Over a stimulating conversation with a friend about work-life balance, we discussed how completing tasks and goals quickly gifts us more time. Furthermore, striving for efficiency means we can’t be perfect—our focus should be on being agile while striving for excellence.
Embrace the Power of Small Wins for Unbelievable Growth
It’s hard to believe that striving to be perfect can affect you negatively, but it can! Here’s the thing, if you focus on small mistakes and getting things perfect, you miss out on so many other things around you. We must realize that striving to be perfect is not the same as trying for your best. - Linda Marshall, Author
Keep A Laser Focus
Many work towards perfection without appreciating its adverse impact on our lives.
My friend, an expert project manager, highly recommends using an agile approach to achieve your goals. In simple terms, focus solely on one goal and break down the goal into multiple short-term sub-goals. Keep a laser focus on completing each sub-goal and celebrate each success along the way. Focusing on small wins will help you achieve more accomplishments in a shorter period, and the small wins will lead to excellence and increase your overall happiness.
You Don’t Need to Be Perfect to Find Success
Striving for perfection is not only an unhealthy way to live; it’s impossible to achieve it. After attaining a sub-goal, which doesn’t have to be perfect, plan the next sub-goal based on learnings from the last one. You continuously improve through quick and short sprints through each sub-goal. This approach contrasts with typical multi-tasking, which includes an incredible amount of wasted time frequently due to ‘switching’ between different tasks and goals. Multi-tasking takes much longer to achieve many goals. It robs us of leisure time and creates more stress, affecting our balance in life.
Being Agile Supports Emotional Intelligence
You can apply this agile method to developing your emotional intelligence. When you have strong emotional intelligence, you’re not a perfectionist; instead, you focus on self-improvement. As you become more self-aware, you can determine steps to strengthen your emotional intelligence. Agility is critical to ongoing growth, short-term achievements, and continuous development.
Getting it Done Trumps Perfection
Working towards completing a task with your best effort without focusing on a perfect product is both efficient and effective. Yes, getting it done trumps perfection. You still have long-term ambitions (your compass) but can achieve them in shorter, incremental, iterative milestones (your roadmap). One milestone isn’t perfection - it is an outstanding achievement to celebrate.
Without question, you can save time and build more balance into the day by being more agile and emphasizing small wins, and you can change your focus from perfection to excellence. Check out many more motivational blogs here, if you feel motivated to strengthen your emotional intelligence.
This article was originally published on January 5, 2019, and has been updated (May 2023).
More Motivational Reads Here »
How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
Sign up for Linda’s monthly tips to build your Emotional Intelligence and reduce Emotional Hijacking!
