PerfectionisM

I've been a professional designer for over 12 years now and there are days where this Dream Killer still gets the best of me. What's worse is how often I see it kill the dreams of my clients because they can't seem to get over it and favour progress over perfection to truly help us realize their dreams together.

This is the story of how PERFECTIONISM crept into my life and stalled my dreams for years, because I didn't know how to "get over it..."

What started as a hobby in high school turned into a career of "making things look beautiful and communicate well". Back then I knew that it was all about "does it work?" –does what I'm making convey the message enough that people want to take action on it, understand it or are at least compelled to ask questions about it? If I had done that, I had done my job well.

It was about PURPOSE + PROGRESS.

I just happened to enjoy what I was doing too.

Then, after four years of University where I earned my Bachelor of Design in a highly competitive program the creeping feeling of Perfectionism began to show up everywhere: in my work, in my life and in my head.

Suddenly I was just *so aware* of how much better everything could be.

Nothing was good enough.

It could always be better.

So I stopped sharing things.

I spent longer making things.

And I began to fear asking for others opinions...

Because there was always something that could be fixed or made better in their eyes. It was exhausting. In hindsight I realize that I was actually a very fast creator, and that my first iteration was usually one of the best. Then I would spend hours re-doing it, doing it differently, doing it the same way other people were doing it, un-doing it and then finally,