LibraryPatternsLet Go of PerfectionismA single typo or tiny error can consume me — I will f…
Problem
Toward Craftsmanship

A single typo or tiny error can consume me — I will fixate on it long after it is fixed, certain everyone noticed and judged. Trivial mistakes that others would shrug off feel, to me, like glaring proof of carelessness.

Part of the pattern: Let Go of Perfectionism
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You might also say it as
  • “I obsess over typos and tiny errors”
  • “a small mistake consumes me”
  • “I am sure everyone noticed the trivial error”
The path forward
  1. 1Notice the fixation forming
  2. 2Fix it and move on
  3. 3Trust most people won't notice
One thing to try this week
When you spot a small error this week, fix it once and deliberately move on without re-checking. Most trivial mistakes are invisible to everyone but you.
Related problems
Accepting good-enough work from myself or my team feels like a concession — a failure to care enough. The identification of good enough with not caring has made adequate work feel like a moral failure.Every sentence I write is edited before the next one appears. I cannot produce a rough draft because editing is embedded in the first pass. The writing is slow and the output is polished from the start but minimal.Every time I get close to my standard, the standard moves higher, so I never actually arrive. What looked like the goal becomes the new baseline the moment I reach it, and I am running on a track that extends itself with every step.Everything has to pass through me before it goes out. I have become the bottleneck in my own organisation because I cannot trust work I have not personally reviewed.I apply the same exacting standard to a quick internal email as I do to a public report. The standard does not scale with context and I am exhausting myself and my team with inappropriately high bars.I approve something in a meeting and then privately revise it after. The team submits work that has already been signed off. Nobody knows the revision is happening.

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