Good enough is usually good enough

Midlife can be a time of increased stress and I often spend my time with clients helping them to introduce new habits to reduce their stress and increase their energy levels.

One of the less obvious habits that has a huge impact often without us realising is perfectionism. We spend excessive amounts of time producing work with endless reviewing, redoing, tweaking, reviewing again, rewriting and on it goes.  

But how often is ‘perfect’ required?  (And how do you know your ‘perfect’ is the same as the recipient’s?)

More often than not, good enough is absolutely good enough.

By taking the ‘good enough’ approach, we significantly reduce our stress levels.  

Perfectionism feeds procrastination and being unproductive is a huge contributor to stress. Perfectionism breeds inefficiency as we spend way too long completing tasks when we could have been spending time on other things…more stress.

On the flip side when we take the good enough approach we remove the pressure and free up energy which can be far better utilised elsewhere.

So how can you adopt the ‘good enough’ mentality?

• Before starting a piece of work ask yourself if ‘good enough’ will suffice…more often than not it will.

• Focus on confirming standards with others rather than creating your own. Check in with colleagues at 50% or 70% completion and get their feedback so that you know exactly what else is required.

• Experiment by reducing your standards slightly - Try submitting work that is ‘sub-perfect’ and see what happens. Are your worst fears realised?

Just introducing this single habit change can have a huge impact on your stress and productivity levels.