I wish I was a perfectionist

When is it ok to not do your best?

When was the last time you handed in a piece of work that you genuinely felt was as good as you could make it? When you honestly felt that was all you could do?

For me – I don’t think ever.

Exciting…

It’s not that I don’t care. I do enjoy the work – to an extent.

And it’s not that I always put myself down and I think my essays are really awful when they are actually fantastic. My work is normally alright.

We constantly have to juggle every aspect of our lives, picking out which bits are going to get full attention and which parts are going to be neglected.

You can’t do your best at everything, so what do you sack off?

Sometimes I’ll remember that I need to call my Nan so I put the full stop at the end of a sentence. I send off the essay with references that resemble something similar to the vomit at my fifteenth birthday party.

Steady, chaps.

When the agenda is moving so quickly, if you focus on getting everything absolutely right, you’ll mess something up.

In life we’re often going to have to sacrifice things for things that we deem as more important. You might have your priorities completely wrong. You might put too much effort and time into work or a relationship that in hindsight wasn’t really worth it. But that’s the best you can do.

People often have a fear of not doing something perfectly so you stop doing anything at all. ‘I’m a perfectionist,’ people always say. A common excuse used by what’s otherwise known as a lazy fuck.

More stressful than an essay on Marx?

When I was younger I always used to ask my Dad if he got really nervous that he would make the wrong decision in a fire. All he said was that in a fire, you just make a decision, with the short time frame and lack of information you make the best decision you can. Not making a decision would be the worst thing to do. All you can do is take action and then deal with the aftermath later.

So, if you think my column is shit then you can really just do one.

Try thinking up 400 words of your best work on a Thursday evening when you’re hanging out of you arse and you have 4 essays for tomorrow because you literally don’t know what organisation means.

Peace out.