SOME IMPERFECT THOUGHTS ON PERFECTION

This post occurred to me a few weeks ago while watching some extraordinary Olympic athletes attempt to score “Perfect 10s” in diving events.

As a kid, I remember watching gymnast Nadia Comăneci get the first perfect 10 in Olympic history. I recently rewatched her routine. It’s amazing, astounding, mind-blowing.

But perfect?

Look at this screengrab I made: Her left foot is slightly above her right foot!

No disrespect to Ms. Comăneci, who is a legend and crazy talented. But I DO mean deep disrespect to the concept of perfection.

I have a grudge against perfection. The pursuit of this non-existent goal has cost me untold time and stress.

I’d love to see the notion of a perfect 10 disappear, and not just in sports but in all areas of life, since perfection only exists in the Platonic dreamworld. (Note: Gymnastics changed its scoring system in 2006 and hasn’t awarded a perfect 10 in years, which I think is good. But diving still gives out perfect 10s, including at the Paris Olympics. Perhaps next Olympics, diving should have a maximum score of 9.99, though I guess 9.99 would become the new perfect, so it’s far from a perfect solution).

All this is to say, I hate the toxic idea of perfection, and I wanted to share three methods I use to battle perfectionism in my own life, in case you find them helpful.

Oh, before I list them, an important caveat: I don’t like perfectionism, but I have nothing against conscientiousness. And in many parts of life, we need a LOT more conscientiousness. How much? It depends on the task and the potential consequences. NASA engineers and neurosurgeons should strive for maximum conscientiousness. Most social media users (including me) need more conscientiousness in their posts. As does the writer of a resume I once received with “detail-oriented” misspelled. I swear this is true). The challenge is to navigate between, on the one hand, the tyranny of perfectionism and, on the other, rushed, dangerously shoddy work.

Okay, here are some tools I use:

1. LOWER THE STAKES WHEN STARTING A PROJECT

Perfectionism is particularly annoying to me when I’m starting a project. I feel paralyzed. I can’t write that first sentence because I fear it will send me in the wrong direction. What if it ends up in the final draft? It better be amazing.

My strategy is to lower the stakes. For one thing, I call my first draft “Crappy Draft #1.” I’ll label it that way on my laptop. (I learned this trick from an author I heard on a podcast; I can’t remember her name, so apologies for my imperfect memory).

Actually, I don’t even call it a Draft. I call it “Crappy Outline #1” since that label lowers the stakes even more. My pieces evolve from a series of crappy outlines that become longer and longer and, I hope, less crappy.

I’ll also remind myself of the origin of the word “essay.” It derives from the word “to attempt” in French. The sixteenth-century writer Michel de Montaigne came up with the term, and I think it’s apt. My pieces are just attempts or experiments that sometimes work and other times don’t.

I also have some helpful metaphors. I tell myself the starting words are just the clay. I need clay. I need something to mold. I can’t mold air.

And those first sentences I write may not even be the clay I use in the final draft. I usually scrap almost everything I write during those ten minutes of warming up.

2. REFRAME ERRORS AS YOUR FRIENDS (OR MAYBE FRENEMIES)  

Let me praise mistakes for a moment:

—You would not exist without mistakes. No humans would. Or dogs or canaries or lichen. DNA mutations are just mistakes in copying the genetic code, and mutations were what initially drove evolution. If there had been zero mistakes in code-copying, we’d all be single-celled organisms living near oceanic volcanos.

—The Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman said he loved being wrong because it’s the best way to learn. Kahneman once said that being wrong made him feel good because it gave him a pleasurable sense of progress: “I used to think something, and now I think something else.”

—Every single person, place, or thing contains mistakes. As I wrote in my most recent book,  the U.S. Constitution has two different spellings for the state of Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania and Pensylvania).

—The Japanese have a concept called Wabi-Sabi, which has been described as the Art of Finding the Beauty in Imperfections (e.g. the lumpy asymmetry of a handmade bowl). The Italians have a concept called Sprezzatura, where the chicest dressers purposely have something slightly off about their clothes (e.g. a partially untucked shirt).

So instead of being paralyzed by your fear of the inevitable mistakes, remind yourself mistakes can be your friends. Acknowledge them, learn from them, embrace them, invite them out for a beverage!

3. REMEMBER THAT PERFECTION IS A FLAWED CONCEPT

Especially when it comes to artistic matters, the concept of ‘perfection’ makes no sense to me. One person’s perfect work of art is another person’s piece of rubbish (whether that’s a painting, movie, book, video game, etc.)

A simple Google search reveals legions of Mona Lisa haters (a lot of folks are really angry about her supposedly smug smile). Michelangelo despised the Sistine Chapel, at least while he was painting it. While brainstorming this essay (a.k.a. attempt) about perfection, I rewatched the Bo Derek movie 10. The plot involves a schlubby guy (Dudley Moore) who becomes obsessed with a physically stunning woman (Derek). The movie’s point (spoiler alert!!) was that Derek was a 10 in physical attractiveness but was still a bad match for Moore, who ended up with the supposedly less stunning Julie Andrews.

But of course, even physical attractiveness is not totally objective. Sure, People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive is the result of rigorous statistical analysis by America’s greatest thinkers, but that’s the exception that proves the rule. In reality, everyone has different physical types (Julie doesn’t like the he-man-muscly-Chris-Hemsworth type, thankfully!).

I find it liberating to remind myself that perfection is as mythical as the Cyclops or healthy energy bars. When I’m writing, I no longer visualize my job as the quest for a perfect book. I see it as a quest to write something that makes me smile and think and I hope that it does the same for a portion of the world as well.

PS This essay contains many errors (in grammar, facts, logic, etc.) I made these mistakes on purpose to prove my point.

PPS: Actually, that’s a lie. But it seemed like a good way to cover my ass.

PPPS: Oh wait. I don’t need to cover my ass because I should be proud of learning from my mistakes!

PPPPS: I just fact-checked the Nadia fact The image is actually from another one of Nadia’s other perfect 10 routines at that same Olympics, not that very first perfect 10 in Olympic history. So that is a mistake!