2 Comments

Ally-mai! You articulate this so well. And me too! Keep moving towards this aim, as it will be so freeing. I'm very far from a perfectionist, and have gotten really good at what I call half-arsing things. : ) And also forgiving myself when I completely eff things up!

Expand full comment

I find that I’m often too overwhelmed by the idea of something to start it, but by taking a bite sized piece of the thing and trying to do that, it makes it less intimidating and also starts the momentum of doing the thing. (I’ve seen people say that when you have ADHD, doing something small can be good because it gives your brain a dopamine boost of achieving the thing, which makes you want to do more of it to get more dopamine from it.)

I’ve been trying to relate that to perfectionism, because I think for me a lot of the reason I’m overwhelmed is because I have a need to do a good job at the thing, but that means I often don’t even do the thing, and if I do do the thing, I notice all the parts I did badly. I’m not very good at letting myself be bad at things (or even just letting myself be okay at things). Recently I’ve been trying to just do the thing, even if it’s done badly, then be okay with the outcome. I’m definitely not doing that consistently, but that’s the goal.

Expand full comment