Re:Ask HN: How do you get over perfectionism/overthinking in...
by vibrolax on Wednesday January 16, 2019 @12:39PM
(#18922916)
Seconded to the max. Being able to finish things is a more important ability than being able to do things perfectly. In my 30's, I put aside the pursuit of perfection in favor of developing the discipline to finish with acceptable results. It's the second most important improvement I have made in my life.
Re:Ask HN: How do you get over perfectionism/overthinking in...
by quacked on Thursday January 17, 2019 @09:40AM
(#18931052)
What was the first?
Re:Ask HN: How do you get over perfectionism/overthinking in...
by vibrolax on Thursday January 17, 2019 @09:56PM
(#18936683)
That I am a human being, like all the other humans, and not a robot or machine. I was hard on myself, and by consequence, hard on others. Learning to be easier on myself allowed me to learn how to complete good, worthwhile things without damaging myself or others.
To fix my frustration and increase my output, I focused on:
1) Changing my anticipation of a reward from the perfection of the project to the completion of the project. This required me to actively tell myself "this isn't that good, put I'm executing regardless". Being able to tell my friends "hey, I wrote this song" is better than being able to say "hey, I've got this great idea for a song", but it didn't more satisfying until I had written a bunch of songs (quite a few of which weren't good).
2) Anticipating the reaction to the project from people who don't know the details rather than the reaction to the project from the experts. An amateur barbershop quartet may sound medium-talent in the eyes of a vocal professional (who I was initially working to impress), but it's fun and sounds great to the average person at an open mic (who I started working to impress).
Other tips:
- Rather than trying to implement perfectionist ideas in the moment, note them down and continue making an imperfect project. Once you've got something done, you can look at your perfectionist notes and decide whether or not to go back and fix/rewrite. This is how I finish scripts for plays and new compositions.
- Adopt the mindset intended by this reddit anecdote I'm paraphrasing: "You're 30 and you can't play guitar. Yeah, you missed the window of time where you could have been a great professional guitarist at a young age, but ten years from now you're going to be 40, and you can either have spent 10 years practicing guitar, or you can have spent 10 years regretting how you didn't become the best guitarist it was possible to be and imagining how it could have been different". Apply to coding as necessary.