I had a project I was procrastinating that was long overdue. I kept waiting for everything to be exactly perfect before I started it, yet that time never came. The concern that people weren’t going to like it if it wasn’t top notch loomed over me for weeks. Yet the guilt for not completing it hung right next to it.
That started me wondering why I was so concerned about it being “perfect.” Then it hit me…that was what had been drilled into me. From the time we are a child in school through adulthood working in our career, we are “graded” on the quality of our work. This can cause fear, which leads to stress, which leads to the dragging of feet, which leads to more stress.