My New Year Plan to Fail…

I have a T-shirt, well actually I have a few, although I’m not really a T-shirt person. I’ve gone off track already and we’re only a few words in… so, my T-shirt, it’s got words on it that read ‘Perfectly Imperfect’.

It’s one of my favourite phrases, partly because it describes me exactly but mostly because it’s an incredibly realistic summary of what running your own business is actually like.

I’ve met lots of clients and networking with lots of business owners who happily admit that their perfectionists, that they’ll wait until their website or their copy or their Instagram post is perfect before releasing it into the wild. And I have to admit, that was me 9 years ago, heck, that was me 2 years ago.

But you know the problems with striving for perfection? Firstly, it’s impossible. No, really. The definition of perfection is something that is as good as it can possibly be but the truth is that the goalposts will always be moving so perfect today is less than perfect tomorrow… and trying to chase that is exhausting. Secondly, and more importantly for all of us entrepreneurs, it means you never get anything done.

You must be familiar with it, you create a graphic, it’s good but there’s something missing so you leave it for a bit. You go back and you tweak but you’re still not happy. This process goes on for weeks and the moment that the graphic would have worked online has passed. That obsession with perfection is what will keep you paralysed and stuck in place.

So, you know my feelings on perfectionism but what does that mean for 2024 and for me? Well I’ve decided that being perfectly imperfect is alright by me but I’ll have to admit that the thought of not getting things 100% right was scary so I came up with a plan.

Recently I started following Noom- bear with me, this is going somewhere. Noom makes you weigh yourself everyday so you get used to the ups, downs and plateaus that any weight loss journey experiences and it takes away scale fear. This tactic is called exposure therapy and I figured that if I could stop caring what the scales said then it might work for other things.

At the start of January I created my ‘ultimate to do list’ which listed out all the things I would do in my ideal day, there were a lot of them and honestly I’d have to get up at 5am to manage it all (which I’m not doing btw, I have enough trouble getting up at 6.30am for the gym). But I go into every day trying. I don’t pre-think about whether I’m going to miss any of these targets I just go in hopeful every day and do what I can.

And at the end of each day I tick the things I did and cross the ones I didn’t… and as the days go on I’m finding the crosses don’t bother me, the ticks make me happy but the crosses are just a chance for me to try again tomorrow and I love it. I love how it feels.

I’m out here celebrating all my wins (my ticks) and not beating myself up over the losses (the crosses). I’ve developed failure intolerance, success gratitude and I’m smashing being perfectly imperfect.

Who wants to join me?