E74 Script
Perfectionism Is Rarely About Standards
Section 1 Intro
Last week we talked about small steps and consistent action - and how the path reveals itself through movement rather than through planning. That one was about scale. The goal feels too big so nothing gets started.
Well, this week is the companion to that. Because there's a second reason makers don't start or don't finish that shows up just as often and is just as stubborn. And it has nothing to do with the size of the goal.
It has to do with standards. Or at least - that's what it claims to be about.
Here's what I've noticed working with makers over many years. When someone tells me they haven't released the work because they have high standards - that first part is usually true. The standards are real. But the second part - the part where the perfectionism is serving those standards? That's where it gets more complicated. And that's what this episode is about.
Section 2
Sheryl Sandberg said "done is better than perfect" and it became one of those phrases that gets repeated so often that we forgot where it came from. You've heard it. You've probably said it. And you've probably also sat on a piece of work for three months past the point where it was ready because – well, we really don’t know why.
Knowing the phrase doesn't fix the problem. And I think the reason is that "done is better than perfect" addresses the symptom without touching what's underneath it. It tells you what to do - finish it, release it, move on - without explaining why you're not doing that already. And if the explanation were simple, you'd have figured it out on your own by now.
So, I'm not going to spend this episode telling you that perfectionism is bad and action is good. You know that. What I want to do instead is look at what perfectionism is actually doing - because I think once you see what it's really protecting, the whole thing looks different.
This is the companion episode to last week. Episode 73 was about small steps - the goal feels too big and paralyzes you before you start. This one is about imperfect action - the work doesn't feel good enough and paralyzes you before you finish or release. Scale and standards. Two different problems with a remarkably similar answer underneath them.
Section 3
Here is the thing about perfectionism that I think most people haven't heard stated plainly.
Makers who struggle with it say it’s because they have high standards. And they genuinely do have high standards. That's not the problem. The problem is that the perfectionism isn't actually serving those standards. It's working against them. Which means something else is going on underneath all that refining and adjusting and not-quite-finishing.
What perfectionism is actually doing - most of the time, for most makers - is protecting them from the vulnerability of releasing something real into the world where it can be judged by others.
Think about that for a second. An unfinished, unreleased piece can't fail. A piece you're “still working on” (I’m using air quotes here) is still potentially perfect. It exists in this protected space where it hasn't been evaluated yet - where the gap between what you intended and what you made hasn't been seen by anyone else. The moment you call it done and put it out there - share it, post it, sell it, submit it - that protection disappears. The work is now real and visible and it can be evaluated by others. And that evaluation might not go the way you're hoping.
That is genuinely uncomfortable. I'm not dismissing it at all. The vulnerability of releasing work you care about is real. But here's the honest version of what's happening when a maker keeps refining and never releases - they're not being thorough. They're trying to manage anxiety about what others might think. And calling it high standards is a way of making that feel more defensible than it actually is.
There is research in psychology on something called evaluation apprehension- basically - the fear of being judged. It shows up across all kinds of situations and it's well documented. So, you are not alone! What it means practically is that the anticipation of judgment can cause capable people to either avoid doing the thing altogether or to keep doing it privately, in controlled conditions, long past the point where going public would serve them better.
For a creative maker that looks like the pattern you've probably seen in yourself or in someone you know. The work that's been almost ready for six months. The pieces that are good enough to share but somehow never quite make it out. The course that's been recorded but not launched. The collection that's complete but hasn't been shown. The pattern that's been tested but not released.
It's not that the work isn't ready. It's that calling it ready feels terrifying.
So here's the question I'd put to you directly - is the work not done because it genuinely needs more work? Or is it done, and you're sitting with the discomfort of releasing it? Because those are very different situations and they need very different responses.
Section 4
Now let's talk about the ONE thing that actually gets better work out there. Not the things that feels like it should produce better work - planning, researching, refining, waiting for the right conditions. The thing that actually does it. And that thing is…
Iteration. Also known as repetition, duplication… Yes – iteration.
Everything that exists and is any good went through versions. The first version of anything is always worse than the fifth version. But - and this is the part that matters - the fifth version only exists because the first version was made, released, used, and learned from. You cannot skip to version five. You have to go through one, two, three, and four to get there. And each of those versions has to actually exist in the world where it can be tested against reality, not just held in the studio where it only gets tested against your own expectations.
Cars go through model years. Software ships with known bugs and gets patched. Skills develop through practice that is by definition imperfect. None of this happens because the people involved had low standards. It happens because they understood that the only path to a better version runs through the current version, whatever state it's in.
You cannot improve what doesn't exist.
That's the whole principle right there and it's worth really soaking in. Not as a motivational sentiment. But as a practical fact about how development actually works. The work that stays in the studio forever doesn't get better. It just sits there, still potentially perfect, doing nothing. Learning nothing. Reaching no one. Teaching you nothing about what the next, even better, version needs to be.
