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Strive For Excellence Not Perfection
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Mark Des Cotes, My baby girl started her first job this week, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I talk about putting it out there and moving on.
Hey there everyone. I’m back from vacation and wow, what a great time it was.
Today’s Fun Fact of the Day: In honour of my daughter’s first job, here are some fun facts about Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut is the world’s largest user of cheese, It uses more than 300 million pounds of cheese annually. Pizza Hut purchases more than 3 percent of all cheese production in the USA, This required a heard of about 170,000 dairy cows. They also use 700 Million pounds off pepperoni and 525 million pounds of tomatoes per year. In 2001 Pizza Hut sponsored a pizza delivery to the International Space Station. Finally, the most successful Pizza Hut, based on sales per day is in Moscow.
Here’s What I leaned yesterday.
Since coming home from Podcast Movement I’ve been looking into the doings of a lot of the people I met there. Listening to their podcasts, visiting websites, interacting in Facebook groups and so on.
Somewhere along the way I stumbled upon an article at Entrepreneur.com by Dixie Gillaspie about what she learned at the conference. What she wrote in her article really had an impact on me so I thought I would share what I learnt with you.
First a little background. As you may know, I’m a graphic & web designer. A little over a year ago I decided to merge my love of design with my passion for podcasting. I came up with the idea to start both a blog and podcast to help designers run a studio out of their house like I do. My goal is to grow this into the resource for all home based graphic and web designers.
To begin, I registered the domain name resourcefuldesigner.com. I built a website and wrote a few blog posts to get it started. I then set to work on developing the podcast. I hired Wayne Henderson from mediavoiceovers.com to narrate my podcast intro and I narrowed down and finally chose the music to accompany his voice. I created my podcast cover art and I even arranged and recorded an interview episode with an award winning photographer on the process designers should take when hiring a photographer. I was all gung ho.
And then I stopped. Something was holding me back from launching the podcast but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I haven’t touched the website since February. It’s not that I lost the passion for it. On the contrary, I think of it almost every day. I’ve been telling myself that I’m too busy, what with my design clients, plus doing SILY and my three TV fan podcasts. But the truth is, I could have launched the podcast at any time. But I’ve shackled myself. And I’ve only just figured that out.
The article by Dixie Gillaspie drove the idea home. The funny thing is, what she wrote about wasn’t even her idea. It was something Jeff Brown, a very well known podcaster has said during his Podcast Movement presentation. A presentation I didn’t attend because it was at the same time as Darrell’s.
According to Dixie, Jeff opened his session with two points about starting a podcast, or anything else for that matter:
One, excellence comes from preparation.
Two, perfection is a moving target, but excellence is within reach.
Two simple truths, Excellence comes from consistent improvement. Dedication to preparation and practice yields increased excellence.
Perfection on the other hand cannot be defined, let along achieved.
I realized while reading her article that I’ve been waiting to launch my podcast until everything was Absolutely perfect. Which I know deep down will never happen.
It’s like an athlete. No matter how hard they practice, they will never achieve perfection. If they could there would be no point in continuing on afterward. What athletes do is strive for excellence at their level. They spend 90 percent of their effort preparing for a game and only 10 percent actually playing the game.
Excellence is achievable because it comes from constant improvement and dedication. Preparation and practice yields increased excellence.
Imagine a high school basketball player who is continually practicing his sport. Through hard effort he can achieve excellence and become the best player on his team. He then graduates and moves on, continuing to practice his game. In college he once again achieves excellence and becomes a star on the court where he is noticed by the scouts. The player is then drafted into the NBA where he must continue to apply himself and improve, striving once again for excellence at this new higher level, hoping to one day be an all-star or MVP.
That was my mistake. I got the crazy idea in my head that I wanted everything to be perfect before I launched my Resourceful Designer podcast. But I don’t need it to be perfect. I only need it to be excellent, which at my current level of podcasting is easily achievable. And once it’s launched, I can then keep striving for excellence by making each episode better than the last as my skills keep improving.
Here’s what I learned.
Just get it done. Do the absolute best you can and get it done. Then start working on making the next one even better.
When I listen to the very first episode of my Under The Dome Podcast, I cringe at how it sounds. It’s awful. But I’m judging it by my standards today. Back then it was the best I could do with my limited knowledge and cheep equipment and I was proud of it, still am. When I started my Orphan Black podcast several months later, I was a much better podcaster and you could tell. But that first episode also sounds pretty bad compared to what I do today. I’m sure that a year from now when I listen to this episode of SILY I’ll realize how much I’ve improved from today. That’s because I’ll always be striving for the excellence.
That’s what I have to do with my Resourceful Designer podcast. Get it out there and then keep improving on it.
Now I’ve talked a lot about podcasts and podcasting but the concept of excellence over perfection can be applied to anything. Cooking, painting, dancing. Building something, learning something, or doing any task at work. As long as you try your hardest you are achieving excellence.
That high school basketball player may not have been as good as his future NBA self. He may not have been as good as players on the opposing teams. But he did achieved excellence in what he was personally capable of at the time.
So if you’re holding back on something because you’re looking for perfection. Stop it. Perfection can’t be defined, let along achieved. Instead, aim for excellence, it’s well within your reach.
Don’t let the fear of not being perfect keep you from doing what you want to do.
I’m Mark Des Cotes and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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