Today, I committed the classic Seren mistake all over again. It happened on ITV when we delivered a perfect billion page analysis, it happened when I worked all weekend to deliver the perfect user journeys storyboards only for the client to change the names into Chinese to make the vendor laugh, I tried to deliver the perfect competitor analysis. Guess what it’s OK but its not perfect, it’s also late.

Perfectionism is a curse. I really wanted this to be an outstanding perfect first delivery for the client, but it was too ambitious and became a struggle to complete. So I left work today feeling I’d screwed up.
Mr Perfect easily becomes Mr Grumble.
I see a lot of people in a similar place stressed because they have too much to do,(perfectionists always give themselves too much to do, and there is always something to do) putting myself down because I missed a deadline, which has the danger of bringing colleagues down too. Then there is the danger of losing your design jedi skills,because you set the bar too high again and you fail again.
Stupidly I know the answer to this. I knew the time, which I over ran, I knew the cost (budget) which I blew, but I didn’t limit my scope, so quality suffered. Fortunately this has happened now, I have learned my lesson, and now I am going to be realistic about what can be achieved. If its 4 days for a competitor analysis thats 12 pages, not 72. I could have made 12 very good pages. The time was up last week I should be working on something else now.
From now on I’m not going to be a perfectionist, I’m going to be a realist, I’m not going to become Mr Perumpy.