Perfection was my motto… for a long time, from as early in my life as I can remember. I would aim for perfection in whatever I do, with attention to every little detail I could think of – be it at school, or at work, or at extra curricular activities. Or may be I should admit that it was much more than a motto. I just could not get myself to settle for anything less than perfect. In the pursuit of perfection, I would land up (willingly) spending double the amount of time, if not more, on almost every activity I’d undertake.

For example, if I had to draw a sketch, I would not be done a soon as I had it drawn. My fellow classmates used to think the sketch was excellent as it is, and would worry that it could go wrong if I do any changes to it. But I just couldn’t stop myself there. I would do further touch up, enhance gradients of the shades, and try to make it as best as possible, until my heart said, “now that looks good enough!”.

Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of unlimited time at our disposal. The more time we spend on something, the less time we will have for the other things that need to be done. What I didn’t realize until not too long ago was this fact that in my passion for perfection I was losing out on valuable time!

But even after this realization, it was not an easy task to get myself to cooperate. Even after the principle was clear to me, somehow that inner voice would just not agree to settle for anything but the best.

After years of efforts, I am finally getting myself to settle for excellence over perfection. And I say to myself, “If only I had chosen to settle for little less than perfect much earlier! I’m sure I would have done almost as well in all those things that I did, and yet have had the time to do so many other things as well in all the years gone by”.

My sincere advice to all the perfectionists: The earlier you accept this truth AND start following it, the further you will get ahead in life. Doing ten things with excellence is certainly worth more than doing just one thing perfectly. Aim for excellence, not perfection.