Criticizing myself, was like my hobby, believe me. I used to lose a lot of time with the most ridiculous stuff, trying to fix things that weren’t broken, trying to fix the minimum detail, always criticizing my own work, even when the clients were happy.
That weird behavior was making me lose a lot of time and of course a lot of money. One day I was doing a photo editing in Photoshop and after two hours, I finished this ridiculous work and it didn’t look well (at least to me). It took me another extra hour, and I still was not feeling well about the work (yes, was like Monk, really weird). After four hours of work, everything was done. That day at night I was thinking “What a hell I’m doing. I cannot lose a day just doing a freaking picture; I’ll never move forward or make any money that way”.
After that day, I decided to change the way I was doing business. I started thinking in a way of not loosing time, I started thinking in a way of not loosing time, and I sent unfinished work to a friend and waited for his feedback. I did the same with some clients, and I waited for their feedback. This was one of the most difficult things I ever did. Seriously, I sent emails to clients, and expended all the time just thinking “this guys will hate it”, “I could have taking more time on this”, in the end — all crap in my head. After a while, I started to notice some good feedback from clients, only asking for minor changes. Getting all this emails back with good feedback just helped me to be more comfortable with my work.
“Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solitude is the enemy of well-being.” ~ John Updike (1932-2009) American writer.
This was difficult to change; but I was able to stop being a perfectionist in my work and I stopped criticizing myself for no reason. Although I have attention to detail, and I try to push myself to give the best, changing that part of me have helped me a lot in my business.
Asking for feedback was the key for all the change. This helped me to move in the right direction without losing time.
Some things I’ve improved
- I used to start an idea and kill it, just because I was not happy and I could do what I wanted. This was making me lose a lot of time. Working with the initial ideas and modify, until I reach my goal, was the best way.
- Delivering my work on time was also a big issue, I used to take forever to do my work, and I didn’t delivered anything until I wasn’t completely happy.
- I learned to focus in what was really important. Focusing in what really matters, will help you improve and move forward a lot faster than you think.
Don’t be afraid of mistakes, people don’t care if you make mistakes, unless they are douches (or if you make them to lose money, but that’s other story). Really, if you are helping somebody, and you make a mistake, people will give you the chance to fix it.
PS:
After rambling around, I was able to finish this post and now I’m thinking in writing a novel… no need to call the cops, I was just kidding
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