Another thought for today...

I'm rarely inspired to "pursue greatness" (or whatever) by the self-help/inspirational articles I see circulated by people on my LinkedIn network, but there are occasionally diamonds in the rough. In today's feed, "Why Being a Perfectionist Can Harm Your Productivity" was one of those few articles that spoke to me. The title says it all: Perfectionism becomes a disorder when it becomes an impediment to completing a task. In my case, I have found that perfectionism often gives me a natural anxiety about even getting started. It's the reason that my professional journal contains countless ideas for paper topics that I have yet to pursue, and why I have often been unable to finish any project that doesn't have a deadline attached (i.e. papers for classes). I cannot count the number of times that I've done an examination of scholarship on a given topic in foreign policy, and I find myself obsessing over whether I am including enough (or all) of the most important preceding journal articles on the subject, lest I come across as ignorant of the debate. The single scariest thought to me in writing a paper is that I might not sound like an expert on something because I haven't read everything ever written about it, and I am not sure why I feel this way.

So, in my own (endless) pursuit of perfection, I suppose that I would do well to mull over this quote from David Burns quoted at the end of the aforementioned piece:

"There are two doors to enlightenment. One is marked, 'Perfection' and the other is marked, 'Average.' The ‘Perfection’ door is ornate, fancy, and seductive… So you try to go through the 'Perfection' door and always discover a brick wall on the other side… On the other side of the 'Average' door, in contrast, there’s a magic garden. But it may have never occurred to you to open the door to take a look."

And because I haven't quoted Shakespeare in a while...

"All lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one."

Consider this blog my attempt at making peace with my inability to be perfect: It's better for me to be writing something rather than absolutely nothing.