Aim for 110%, Settle for 70%
Imagine you are lost in a vast desert. The sun scorches the sand beneath your feet, and the horizon dances with waves of heat. Your body is drenched in sweat, your throat dry as a rock. There is no water in sight—until, in the distance, you notice a small oasis. Your logical mind warns you: it must be a mirage, a cruel trick of the desert. But something inside you whispers, what if it’s real? You press forward, fueled by the hope that maybe, just maybe, salvation awaits. Yet, as you move on, the oasis never gets any closer. You knew it all along. Just a mirage.
This is how I feel about perfectionism.
It is a story I tell my students again and again, as I grow older while they remain the same age. It is also a story I tell myself, because I know my own weaknesses too well (or at least some of them). Perfectionism lurks in every single project I undertake. Like a ruthless villain, it waits for the most vulnerable of moments to strike—right at the end, when the final decisions must be made. No more tweaks. No more second chances. It creeps in just as you’re about to finish, whispering that there’s still more to fix, more to refine, more to perfect.
But once you recognize perfectionism as the villain, you also recognize that it’s an enemy that must be confronted. As Sun Tzu said:
Know your enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster.
Of course, the war I’m speaking of is an internal one. I don’t want to get too poetic about a book that puts War and Art in the same sentence (The Art of War), but the struggle is real.
The Two Faces of Perfectionism
Some might ask: Why fight perfectionism? Isn’t it the driving force behind great art and scientific breakthroughs? Well… yes and no. There is a form of perfectionism that is a blessing—it pushes you beyond your limits, sharpening your skills and helping you strive for greatness. It makes you better, forces you to refine, to evolve, to never settle. But there is another form, a far more sinister one, that is a curse. This is the kind of perfectionism where no matter how much effort you put in, your work never feels good enough.
This is where the illusion of the oasis becomes dangerous. You push yourself further and further, trying to reach that ultimate version of your work, but it remains just out of reach. You tweak one tiny thing, then another, and another—only to realize that perhaps the 10th version was better than the 25th. So you go back, start a new strain of revisions, and before you know it, you’re drowning in an ocean of micro-adjustments, unable to see the bigger picture. The worst part? By the time you make all these changes, you risk becoming numb to the very details you obsessed over.
Decision-making has its limits. After a certain point, your ability to discern meaningful improvements diminishes. Perfectionism, if left unchecked, can lead to paralysis. At its worst, it prevents you from sharing your work at all, no matter how much time and passion you’ve poured into it.
If this sounds familiar, the first step is acceptance. Acknowledging perfectionism for what it is allows you to counteract it. Over the years, I’ve developed a few strategies that help me move forward despite the temptation to endlessly refine. If you struggle with perfectionism, perhaps these will help you too:
1. Treat Your Work as a Snapshot in Time
One of the most liberating realizations I’ve had is that every piece of work I release is a snapshot of my current artistic and technical abilities. It may not be perfect, but it represents who I am today. Tomorrow, I might have new skills, new insights—but this is where I am now.
Artists, musicians, writers—we all evolve. If I compare my current work to something I made five years ago, of course, I see imperfections. But that’s exactly how it should be. If we never let go of our work, never share it with the world, we never have the chance to grow from it. By viewing my work this way, I free myself from the need to make it flawless. The timestamp on my project serves as a reminder: this was me, in this moment.
2. Your Audience Wants to See You Grow
Give them the chance to do so. Your audience wants to witness your evolution as an artist, to see how your work changes over time, and to feel like they are part of your creative journey. This sense of connection is invaluable. When you allow them to experience your growth, they gain a deeper appreciation for your work and a richer perspective on your artistic evolution.
Moreover, having a body of work—complete with all its imperfections—gives your audience a point of reference. They will be able to look back, compare, and understand how far you’ve come, and not just in terms of technique, but in terms of creative output. If you spend years obsessing over a single project before presenting it, its impact will likely be far weaker than if you had allowed your audience to witness your growth along the way.
3. Set a Deadline—And Announce It
Deadlines work wonders, but they’re only effective if they carry real weight. If you’re working solo, an internal deadline may not be enough to hold you accountable. The trick? Promise your audience.
For my latest album, I first set an internal goal: release by springtime, preferably March (which I managed!). Why this timeframe? It wasn’t arbitrary—seasons have a profound effect on our collective mood. Just as December is festive and nostalgic, January is slow and introspective. Spring, for me, felt like the right time for my album’s release.
Your deadline doesn’t have to be an exact date. It can be a month, a season, or a specific quarter of the year. The key is to announce it. By doing so, you create external accountability, which helps push you toward completion.
4. Recognize the Point of Diminishing Returns
One of the most important skills you can develop is knowing when your improvements have stopped being meaningful. A simple way to test this: when you’re struggling to decide between two versions of your work, ask someone else for their opinion. If they can’t even tell the difference, you’ve likely entered the territory of diminishing returns.
This is a crucial moment. If an uninvolved listener—or even a fellow artist with a trained ear/eye—doesn’t notice the microscopic changes you’re agonizing over, it’s a sign that you’re wasting time. Stop. Move on. Your work is already good enough—perhaps even great—and you just haven’t realized it yet.
5. The 70% Rule
This is something I’ve learned to live by: If something feels 70% done, it’s done. This is just an arbitrary number, of course we can never grade creative work (Well, I’m in academia and reluctantly do this all the time). You will always want to tweak more, refine more, polish more. But if you stop at 70%, that final 30% is often where perfectionism kicks in. You are basically saying, yes I know that it is not perfect, but I am going to settle with what I have. In reality, most people won’t even notice the difference.
You may fear that the one detail you let go of will haunt you for the rest of your life. But having been on both sides of this struggle countless times, I can assure you—it never does. Eventually, that tiny imperfection will be as inconsequential as the color of your socks.
The Final Push
These methods have helped me push through creative frustration and deliver projects that might have otherwise been trapped in limbo. Whenever I start to feel like my work isn’t living up to my expectations, I pause and remind myself of the bigger picture. More often than not, the project was finished long ago—I just hadn’t accepted it yet.
So, arm yourself with these or similar strategies. Recognize the mirage of perfectionism for what it is, and keep moving forward. Finish your work. Share it with the world.
P.S. If you have your own methods for overcoming perfectionism, share them in the comments below. Let’s build our collective arsenal against this creative curse!
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