How Perfectionism Kills Your Craft & Crushes Your Spirit

At age 17, my artist-father was taught a mantra. ‘Near enough isn’t good enough. It has to be perfect.’ So he slaved for his mentor, re-doing work over and over again until one day, the mentor was moved to tears and whispered; ‘now it’s perfect. And that’s near enough.’

But the damage was done. Over 60 years of painting, dad couldn’t bring himself to have an exhibition. Nothing was perfect. It robbed him of so much joy and satisfaction and held him back from moving forward in life.

I inherited my dad’s perfectionism. It’s a fear of disapproval or failure so one never quite finishes or feels satisfied with the results. It taught me how to hang on which is great for commitment but then I had to learn how to let go.

As a filmmaker and a scriptwriter, perfectionism can make a person unpleasant to work with, creatively crushing colleagues in a crew and make someone unreliable when it comes to deadlines. The best training I had to learn to meet deadlines and transcend perfectionism was as a young print journalist then as a TV news reporter. I learned the meaning of ‘deadline’. It’s a line you can’t cross or you’re dead.

If perfectionism is plaguing your creative process, ask yourself questions such as:

Is the 51 st shade of grey more perfect than the previous 50? Will tinkering with this one detail make an important difference to the audience understanding and loving your screen story more?