Perfection Is the Enemy
How wanting to do things right can prevent you from doing anything
16 years. We enter the school system at 5 years old and typically exit college at 21. In those 16 intervening years, we’re told that perfect is not only attainable — it’s our only option. We must score 100% on every exam, we must get an A for the class at the end of every semester. And there are no do-overs; there is no stumbling and getting back up again. One mishap on an exam permanently relegates us to second-class citizens, unable to receive the A that we so desperately need. As a result, we learn that failure is something to be avoided at all costs and in all circumstances.
Existing in this environment for over a decade of our lives (and sometimes over two decades for those of us who go on to graduate school) instills this type of thought into our psyches. Failure becomes not just undesirable — it ceases to be an option. Any failure is seen as the end of the world because, for at least 16 years, it was the end of the world for us. As a result, even though we may be outside of the school environment, we fear failure to the same degree and avoid the situations which may lead to it. This fear becomes self-reinforcing — the more we avoid situations out of fear that may lead to failure, the more we feel that our fear is justified. Our actions tell us that our emotions are reasonable, and so we avoid failure with increasing conviction and fear each passing day.
This avoidance of situations that may lead to failure is disastrous for long-term growth. The world is governed by probability — few, if any, actions that we undertake entail certain success. Those that do have a near-certain probability of success are simple, small-scale, and have been done by countless others before us, giving us a clear roadmap for how to achieve what we are aiming for. Unfortunately, using these three features, we have specifically defined an action that is not valuable, as it is not difficult (due to its simplicity), is not impactful (due to its small-scale nature), and is not novel (due to the preponderance of people who have completed the action before us). In short, by limiting ourselves to actions with a near-certain probability of success, we are limiting ourselves to the least valuable actions available to us, reducing the growth we can experience as individuals, as well as the impact and scope that our lives can have on our communities around us.
In order to shift our focus from actions that are not valuable to those that are, we must open ourselves up to a very real (and frightening) risk of failure. Perfection and its associated connotation of guaranteed success are not possible for most valuable actions, such as starting a business or approaching the person who may end up being your spouse. These actions bring along large probabilities of failure but massive rewards in the case of success. To overcome that need for perfection and the fear of failure which stops us from undertaking these actions, we first attempted to understand where our fear comes from, as we described in the introduction. Now we must also understand why repeated failure is a normal and necessary part of the process when undertaking valuable actions.
There are two key aspects that all of the most valuable actions share:
The probability of success is low, but the rewards are massive. It might take multiple attempts to achieve success, but the effects are life-changing.
The probability of failure is large, but the outcome associated with failure is not ruinous. You can get back up and keep going in the event of a failure.
The high reward that accompanies success ensures that we have a reason to continue attempting the action, despite failure. The high probability of failure along with its relatively low associated costs ensures that we almost definitely will fail along the way, but that costs are not so high that we cannot refine our approach and try again in the event of failure.
Moreover, if we look at each attempt at a specific action as an independent trial, we see that we can dramatically reduce the probability of failure (i.e. never having one success) by repeatedly trying this action. For example, if our probability of failure when applying for a new job is 0.9, then if we apply to 100 jobs, our probability of failure falls to 0.00002, virtually guaranteeing at least one successful job application. If instead we were focused on perfection, we would try to minimize that 0.9 probability of failure before taking any action. Even if we reduced the probability of failure by 80% through planning and preparation, we would still have a 0.18 chance of failure. In summary, repeated attempts at an action can dramatically reduce the probability of failure when compared to simply attempting perfection from the outset.
Put plainly, the above arguments say that, for high-value actions, the rewards for success are well-worth the costs of failure and that multiple failed attempts at an action increase our odds of eventually succeeding. As a result, it is in our best interests to place our fears to the side and put our best foot forward for any action which we want to accomplish. Waiting for the perfect time or trying to design the perfect situation for action is an impossible task in most cases and, even when it is possible, it results in lower chances of success than simply trying, learning, and iterating.
Putting it all together, we see that fear of failure stems from years of a perfectionist mentality being instilled in us from the school system. This fear of failure limits us to undertake only those actions which are not valuable, but this need not be the case. We can shed this fear by understanding its origins and how it limits us. We have seen that truly valuable actions cannot be achieved with a perfectionist mindset due to their high probability of failure. We now know that repeated action, not perfect action, is the key to success in high-value situations. And we can take this knowledge forward to achieve what before we were afraid to even dream of.