When we last heard from farmer David – that was me last weekend – I talked about how important it is to find people who already know the tips and tricks that help you move through problems quickly.
Farmer David on the Dream Machine
What is that great quote? I think it’s something like this: The smart man learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from other peoples’ mistakes.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve made plenty. And finally, I’m ready to make fewer.
The problem I was trying to solve was how to use the big Kubota tractor – my dream machine – with a Box blade and a front end bucket to smooth my washboard driveway.
And with my friend’s advice (let’s call him my driveway mentor), I had the answer to smoothing my drive – drive backwards and drag the front end bucket to scrape the driveway smooth. And it was working very well until…my perfectionism kicked in.
That’s never good.
Perfectionism stalls me at every turn if I let it creep into my life. I’ll give you a few examples – the first is the driveway.
Following my driveway mentor’s advice, I got the drive fairly smooth – but was concerned about the loss of gravel. So, I wasn’t aggressive enough with the bucket and the driveway had a few bumps in it – maybe more than a few.
Saturday night, I was taking Charlsa, my lovely wife, to dinner and we bounced out to the road. She turned to me and said, “maybe you should call an expert.”
How did I go from a relatively, but imperfectly, smooth driveway earlier in the day to an almost unpassable quagmire again.
I forgot my main rule – good enough is good enough.
A few imperfections became big rolling gutters in the drive as I obsessed over getting it just right. Saturday evening, I was trying to finesse the ground with the box blade – just the tool my driveway mentor said to stay aware from.
So, Sunday morning I was back on the tractor really going after the drive with the front end bucket – no box blade.
I didn’t care if there was a ridge of gravel down the middle of the drive. Or if some of the gravel spilled over the edge of the drive into the gutter. The point was to get it 80 percent.
And guess what, within a couple of hours – it was very smooth – so smooth, I could drive 30 miles an hour down the drive without bouncing. (I don’t usually do that).
And I thought about my business…
How many things are not completed because they’re not perfect? The answer for me is way too many! It’s a good question to ask yourself too.
What’s keeping you from releasing your product or your article or getting your blog up? If you’re waiting for it to be perfect, you’ll wait be waiting until the day you die.
Let go of it now. I promise I will too.
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