Procrastination through Perfectionism
"Sunday Thoughts."
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Far too often I find myself wanting to start something and never seeing it through. I come up with an initial idea and immediately jump to overthinking the minutiae.
Take this website for example. I’ll spend all of my time considering how to categorise or present content, how to efficiently build pages, whether to use scripts, the list goes on. Starting to write media reviews is high on my to do list, but so far it only remains an intention. I haven’t started drafting any articles or even decided which media to begin with, as I’m too preoccupied with trying to decide how to present the reviews on the website, whether to use JavaScript for parsing the content, etc. The same goes for writing new blog posts - I have a few drafts, but first I want to get around to overhauling the blog page, decide whether to stick with a list or use div blocks and sort nonexistent posts into categories.
I feel that this is an issue which sets me back in many areas of life.
Getting started with anything feels daunting because my initial attempts, or the idea of how the end results might turn out, don’t feel like they’ve been done “properly” or up to standard. This presents a perfect opportunity to either procrastinate or not bother getting started at all. Any new project starts going through iterations of revisions and changes until it ends up scrapped due to dissatisfaction and burnout. Similarly, in my day job I’ll approach any task from an angle of getting the details right, following certain standards or processes I set out for myself, only to lose track of what needed to be done in the first place.
This can border on neurosis and inevitably leads to underachievement.
The only advice I can give - both to myself and anyone else running into similar problems - is to simply create something, a basic initial attempt, and see how things can improve from there. At least if it fails or goes nowhere, you have something to show for it.