Early on in my career, I would constantly get in my own way and tell myself ‘i can’t be perfect so what’s the point?’. One of my favourite films growing up was “A Cinderella Story” but I never understood the quote that’s uncovered from Sam’s Dad’s Diner in the end. It reads “Don’t let the fear of striking out stop you from playing the game”. I wasn’t into sports growing up, and so I never paid attention to it, but after rewatching it one Saturday when I was feeling nostalgic, it finally made sense to me and I realised how much it resonated with me… that was exactly what I was doing! I was afraid of not doing things perfectly, so I was deciding not to do things at all. The fear of failure (in my eyes at the time, not perfect = failure….) was stopping me from doing the things I was passionate about.

A few years before having this realisation, I was I was  taught about the marginal gains framework. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an approach that was famously adopted by Dave Brailsford, the England Olympic Team Cycling coach to improve the performance of the team. He broke down every single element that impacted the teams performance down to the inflation of the tyres, how well the team were sleeping and even how they washed their hands, and improved every aspect slightly.

Again, I didn’t pay too much attention to this at the time, or even really understand how I could I could apply it to my life, but when I stopped thinking everything I did needed to be perfect, I started to think back to what Dave Brailsford did, and wondered whether this was something I could use. I began applying it to my every day and started to realise how much quicker I was getting things done. The idea of breaking down “performance” into smaller projects helped to take the pressure off each task and I by focusing on improving each individual aspect, I was able to tackle them and find ways to improve much quicker. 

A lesson I didn’t expect to learn through all of this was that even if something doesn’t resonate straight away, keep it with you as you may well come back to it years later and it can have the ability to have a profoundly different impact than you thought was possible.

So, next time you are feeling blocked by a large project, remember that just making a start is better than worrying about it not being perfect. Break it down into smaller tasks and think about how you can improve the outcome. Or you could even apply this idea to your every day life; whether in work or not!

Good luck!