There is research that supports this in a way I find genuinely useful. Adam Grant looked at creative output across multiple fields and found something that challenges the way most people think about creative quality. The most prolific creators - the ones who produced the most work over time - were also the ones who produced the most excellent work. Not because everything they made was excellent. A lot of it wasn't. But because volume creates the conditions for excellence in a way that waiting for excellence never does. Picasso produced over 20,000 works. Bach wrote a cantata every week for years. Edison filed over a thousand patents. Not all of it was good. Most of it wasn't. But the practice of producing, releasing, learning, and producing again is what made the excellent work possible.
Jon Acuff put it more simply and probably more memorably: "You gotta be brave enough to be bad at something new." That's not an instruction to lower your standards. That's a description of the actual mechanism through which standards improve. You don't get better by waiting until you're better. You get better by doing the work badly and then doing it again.
Section 5
I want to tell you about my own version of this because I think the raw version of this story is more useful than the tidy one.
Let me start with the work itself - because this principle doesn't just apply to the business side of what I do. It lives right in the studio.
When I started using Adobe Illustrator to create repeating surface patterns, my patterns were genuinely not good. The elements were all the same size. There was no variety in scale or weight. The spacing was monotonous and flat. It looked like someone had arranged shapes on a grid and called it a day - because that's essentially what I did. It took several attempts before I started to understand the nuances of visual balance - how varying the scale of elements creates movement, how negative space is as important as what you put in it. I couldn't have learned that from a tutorial alone. I had to make bad patterns, look at them, figure out what was wrong, and make different ones. The current work exists because the bad work got made first.
Same principle with garment construction. My first gown commission was in high school. A friend needed a dress and I said yes before I fully understood what that commitment required. My equipment was rudimentary. My seams weren't finished the way I would finish them today - not even close. I stumbled through parts of the execution. But the end product was lovely in its own right and my friend wore it and it did what a gown is supposed to do. If I could see it today I would probably be appalled at the technical details. But that dress - imperfect as it was - taught me things about construction that I could not have learned any other way. Every commission after it was better because of what that one showed me.
And when I made the transition from garment work to mixed media textile art - taking my understanding of three-dimensional design from clothing into a completely different material world - I had to learn from scratch how different materials behave together. Incorporating glue, paper, found objects, heavier elements alongside fabric. Elements I thought were secured weren't. It took time and a fair amount of failed attempts to find an archival glue that would actually hold heavier components where I wanted them - and to understand how different surfaces accept adhesive differently. That knowledge lives in my hands now. It got there through making pieces that didn't hold together.
The first blog posts I wrote were stilted and too wordy and way too academic. More concerned with sounding credible than with being useful to the person reading. I cringe a little reading them now. But writing them - and releasing them, and seeing what landed and what didn't - is what eventually produced a voice that actually served the reader. You don’t find your writing voice by thinking about finding it. You find it by writing things that are wrong and doing it enough times that you start to notice the difference.
None of those early things were good by my current standards. But they were the best I could do at the time based on what I knew at the time. And only by releasing them - putting them out where they could be used and reacted to and learned from - did I find out what to do next. What I needed to learn next. The work that stays in the studio teaches you nothing about what your audience needs or how to serve them better. It just “protects” you from finding out. In a nutshell, perfectionism is actually preventing you from putting your things out there, learning how to make them better and better your standards. It literally keeps you from finding the perfection you seek.
Section 6
So here's where I want to bring this together.
Last week was about small steps - you don't have to see the whole path, you just have to take a next step. This episode is about that imperfect action - you don't have to get it right, you just have to get it done and out where it can be used and learned from.
Together these two principles address the two most common reasons a maker's work doesn't make it into the world. Scale and standards. And they have the same answer underneath them. Start. Release. Learn. Improve. In that order. Not improve and then release. Release and then improve.
The maker who understands iteration - who knows that version 1.0 is not the destination but the beginning of the actual development process - is operating from a completely different relationship with their work than the one who's waiting for perfection before they begin. One of them is building something. The other one is waiting. And the waiting doesn't produce better work. It just produces more waiting.
The Ten Principles download is in the show notes or you can go to virginialeighstudio.com/learn and download your copy. It’s free. The exercise for this principle is one worth actually doing rather than just reading. And if you're curious about what version 1.0 looks like versus where something ends up after years of imperfect iteration - the old blog posts are still findable on my website.
Remember, the work that doesn't exist can't fail. But it also can't get better. It can't reach anyone. It can't teach you anything useful. It just sits there, still with a potential to be perfect, but going nowhere.
Put it out. Let it be what it is right now. Make it better later. But it has to exist first.
Section 7 Close
You know, I spent a long time being very precious about my work. Making sure it was ready. Making sure it was right. And what I eventually figured out - the hard way, through actually releasing things that weren't ready and surviving it - is that the judgment I was so afraid of was never as bad as the cost of waiting.
The work you're sitting on right now - the thing that's been almost ready for longer than you want to admit - it doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to exist. It needs to have it’s life. Pick one thing. Put it out this week. Not because it's done. Because it's done enough to teach you what comes next.
That's worth more than another month of refinement.
