Learning to stop striving for perfection and overthinking your online business is an essential skill for your success. Wanting to create excellent content for your audience is a legitimate desire, of course. The problem is that striving for perfection can not only paralyze you and cause you to never take action (we all know we can’t produce perfection) or it can make you waste time as try to improve your content to bring it up to your standard. The best thing you can do to run a successful online business is to create B- content.
How to Stop Striving for Perfection
You probably have heard of other 80/20 Rule. It is used in so many ways! For example, eat the most optimal foods for your body 80 percent of the time and allow yourself to make suboptimal choices 20 percent of the time. Or, 20 percent of your efforts will lead to 80 percent of your results. Well, in the case of blogging, 20 percent of your content will bring 80 percent of your traffic. That’s why it’s important to learn how to stop striving for perfection and be comfortable with creating B- content. The following tips will help.
Be Curious
If you struggle with perfectionism, be curious about it. Why do you feel the way you feel? Are you fearing making mistakes and getting judged? Do you want to ensure everything you create is of professional quality because you don’t want to be seen as a hobbyist? I am sure there are many other reasons and fears that motivate entrepreneurs to strive for perfection. Take a moment (at least 15 minutes) to evaluate yours. Don’t judge your reasons, just be curious about your thoughts and write them down.
Think of the Worst That Could Happen
Now, that you spent some time exploring your motivations for striving for perfection, I want you to think of the worst-case scenarios that could happen because of your B- Content. To learn to stop striving for perfection, you need to realize that the worst that could happen is not that bad after all. You will soon notice that the worst that could happen are feelings. Feelings of feeling judged, for example.
Start Replacing Your Thoughts
Did you know that your feelings are created by your thoughts? As you discover the feelings you fear that are causing you to always strive for perfection, you can start replacing the thoughts that are causing them. Just keep in mind that if your desire for perfection causes inaction, you are just going to have to stop thinking and start doing. Otherwise, here are some examples of how you can replace your thoughts:
- “I will not be credible if I make mistakes” replace with ➡ “Everyone makes mistakes.”
- “I need to make sure I understand everythIng about the topic before I teach it.” replace with ➡ “There is always more to learn.”
- “To be sucessful, my content needs to look professional.” replace with ➡ “Successful marketers often find that their content created on the fly is most popular.”
- “Nobody will want to learn from me if I look amateurish.” replace with ➡ “People enjoy authenticity because they relate to the person that doesn’t try to be perfect.”
- “People make fun of me if I go online and look like I don’t know what I am doing.” replace with ➡ “People will critcize me no matter what I do and it’s OK.”
- “If I spend more time on my content, I can improve it enough to make it worthwile.” replace with ➡ “Most of my content will not be seen much, no need to waste time. I can fix my mistakes later.”
- “I need to know enough about how to do things right before getting started to be able to share true value.” replace with ➡ “Everyone sucks at first, I will get better with practice.”
These are common thoughts that cause entrepreneurs to be paralyzed by perfectionism. Write yours down and take some time to dig deeper. Figure out how you can overcome these thoughts using my examples.
Take Action
Yep, time to stop striving for perfection and take action! It’s one thing to write down your fears and your thoughts. It’s another to put them aside and get to work! This is where you stop thinking and start working. Move towards your goal one step at a time without judging yourself critically. Instead, remember that you are learning and growing. Every action you take brings you closer to your goal. It’s the natural process that will help you become more efficient and improve your skills.
You don’t need to strive for perfection, you just need to strive for more action! Create B- content and you will see results.
What is B- Content?
Now we talked about the need to stop striving for perfection and about how you can settle for B- content but what does it mean? How do you know if your content is good enough to publish? As you improve over time, your B- content will look somewhat different than when you get started. Here are some steps you can take to ensure your content is a good as possible without wasting precious time:
- Look at other people’s content in your niche for inspiration.
- Do your best to share your knowledge with some extra points that your competitors didn’t address.
- Don’t obssess over details that don’t affect the value you provide (like layout, perfect grammar, etc).
- Allow yourself to spend a specific number of hours on your content and don’t go over that (as a general rule).
- Just get it done! Sometimes, we get into a mindset of time wasting. Fpcus on getting it done.
This is how I create my content. I always keep these tips in mind, but I often reread what I wrote a few days later and make a few adjustments. When my posts take off, I revised them fairly regularly (every few months if they get a lot of traffic to keep improving them).
In Summary
How to stop thriving for perfection is a matter of examining your thoughts and getting to work. It’s that simple! Ok, maybe it’s a bit hard sometimes, but if you follow the tips in this article. you are on the right track. Learn to discern your thoughts and replace them with more productive ones. Finish your content without wasting time and get back to your most popular pieces to improve them later.
