Is Perfectionism Hurting your Business?
You don’t want to hear it and neither do we: nobody is perfect. Perfectionism itself as a pursuit is an impossible task to uphold. You owe it to yourself and your sanity to back off a little. Here at Blue Spirit Bookkeeping, we have been guilty of this COUNTLESS times and want you to know that you are not alone. Here we detail why trying to run a perfect business could be harmful and how you can maintain your sanity.
Perfectionism is holding you back
How many times have you tackled a task and when you finally finished it were disgusted at the amount of time you spent on it? We all have felt this stab before. The truth of the matter is, when we focus too much on the end result rather than the process itself, we can easily fatigue ourselves and make the next task even harder to handle. Mental fatigue is a huge problem for a lot of business owners and individuals who want things a certain way even if some elements are out of their control. You spiral into a frenzy of anxiety when something goes wrong and often times can ruin the rest of your day. This can harm your business’s profitability by costing you time and money while also reducing your reliability. The more mentally fatigued we become, the less efficient our business will run.
You avoid taking risks
Taking risks is a key component that is necessary for almost any business to grow. When you spend all of your time tweaking, rechecking, revising, and second guessing, your are doing yourself and your business a disservice. Mistakes are unavoidable at times despite your most desperate attempts to do otherwise. We are only human and cannot hold ourselves to such a high rate of accountability especially when the only person we are usually trying to please is ourselves. This is also linked to a fear of failure that prevents us from taking those risks that can take our business to the next level.
But what can I do?
First, stop telling yourself that failure is not an option and start telling yourself that failure is a necessary learning experience. Here is some advice that can help you avoid running yourself into the ground:
Stop trying to manage everything yourself. Delegating tasks is important for getting things off your plate that don’t make your business money directly and allow you to spend more time helping your business grow.
When confronted with a roadblock, don’t collapse and raise the white flag. Roadblocks are often very valuable for your business as they mostly arise to present your business with a problem to solve. This help your business run more efficiently once you defeat those obstacles.
Feel the fear and do it anyway. This is one of the most resounding statements we use here at Blue Spirit Bookkeeping and can help motivate you and put things into perspective. Fear will never truly go away so waiting for it to disappear is not an option. Recognizing that it’s there and moving forward will do wonders for your sanity.
Take a breather! We perform our best when we’ve had rest and sleep. Making sure that you take care of yourself will provide your business with someone who can get the job done. We perform less efficiently when fatigued and taking the time to tend to the one who is responsible for running the business should be priority.
