Small bites and just start.

Having something done is better than perfect and not finished. I love to learn and a big part of the learning process is starting before you are ready. I have to remind myself of this often. I experienced this in so many different aspects of my life and unfortunately one of the worst parts of getting older is that it is harder for one reason or another to do this the older I get.

“There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bit at a time” Desmond Tutu.

If I want to learn to swim I have to get wet. When learning

to swim at some point you are going to have to get in the water. You can read as many books and watch documentaries on the

subject, but you will never learn until you jump into the water and start flapping arms. When approaching something new that is scary this is a trap, to keep studying everything and figuring out the perfect thing. But the truth to it is the person who just jumps into it will learn it much faster. I am not saying there isn’t value in working at it, or learning about it. I’m saying it is just going to make everything take longer than it normally would.

I have struggled for so long seeking perfection. This is a trap! A true master seeks continuous improvement rather than perfection. Continuous improvement is achievable.  In everything I do I just seek to be better than I was yesterday. This allows me to get better without the pain of falling short of perfection. Perfection is not achievable. I think of perfection as like if you were to be trying to walk across a room by only taking steps at half the distance each time. In theory you will never actually make it to the other wall because you are only splitting the distance in half each time and never actually reaching that other wall. You will get very close, but that other wall of perfection is never actually met. There is always something I can tweak or improve. For some this can seem like a negative but for me this is a wonderful thing. For me this is a freedom, to embrace that perfection is not possible and to just let go, then live in the excitement of continuous improvement. That is a world that I love to live in.

My mantra when I started my business was “good enough and on time.” So when I was developing the product I wanted it to be functional but most of all I needed to get something delivered to the customer. The cool thing about having a product that is not perfect is there is room to improve it over time as you get better. There are things that can only be learned by doing. Yes there are a lot of resources out there with the internet but the lessons learned with experience are always deeper. I learn more from mistakes than the wins. I do learn from the wins but often when something works I do not know why, while when something doesn’t work I know what didn’t work. Then I tweak and try again. The idea is to make sure the mistakes don’t debilitate so much that I can’t keep playing. I liken business or standup comedy to skateboarding where I take risks and do my best that those risks allow me to skate tomorrow.

Taking small bites is something that I struggle with like so many other people. I get excited about something so I just jump in and go for it. To go back to the learning to swim analogy, when learning to swim I don’t backflip off a bridge into a swiftly moving river. In fact in my whole swimming career, I may never have to jump off a bridge into a river or do a backflip. I can learn to swim in the shallow end of a pool. Small bites or small steps are so important in learning anything for several reasons. It allows for small wins and victories along the way to keep the progression rolling through all the hard times or dips. It feels achievable and often before I know it, I have done more than I realize. For example; I set out to learn to be a better writer. I am on my 13th article, and I had to go look that up. If I had started this and tried to write 13 articles all at once, they would not be as good, it would have been a huge undertaking and required a lot more effort than to just write one each week. The content is better too because I am able to spend time thinking on a subject and really bring something new each week or transcend each in one way or another.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed I just scale back more. I think how can I break this up even more? How can I slice this piece of elephant meat into an even smaller digestible bite that I can fit in my mouth? When I look at the whole thing it is overwhelming. I think it’s important to look at what I am working for, but not let that ever be a reason to stop. Just use it as my compass to make sure I am still on the path to my goal. I like to save this for my year end review and goal setting.  Day to day I set my focus on each small step, before you know it I will wonder what to do with all these elephant bones.

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Thank you for reading, You’re doing great. 

Bjorn RG.