How I'm Overcoming My Perfectionism
The Copywriter Column #107
Hello, my name is Matt, and I am a perfectionist. Well, recovering perfectionist.
For as long as I can remember, everything I put my hands on needs needed to be flawless before putting it out there for the world to see. And when it flops flopped or merely fails failed to meet my unrealistic standards… I’ll I’d lose my shit.
At least that’s the way it used to be.
Growing up in school, I had an insatiable drive to be good at everything.
From academics to music to sports, I needed to be the best of the best. If I wasn’t and there wasn’t an iota of potential I could excel at it in the near future, I’d quit whatever thing I was trying to do.
Why waste my time with one thing when I showed more natural promise for another?
Little did I know how, if left unchecked, it’d (negatively) spill into other areas of my life…
The first crack of oh-this-might-be-an-actual-problem awareness happened a couple of years ago, not too long after I started working at Homestead.
As fortune would have it, I was the only full-time copywriter on staff, and the bulk of the writing assignments were going to me.
The problem? I was a slow writer.
Why was I a slow writer? Because everything had to be perfect.
Turns out, when you’re writing for 18 different brands who each expect you to strategize and write nearly a dozen email campaigns for them, you don’t have time for perfection. You have time to say a prayer, send it out for approval, take a swig of water, and move on to the next one.
That was my first “aha moment.”
But I became most humbly aware of my perfectionistic tendencies nearly a decade into my marriage – when my efforts to hold everything together started to fracture a bit.
I knew I was a perfectionist when it came to performance-based initiatives (i.e. work), but I didn’t know I projected that same need onto my relationships, my friendships – my marriage.
If I disappointed Merridith, got into an argument with her or fell short in any area of our relationship or my responsibilities therewithin – I would spiral. Most times, I’d fall into a deep depression.
There was just so much more on the line when it came to cherished relationships than there was with acing a geometry exam, a music recital, or the pitch deck for a client.
After decades of living this way, it was no longer sustainable. It wasn’t bearing any good fruit – that’s for sure. Something had to change. So what did I do?
Well, I went to therapy (highly recommend btw).
Turns out that thirst for perfectionism wasn’t for perfectionism’s sake, but for validation’s sake because I had a lot of issues related to my inherent value as a human being. Yikes.
But I also picked up a little practice to help me overcome this… desire.. and you’re reading it.
It’s this newsletter.
Week in and week out, I sit down at my keyboard every Wednesday and start writing. No plan. No content calendar. No agenda. I take the first wild idea that crosses my mind and chase it with words.
It’s sloppy.
It doesn’t always make sense.
It almost always has nothing to do with the topic at hand (copywriting).
But I don’t care. Because in the almost two years I’ve been writing this weekly newsletter, I’ve found a new kind of courage – the courage to just ship stuff.
Honestly (and I mean that honestly), your opinions matter to me. I love reading them. I love your comments (though rare). I find them all valuable.
But I genuinely don’t write this particular “column” for you. I write it for me. Because in many ways, it’s helped helping me overcome my perfectionism one unhinged thought at a time.
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