The email sits in your drafts, revised for the fourth time. The project waits, almost done but not quite polished enough to ship. The closet stays cluttered because you don’t have time to organize it properly. The hobby never starts because you can’t commit to doing it right. Perfectionism whispers that you’re almost there, just one more pass, just a little more refinement, and everything will finally be good enough to release into the world.
But the bar keeps moving. Good enough becomes better becomes excellent becomes perfect, and perfect is a destination that doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, the email unsent, the project unshipped, the closet unchanged, the hobby untried, they accumulate. Perfectionism promises quality. What it delivers is paralysis dressed up as standards.
What if good enough wasn’t settling? What if, strategically chosen, it was actually the smarter goal?
The Hidden Cost of Perfect
Perfectionism isn’t just about high standards. It’s about the belief that anything less than perfect is failure. Psychologist Thomas Curran, who has studied perfectionism across cultures, calls it “the hidden epidemic of modern times.” His research shows perfectionism has increased substantially among young adults over the past three decades, driven by social comparison, economic pressure, and the curated highlight reels of social media.
The costs are real. Perfectionism correlates with higher rates of anxiety, depression, and burnout. It often manifests as the inner critic that never lets you feel finished. It predicts procrastination, not despite the high standards but because of them. When you can’t tolerate imperfection, you delay starting because starting means risking failure. You delay finishing because finishing means releasing something that could be judged. The perfect becomes the enemy not just of the good, but of the done.
But here’s what perfectionism obscures: in most domains of life, the difference between 80% and 100% requires disproportionate effort. The last 20% of polish often takes as long as the first 80% of creation. And the return on that investment? Diminishing, frequently invisible to anyone but you. The email you revised four times doesn’t communicate meaningfully better than the email you revised twice. The project polished to gleaming often teaches you less than the project shipped and iterated.
Strategic good enough isn’t lowering your standards. It’s recognizing that standards have diminishing returns, and that completion has value perfectionism doesn’t account for.
Choosing Where to Be Imperfect
Good enough doesn’t mean good enough everywhere. It means being intentional about where perfect matters and where it doesn’t. Not every domain of your life deserves the same standard.
High stakes and high visibility might warrant more polish. A job application, a wedding toast, a product launch, these are moments where the extra effort might genuinely pay off. But even here, “perfect” remains mythical. The goal is excellent enough, given the constraints of time, energy, and reality.
Low stakes and low visibility almost never warrant perfectionism. The email to your colleague, the dinner for Tuesday night, the Instagram post that will disappear in 24 hours, these don’t need to be perfect. They need to be done. Treating everything as high stakes is how you run out of energy for the things that actually matter.
Ask yourself: What’s the actual cost of imperfection here? If the answer is “my ego” or “someone might judge me” or “it won’t be as good as I imagined,” those are feelings, not consequences. Feelings are real, but they’re not reasons to stay stuck. The actual cost of imperfection is usually far lower than the actual cost of non-completion.
Practice Good Enough
If perfectionism is a habit, good enough is a practice. It requires intention, especially at first, because your default will be to keep polishing.
Set a completion threshold before you start. “This email is done when I’ve read it once and it makes sense.” “This project ships when these three features work, not when every edge case is handled.” “This meal is a success if we eat it.” Defining done in advance prevents the moving goalpost of perfectionism.
Ship before you’re ready. The first version of anything is never as good as you want it to be. Ship it anyway. Feedback from the real world teaches you faster than another round of solo refinement. Writers know this. The first draft is supposed to be bad. That’s what second drafts are for. But you can’t have a second draft without a first one.
Notice what happens when you release something imperfect. Usually, nothing catastrophic. The email gets a normal reply. The project works well enough. The world continues. Each time you survive imperfection, you build evidence that the stakes your perfectionism imagines aren’t the stakes reality delivers.
Distinguish between excellence and perfectionism. Excellence is achievable. It means doing your best within constraints, learning from feedback, improving over time. Perfectionism is unachievable. It means nothing is ever good enough, everything could be better, and therefore nothing gets completed. Chase excellence. Release perfectionism.
The Freedom of Done
There’s a specific liberation that comes from finishing. Not from finishing perfectly, but from finishing at all. The email sent, even if imperfect, no longer occupies mental space. The project shipped starts teaching you things the project unshipped never could. The hobby attempted, even poorly, opens doors that the hobby imagined keeps closed. Presence in a distracted world means engaging with life as it is, not waiting for perfection.
Done creates momentum. Perfect creates stasis. And momentum, it turns out, is where most of the interesting things in life happen. The writer who publishes regularly improves faster than the writer who perfects one piece for years. The entrepreneur who ships learns more than the entrepreneur who plans. The person who tries things, imperfectly, lives more fully than the person who waits until conditions are right.
Good enough isn’t the consolation prize. For most of life, it’s the actual goal, disguised by a culture that confuses perfectionism with virtue.
Your Good Enough
What’s one thing you’ve been perfecting that could be done instead? The draft waiting for one more revision. The plan waiting for one more variable. The conversation waiting for the perfect words. What would change if you decided that done, imperfect, complete, was actually the goal?
Perfectionism tells you that good enough is giving up. The truth is closer to the opposite. Good enough, strategically chosen, is giving yourself permission to move forward. It’s trading the fantasy of perfect for the reality of finished. It’s recognizing that your standards, in most cases, are higher than they need to be, and that meeting every one of them comes at a cost.
Some things deserve your best effort. Most things just deserve completion. Learning to tell the difference might be the most important skill perfectionism never taught you.
Sources: Thomas Curran’s research on perfectionism, studies on the psychological costs of perfectionism.
