Perfectionism is a pernicious evil. We’ve shared other articles discussing how perfectionism hurts your productivity and your ability to call any project complete, leaving you unable to move forward on new works. But it also has a personal cost, as Renée Brack says in this article for the Stage 32 blog.
Brack inherited perfectionism from her dad, an artist whose mentor said “Near enough isn’t good enough.” While he painted for 60 years, Brack’s father never had an exhibition. “Nothing was perfect,” she explains. “It robbed him of so much joy and satisfaction and held him back from moving forward in life.”
Perfectionism can make you difficult to work with, too demanding of colleagues, vendors, and employees, and often unreliable with your deadlines. If you suffer with perfectionism, Brack suggests asking whether or not the particular detail holding you up will mean anything to the audience. Will changing that element help them understand or love your story more? If the answer is no, step away.
Perfectionism is self-inflicted gaslighting. You become anxious and obsessed about work others believe is excellent. But it’s also hard to beat. If you struggle with letting go of the need to be perfect, Brack suggests channeling your efforts into achievable goals: accuracy and excellence.
During post-production on a film, Brack may be tempted to fuss with the mix until it’s reached some mythical perfection. Instead, she focuses on concrete elements that might distract the audience or add to the experience. In her work, that means finding sounds that shouldn’t be there, heightening the music to convey emotion, and finding spelling errors in subtitles.
Brack also recommends playing the film backwards – or for our purposes, reading backwards. Take yourself out of the character’s journey to see discrete elements with new eyes. “This approach forces us to focus on the technical and mechanical aspects of the online output,” Brack explains.
“Perfectionism kills creativity and the satisfaction we all deserve as artists, writers and filmmakers,” Brack concludes. “Like my dad, don’t wait to have the exhibition until after you’re dead. Meet those deadlines while you’re alive. It’s easier to enjoy them when we’re still here.”
