3540: Give Perfectionism Its Walking Papers: Five Reasons You Should Be Willing to Make Mistakes by Laura Stack

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily. Give Perfectionism Its Walking Papers, Five Reasons You Should Be Willing to Make Mistakes by Laura Stack of theproductivitypro.com. And I'm Justin Malik, your host and narrator. We're going to jump right into it today as we optimize your life. Give Perfectionism Its Walking Papers, Five Reasons You Should Be Willing to Make Mistakes by Laura Stack of theproductivitypro.com.

[00:00:30] Quote, a life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. George Bernard Shaw, British playwright. One of the first productivity concepts we all learn is to avoid perfectionism. And most of us do make the attempt. Even so, it's an insidious habit, one reinforced rather than overridden by many leaders.

[00:00:55] Often, your managers want you to get things right the first time, ASAP, so they can show impressive results to their managers. But true perfectionism kills efficiency. It slows you down and doesn't conform to reality. You can never plan for everything.

[00:01:11] While I'm not a big fan of the good enough for government work concept, I do believe there's a certain point where you do the best you can with what you have and move on, making tweaks where possible and compromising with the real world on the rest. Sometimes you succeed brilliantly, sometimes you make awful mistakes, and that's fine. True productivity comes from allowing yourself to make mistakes. Do so, and you'll succeed more often than any 10 perfectionists.

[00:01:40] Now, I'm not going to tell you to fail often, fail forward, or learn from failure, or whatever the current buzzword bingo term is for accumulating experience. That you should be willing to make mistakes ought to be as obvious as breathing by now. The important thing is why you should bother. So consider these five good reasons. Number one, you may discover something completely unexpected.

[00:02:06] In 1928, Scottish physician and researcher Alexander Fleming went on vacation and returned to find he'd made a dangerous mistake. He'd forgotten to clean up his messy workbench after experimenting with Staphylococcus bacteria. In the interim, a wild mold had contaminated his staph colonies and, oddly enough, had inhibited their normal growth. Eventually, his mistake became famous as penicillin G, the first antibiotic.

[00:02:35] Number two, you may engage your subconscious mind. In 1845, Elias Howe had an idea for a machine that could sew cloth together without the need for a trained seamstress. But try as he might, he couldn't make it work. One night, after a series of mistakes and failures, he dreamed he had been surrounded by cannibals who waved their spears up and down. Each spear had a hole in the shaft just above the point.

[00:03:01] Well, next morning, he tried a new method whereby he passed the thread through a hole near the point of the needle, not the traditional end, and it worked. His subconscious mind had handed him a workable idea by means of a nightmare. Number three, mistakes close off dead ends. Just because you've made a mistake doesn't mean you've failed. You've just tried a way of doing something that didn't work.

[00:03:26] If you're like me, you've tried a few driving shortcuts that didn't end where you expected. Or maybe experimented with a cooking ingredient that didn't produce the result you wanted. A mistake? Sure, but everything in life, including science, progresses this way. More often by a willingness to keep going until you hit a dead end or bounce off a wall than by making quantum leaps. Progress often more advances in a drunkard's walk than a straightaway.

[00:03:56] Number four, refusing to risk mistakes ruins your potential. While Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a musical prodigy from an early age, I'm willing to bet he struck a few sour notes during his first few times at the keyboard, though by all accounts there were very few. Even so, he didn't give up. No matter your career path, you will make mistakes. If you're determined to avoid all mistakes, you'll get nowhere and learn nothing.

[00:04:24] Imagine a world without Ein-Klein-Knocht music just because young Mozart refused to chance any mistakes beyond his first few. Learning from mistakes improves your skill set later. And number five, mistakes proving the best possible life lessons. Even when they hurt, they're part of being human teaching you what truly matters. You learn how to forgive yourself and others and let go of fear once you realize most mistakes aren't too bad.

[00:04:53] They help you grow mentally, socially, and intellectually. You don't pile up regrets for never trying things that might have helped you become a better person and a more productive worker. Step by misstep. As Mrs. Fizzle says on the magic school bus, quote, Take chances, make mistakes, get messy, end quote. Not everything you will try works out. Probably most things don't. But like wildcat oil wells,

[00:05:21] the occasional success among a forest of dry holes may just be the one that really pays off and helps you define a safe, productive path for you to follow through life. You just listened to the post titled, Give Perfectionism Its Walking Papers. Five Reasons You Should Be Willing to Make Mistakes by Laura Stack of theproductivitypro.com And I'll be right back with my commentary. You know what I love about optimizing my day?

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[00:06:47] Visit wonderfulpistachios.com to learn more. Thank you to Laura. I know we've talked about perfectionism before, but it's always nice to get a reminder and someone else's take on it. And there was a nice quote that started off the post that's worth mentioning again. It's from George Bernard Shaw. He said, a life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. It reminds me of something we've talked about before,

[00:07:15] and that is this sort of pursuit of not just happiness, but a life of leisure and comfort. It seems that for a lot of us at least, myself included, we'll want the pay raise or bonus so that we can get a random luxury, maybe a new car, all for this idea of more comfort. But with that comes other problems and issues, maybe more money needed to manage that new car,

[00:07:43] or in the case of always wanting to be comfortable, possibly health problems from a more sedentary lifestyle. Always pursuing more comfort is probably going to lead to discomfort if it goes too far towards laziness. There's always that balance we have to think about. There's a bit of a tangent from perfectionism, but I think it all relates. The middle ground where things are balanced is probably the best path because any extreme, whether comfort or perfectionism,

[00:08:12] is likely to cause more unintended and negative consequences. Something to watch out for. I'll leave it there for today. Have a great rest of your day and I'll catch you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.