The Problem With Perfection...
How many times do you find yourself stuck collecting data and analyzing a problem for weeks or even months before coming up with the best solution instead of taking action to actually resolve the problem?
Why do you do so? Are you trying to figure out a perfect solution and create the perfect condition so the outcome will be perfect?
But will your solution ever be perfect even after spending tons of time and effort on research and analysis?
The answer is likely no.
n most cases, perfectionists have the fear of failure and tend to avoid potentially harmful situations. They don't want flaws in what they do and in themselves.
But the truth is, perfection doesn't exist. Waiting for the perfect time, or trying to make something perfect not only wastes effort but also delays making progress significantly. This is when perfectionism leads to diminishing return.
Diminishing return affects your productivity in four major ways:
1. Investing More but Getting Back Less
Spending a lot of time and energy on a task or project doesn’t always mean that you’ll get better results. A study conducted by Stanford found that you can get more done by doing less.
The truth is, investing a lot of time and energy after reaching the point of diminishing returns does not affect your results significantly.
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2. Not Completing Anything
When you endlessly invest effort into something, you delay completing it; so you will end up not completing anything.
3. Putting off Decision Making
To achieve an outcome for every task, you need to make decisions.
Some people tend to spend too much time researching and analyzing data in order to make the best decisions. While this sounds like a logical thing to do before making a big decision, most of them tend to get stuck at this stage and are not able to make a decision.
4. Wasting Time and Losing Opportunities
When you spend a lot of energy on a project and fail to achieve the objectives, you’ll end up wasting time and losing opportunities. I have explained this in my other article about opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost is usually expressed in terms of how much time and value must be forgone to pursue an opportunity. For example, if you choose to spend time researching and analyzing results, the cost of this is the value of the time you would have spent testing your ideas in the field and getting feedback.
What You Can Do to Prevent Diminishing Return
There are two effective steps that you can take to prevent diminishing return:
Find out how to take these 2 steps in my latest article: What Is Diminishing Return And How to Prevent It
Leon Ho is the Founder and CEO of Lifehack – a productivity blog he started in 2005. He was listed as Business Week’s #4 “Top 24 Young Asian Entrepreneurs” and has grown Lifehack into one of the most read self-improvement websites in the world – with over 12 million monthly readers. Take a look at Lifehack's Make It Happen Handbook if you want to get things done and finally reach your goals!