Thinking Straight in the Age of Overload // Book Summary of Daniel Levitin’s ‘The Organized Mind’
  4. This Hack Will Help You Think Opportunity Costs
  5. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data

Trying to Be Perfect is Where Your Troubles Begin

By Leave a Comment

Fear of failure is one of the insidious confidence killers. Instead of living life in a place of self-acceptance, many folks try to live up to unrealistic ideals. They’re on a continual treadmill, chasing the illusory feeling of urging on everything in their lives to be “perfect.”

When you cling to the all-or-nothing standard, all your endeavors result in perfection or failure. This mindset drives you to see yourself as a disappointment again and again.

Let go of dichotomy. You needn’t be “perfect or failure.” Don’t build yourself up to fail with the unattainable goal of always being perfect. Instead, set goals that are very achievable and within your control. Make your goal just to take action. Not to achieve a perfect outcome, not even to a positive outcome, but just to be done. Completed with a satisfactory result. Checked off.

Idea for Impact: You don’t have to give 110% or even 100% to everything you do. Be very selective about when you want to push yourself to the max—only when the stakes are big enough and when your perfectionism is thoroughly justified.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. What Are You So Afraid Of? // Summary of Susan Jeffers’s ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’
  2. How to Turn Your Fears into Fuel
  3. How to Face Your Fear and Move Forward
  4. What You Most Fear Doing is What You Most Need to Do
  5. Just Start