Don’t be a Victim of Perfectionism

When it comes to making money online, there is one thing that has slowed me down more than any other thing that I can think of. Not only has it slowed me down, but it has probably cost me tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of unearned potential income over the past 11 years of my Internet business career. The “evil thing” I am referring to is PERFECTIONISM!

Here are the two biggest things that perfectionism can do to stop you from making more money online.

1) WASTE YOUR VALUABLE TIME

I am actually writing this post because I fell victim to this monster again over the last two days. What happened was I decided to create my first screen capture video to add to my last post which shows people how easy it is to create an Ultimate Footer Ad. I just purchased Camtasia last week, so there was a little bit of a learning curve, but I figured it out pretty fast.

Looking back, the very first video I created yesterday actually turned out pretty good. But the perfectionist in me would not let me use it. You may find this hard to believe, but I probably spent more than 8 hours yesterday working on that basic 3 minute “screen-capture” video and another 3 to 4 hours today. I just kept redoing it over and over again, as I wanted it PERFECT!

Then to top it off, I actually ended up using the video and audio from one of my first takes that I made. Is it perfect? Not even close, but it works fine for this site.

How much time should it have really taken me create the video? I am thinking maybe 2 or 3 hours, as there was little bit of a learning curve, but 12 hours… that was ridiculous! If I wasn’t such a perfectionist, I could have gotten 4 times as much work done yesterday.

The same thing happened when creating this blog. It should have been live weeks ago, but I just kept tweaking the layout, as I never thought is was perfect enough to go live, but I finally said, “screw it” and opened it up to the world.

2) STOPS YOU FROM EVER PULLING THE TRIGGER

What I am talking about here is being such a perfectionist that you never complete your project or open your website. I have done this many times over the years and it can be a killer. You create this awesome product or service that is extremely relevant at the time, but you never release it to the public because it is never perfect enough for you. Next thing you know time has passed and your product or service has missed its opportune window or other people have released similar products, so you just shelve the project.

Now I am not saying you shouldn’t want to put out a great product, you absolutely should. What I am saying is you shouldn’t be such a perfectionist that it stops you from actually finishing a project or opening your first website.

What you need to do is set yourself a timetable for completion and stick to it. Just get it out there and make tweaks after it is live. I guarantee you that almost every successful marketer out there is not 100% happy with their products when they first release them.

Please don’t let perfectionism keep you from following your dreams.