Why Doing Things Imperfectly is Still Worth Doing
Takeaway Points:
Perfect is the enemy of the good - Meg struggled with perfectionism and it held back her ability to enjoy artistic hobbies for years.
Likewise, perfectionism can hold you back from your fitness goals, especially when you take an “all or nothing” approach.
Doing ‘something’, even if it’s not perfect, helps you to maintain the habit.
(This post was contributed by our coach Meg Humphrey.)
Perfectionism and completionism
I think of myself as a healing perfectionist.
I didn’t know I was a perfectionist until I was already in my 30’s. Perfectionists are perfect by definition - clean, complete, exact, and correct. A few of my closest friends are like this, so in comparison I’ve always been too messy, too unsure; scraping by was always good enough. I was a completionist, because checking everything off my lists has always been a priority (although I very rarely managed to check everything off), but what I did was never the best and my life was never really in order.
Whatever I want to call it - perfectionist or completionist - the truth is that it was hurting me and holding me back. I would always see it as a personal failure when I couldn’t finish a task, when things on my to-do list kept getting transferred week to week and then month to month. It made me feel like I was never going to be good enough and that I had to give up on things I wasn’t immediately great at.
Art
I always loved to draw. As I grew up and made more friends who also liked drawing, I couldn’t help but compare myself to them. They were always so fast, so sure, showing off their clean lines and realistic backgrounds. I was a very slow artist with lots of messy, sketchy lines, weird proportions and backgrounds with no concept of aspect ratio. I knew I could get better with practice, but practice to me meant full illustrations - full bodies, full backgrounds, full shading or coloring. It took me so long to do any of these that I was always frustrated with my lack of things to show for the amount of work I was doing. It made me want to do something that I actually loved less and less until I gave it up completely.
I didn’t really try to draw regularly again until I was 30. Unfortunately, it started out the same way as I left it: struggling with producing full fledged pieces. It wasn’t until the second half of the COVID-19 shutdown that something changed. A friend told me about a silly little drawing challenge that also acted as a good excuse to get out of your apartment. The challenge was to pick a tree and spend five minutes everyday for a month drawing it.
At first I wanted to try it because I thought it could help me sketch more quickly. As I kept going out there, figuring out how I could sketch a very complicated tree in only five minutes, I started caring less and less that I was drawing the tree to the best of my ability. I embraced the fact that there was no way I could do that in that amount of time, so it was okay if the sketch was bad or if I just focused on a particular part of the tree like a section of branches or the trunk. The amazing (and infuriating) part was that my skills improved. I got better at making quick sketches that look good, drawing things to scale, and picking out what details are the most important to include to make my drawing look like the thing it was supposed to. I don’t think that would’ve happened if I had gone out drawing over the same tree in the same way as perfectly as I could. I improved because I let go of being perfect.
Not only do I feel (rather than just know) the value in doing half finished, piecemeal, incomplete drawings, but I like it. I like that I can doodle a face, a goofy meme using my dungeons and dragons characters, or fill a page with subpar hands and still feel good about it. They don’t need to be outlined or colored or have all the extra lines erased. It feels worthwhile to do these things, not just for the skill practice, but because it’s still drawing.
Exercise
The same holds true when it comes to exercising, workouts, and general well being. Sometimes you can only do a few reps, one set, half of a workout routine. Maybe you only left your home to take out the trash instead of that 3 mile walk around the lake you keep meaning to do, but haven’t done yet. Some days you can only manage to brush your teeth and comb your hair, other days you have your full skin care routine.
I would love it if I could make it to the gym five days a week, lifting heavy and hitting all of my muscles for an hour, but I also know that’s not possible for me right now. Sometimes my body doesn’t have the energy, sometimes I don’t have the time with everything else I’m doing, sometimes other activities are just more appealing, sometimes I have a mental block.
When those sometimes happen, I go with it rather than fighting against it (and inevitably feeling like a failure). Instead I do one circuit around the park across the street from my apartment. Sometimes I’m doing light weight dumbbell overhead presses and hammer curls during virtual calls with my friends and ttrpg sessions. Sometimes I do stretches in bed because getting my yoga mat set up in the kitchen requires more energy than I have. Sometimes just getting started with no pressure to do the whole workout ends up in me doing the whole workout. These things aren’t what I planned for, but they still benefit me.
Keeping up with an abbreviated movement routine also keeps you in the mindset of continuing to make time for exercise in your life. From my own experience and working with clients, how you feel mentally makes a bigger difference than how you feel physically when it comes to being a barrier for exercise. It’s harder to pick something up again once you stop completely. Even if it’s a quick walk or a few reps of a single exercise, it signals to yourself that you haven’t given up on this, you haven’t failed. Maybe later in the week you can do two exercises, maybe next week or the week after you can do your whole workout. Even if that’s all you can do every week for a month or more, it’s worth it because you are proving to yourself that you can do it.
Consistent PRactice
Some is always going to be better than none for your body. Yes, consistency in frequency is important when it comes to improving strength and mobility, but it doesn’t harm your body if you only do your exercises once in a while. It still helps your body immediately by working and stretching those muscles and doing those movements. You won’t suddenly get super ripped or be able to run a marathon because those do take a lot of work and a strict routine, but you’ll probably feel better - mentally and physically. That’s enough of a reason to feel good about whatever you did, no matter how small!
I’m sure I’ll still struggle with being less of a perfectionist for years to come. Yesterday I told my spouse “I don’t feel like doing anything and that makes me feel bad,” but was thankfully reassured that I still did plenty this week and even if I didn’t, it’s okay. Of course, I couldn’t really let myself do nothing, but I let myself do what felt right rather than stick to the to-do list I had made earlier in the week. It wasn’t everything I had planned, but I still ended up moving around, starting some new art, and even doing some chores. If I hadn’t let myself deviate from my plan, I probably wouldn’t have amounted to much except for feeling terrible about myself all day. It’s okay to not stick to your rigid plan, and it’s more than enough to do “only” a little bit when that’s all you can do.
Adam’s note
I love this piece as it adds a bit of real-world experience to the common aphorism that “perfect is the enemy of the good”. I’d also recommend that for those situations where you can’t get in a full workout, the concept of microworkouts (as I’ve discussed previously) is a great way to complement those situations where you feel you can’t get a full workout in.
About Meg Humphrey
Meg Humphrey has a passion for learning about how to be comfortable and feel strong in your body. She aims to make fitness and movement accessible to everyone regardless of experience, body size, or ability.
Over the last 15 years, she has accumulated experience in various exercise modalities (including powerlifting, 5x5, CrossFit, kickboxing, yoga, spin, HIIT, and more), and has used this knowledge to help friends and family members craft their own routines. She leads with kindness, compassion, and patience to show that exercise and fitness can be for anyone in any body.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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