Do you have any pending project or task that you really want to do but that you haven’t started yet because the conditions are not ideal? In Manage your Day-To-Day Elizabeth Saunders suggests the following mindsets to overcome perfectionism when it’s blocking us from doing those highly desired projects.

On starting

I know there will never be an ideal time to begin so I set aside time to get started on one part of the process. When I get to that time, regardless of whether I feel like doing the work or whether it seems like the most urgent priority at the moment, I get started on what I can do now […]. I understand that the first stage of working on the piece is messy.

On making progress

I define the meaningful end deliverables and then start to clarify the intermediate steps to create them. I look at how much time I have between now and my projected end date. […] Then I allocate my time budget to the incremental steps weighted by […] the importance of that element to the overall success of the project.

[…]

Then, as I move through the process, I push myself to keep pace with the goals I have set, producing good enough work within the time I have to spend and giving myself permission to go back if I still have additional hours at the end.

On finishing

I define “finished as having at least met the minimum requirements and as knowing I have done the best I could given the time and resources allocated to the project. Saying something is complete doesn’t mean that it can’t be improved upon or elaborated on in the future.

On feedback

I appreciate feedback because it helps me to test and refine my work. […] I can choose how to respond to it. If I never open myself up to others’ insights, I might miss out on something really wonderful.

As Elizabeth writes aiming for less than the sky will allows us to produce more and higher quality work because we funnel all the energy that earlier was consumed by anger and frustration to something more productive.