If you’re looking at this blog post at publication, it looks incredibly basic. How have I let something this bland be the first personal tech project I publish?

Let’s talk about perfectionism

Having high standards should be the gold standard, right? You spend hours crafting a flawless project that displays the absolute best of what you have to offer and everybody stands up and applauds and that man’s name, Albert Einstein. As the old adage says, ‘perfect is the enemy of good’. Once the mind is set on making something that is perfect, it’s doomed to never complete. The project’s scope widens and changes, progress drags and eventually you get bored and abandon it entirely. Now that one “failure” buried itself in your head, the perfectionist approach to the next half-finished project will be ever stronger because “this one will be perfect!” …and the cycle of half finished projects and failure continues.

This is where I found myself. If you find yourself here too, here’s what to do:

Decide what to make. Figure out how to make it. Then make it!

The important part is that first step. Decide what to make, then do not make anything else. You’ll be distracted by imperfections and shiny toys at every turn but any time you find yourself adding more things, stop and ask yourself whether they’re achieving your original plan?

For this singular blog post, here’s my checklist:

  1. Can be read by other people on the internet
  2. Teaches something about deploying a website
  3. Doesn’t look like garbage
  4. Contains enough words to look like a real blog post

One tool that can be leveraged for getting past perfectionism is using somebody else’s work! This site uses a static site generator, Jekyll, thus accomplishing the above points:

  1. Static sites are just plain files that are easy to publish and easy to understand for somebody with a basic understanding of HTML
  2. I could easily set up an account on a blogging platform such as Medium, but all that teaches me is how to write. Setting up a blog using a static site generator allows for much more learning opportunities down the road
  3. Generating a new site (by running jekyll new its-my-blog) includes default styles that look reasonable (if boring) on most devices
  4. Blog posts are written in markdown and converted to HTML behind the scenes, which makes it easy to concentrate on the content.

And that’s how these words have appeared on your screen. Hopefully more will follow.

In summary, if you feel like everything you produce must be perfect, ask yourself whether that desire is holding you back from completing what you really want. Find a goal, decide how to get there, and just Do It!