Excellence Vs Perfection – Are You Sabotaging Yourself?

Some time ago, I was a perfectionist. I used to try to produce flawless work; covering every detail, managing minute matters, planning to split seconds, not willing to accept any loophole, no matter how small or practically irrelevant it was. I used to get admiration and appreciation for my “perfect work”.
I was happy with these appreciations, cherishing these as medals won by proud soldiers, till I realized that these "medals" were a millstone around my neck and were slowing me down. I realized that my “perfectionist” attitude is costing me

My Effectiveness
My Productivity
My Efficiency and most importantly,
My Happiness and peace of mind

I finally realized that no matter how “honourable” and “bright” are the medals, perfectionism is a time-wasting, money-losing goal killer. The worst part is no matter how much time and effort you put in, nothing is perfect. It is impossible to reach “perfection”, so striving for perfection is foolish. On the other hand, trying to make things perfect can prevent you from ever achieving the things you want to accomplish.

A man would do nothing and achieve nothing if he waited to achieve perfection; could do a job so well that no one could find fault. So gradually, perfectionism will stall you.
Probably you are using one of the “Windows” versions as your operating system. Is it perfect? Was any of the windows versions perfect? No. Now just think, if Microsoft had always waited to make Windows perfect before releasing it, had there been any Windows user on the entire planed?? NO.

So I have quitted my perfectionist’s attitude. Instead, I now focus on excellence. Excellence is short of perfection, but is practical, achievable and effective in terms of time, money and efforts invested.

How can we differentiate excellence from perfection? I have the answer in the form of "Exponential Curve of Excellence". This tool guides me on how much time, effort and money to put it... and when to stop and consider my work to be "finished." The graph is show below:



We know that quality does not improve linearly with time spent. Instead, there is an exponential (non-liner) relationship between the two. This means that the earliest efforts produce the largest improvements in quality. However, as you get closer to perfection, the curve flattens out. You still get improvement with time and effort, but the amount of improvement attained per unit of effort is substantially less after every hour invested. The real use of the Exponential Curve of Excellence is that it gives us a clear guideline for how much time and effort we should invest in a project and guides us till what time we should continue and when to stop.
If for any reason, one does not put enough effort into his work, he’ll stop at or before Point A on the Exponential Curve. Depending upon where he has stopped, that quality of his product will be anything from unacceptable to just average to good. At or just before point A, most of the people or companies stop. They end up with just good product.
Excellence lies between Point A and B of the curve. At Point B, one will still get significant improvement in quality in proportion to the extra effort. One will produce work significantly better than the competition and will be rewarded for his efforts. Look around you for the people and companies who excel. Their investment ranges between A and B.
Perfectionists go beyond Point C, investing substantial amount of time and efforts, gaining minor improvement in quality but never reaching perfection. This is a highly inefficient use of resources.
I’ll not totally denounce perfectionism though. But I’ll leave it for those few “crazy geniuses” for whom efficiency, effectiveness or productivity does not matter. They are more centred at personal satisfaction than anything else.

But for rest of us, the 99.9999999% people, EXCELLENCE should be the goal.
So I now aim for EXCELLENCE, not PERFECTION.