I Ditched This Toxic Mindset to Compete With Google — and It Worked The majority of your daily tasks are not worth obsessing over. Prioritize where to focus your effort, and if you're doing something big, don't worry about getting it exactly right the first time.
By Aytekin Tank Edited by Kara McIntyre
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It was one of the most jarring emails I'd ever received, and it was only one line: "Did you see that Google came up with a competitive product?"
The email, sent from a friend, was letting me know about the arrival of Google Forms — meaning my then-young startup, Jotform, was suddenly going up against one of the most powerful tech companies.
At first, I panicked. It felt like there was no way I'd be able to compete. Then, I strategized. To stand my ground, I'd need to get way more efficient at managing all the responsibilities I was juggling. I took a hard look at how I was spending my time and realized a lot of my day was spent on tedious, low-value tasks like sending emails.
That's when I started automating, setting up processes for everything that wasn't directly related to creating a better product and more effective strategy. Sure, not everything I automated ended up being perfect. Not every message I sent was filled with clever turns of phrase or personal flourishes. They didn't have to be. Ensuring perfection, especially in areas that frankly didn't matter, would have sunk me. Instead, I focused on "good enough."
As a result, Jotform thrived — even with Google as a competitor. Here's how to break free of a perfectionist mindset and spend your time on what matters.
Related: People Thought Google and Adobe Would Crush My Startup. Actually, They Gave Us Our Biggest Breaks.
The dark side of striving for perfect
Perfection is paralyzing. If you're learning to do something for the first time, whether it's coding or cooking, you're going to mess up. It's an inevitable part of the process, and it's an inevitable part of growth.
One of the things I've loved about parenthood has been watching my kids learn to read and write: There's a world of language they're working hard to unlock, but getting there is a tough journey. What starts as shapes on a page, with practice, eventually turns into letters, then words, then whole sentences. It reminds me how game we are to learn when we're younger, but as we grow older, our wonder at learning is replaced by a fear of failure.
If you're always in pursuit of perfection, you're never going to try new things, branch out or take risks. My advice? Get good at not being good. What I mean is practice trying new things so often that imperfection no longer feels painful. This form of exposure therapy really works: In one study, researchers assigned volunteers tasks at which they would repeatedly make mistakes. At the end of the two-week trial, they discovered the volunteers had, in fact, lower levels of perfectionism than when they first started.
Prioritizing progress
A hallmark of a perfectionist mindset is "productive procrastination:" You can busy yourself until the end of time making tiny, inconsequential tweaks and adjustments to things that don't matter. You can put off, say, writing a book by cleaning your whole house until it sparkles. Or, you can roll up your sleeves and get to work.
For many of us, the first step into something new is the hardest. Rather than agonizing over a blank page, ask AI to write up an outline or a first draft. Doing this gives you a starting point — it's always easier to have something to work off of, even if it's imperfect.
Related: Seek Progress, Not Perfection: Why Your Business Should Embrace the "Toothpick Rule"
I like the advice offered by physician and author Rajani Katta in Harvard Business Review, who suggests carving out time to just brainstorm about a project by taking a long walk or discussing it with a colleague. Then, she dictates her thoughts into her smartphone, which is less daunting than putting them down on a blank page. "When I sit down to write, having these initial dictated words on the page helps to warm up my thinking and gives me a place to start," she said. "I may delete 80% of what I dictate, but having this early material helps prime my brain and helps me sink into a project faster."
After you take that first step, take a moment to commend yourself for your achievement. It may feel silly, but perfectionism is often born of the need to be super successful at everything. This means we're continually raising the bar to ever-out-of-reach goals without pausing to notice the progress we've already made. If continually chasing perfection is a recipe for burnout, acknowledging — and even enjoying — the journey is part of the solution.
As a recovering perfectionist myself, I know it's not always easy to settle for "good enough." And while some things really are important, and maybe even worth obsessing over, the majority of your daily tasks are not. Prioritize where to focus your effort, and if you're doing something big, don't worry about getting it exactly right the first time. Progress, not perfection, will get you where you want to go.
