202. When the Need to Get It Right Backfires
Are you stuck in the trap of trying to get everything just right?
This week, I’m tackling a common thought pattern that plagues many high achievers and perfectionists: "I have to do this right."
While this mindset can drive quality work and offer a sense of control, it often comes with significant downsides like procrastination, burnout, and missed opportunities for growth.
I’ll break down why this thought pattern can backfire and introduce a powerful new mindset shift you can make to set yourself up for more success and satisfaction.
This episode is packed with insights and practical tips for anyone looking to overcome the pressure of perfection and start making real progress toward their goals.
Want customized support creating your wildly delicious life? Let’s hop on a free consultation call.
I’ll help you understand the blockers you’re facing and how to handle them moving forward. And I’ll share how a three-month 1:1 coaching package could supercharge your progress as well as your satisfaction.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why the thought "I have to do this right" is so common among high achievers and perfectionists.
The benefits and hidden costs of this thought pattern.
How the need to get it right can lead to procrastination, burnout, and stunted growth.
A powerful mindset shift to overcome perfectionism and start taking meaningful action.
Practical thought replacements to help you get started, keep going, and finish strong.
How to balance high standards with the need for progress.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about the need to get it right.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. It’s Kori Linn, welcome to another episode of Satisfied AF. Today we’re diving into a thought pattern I see a lot of people struggling with, especially those of us, and yes us, because sometimes I’m one of them, those of us who tend to be perfectionists or high achievers. It’s the thought, “I have to do this right.”
If you’ve ever found yourself procrastinating on important work, stuck in the middle of a project, asking everyone around you what the best possible way to move forward is, or just perfecting your work to death because you feel pressure to produce the very best work possible, then this episode is for you.
This thought pattern often shows up for folks who are ambitious, who care deeply about their work and who have high standards. This could be you if you’re a solopreneur trying to get your business off the ground. I’ve been there, it’s tough. It could be you if you’re a creative stuck in the planning phase of a new project. Or it could be you if you’re someone working in a high pressure job where the stakes feel really intense.
This thought pattern can hit hard for people who are used to excelling and who don’t want to put something out in the world unless it’s top quality. In my experience, this is especially true for women, people of color, queer folks, and anyone who’s had to work a little, or let’s be honest, a lot harder to prove themselves in environments that weren’t designed with them in mind and where most of the high performers don’t look like them or don’t reflect their identity in some way, because identities are not just about how we look, obviously.
But where does this thought come from? Often this thought is rooted in our upbringing or societal conditioning, but it can also be something we learned from our own lived experience. Many of us grew up in environments where making mistakes was frowned upon, and sometimes it might have even been downright scary. There may have been spoken or unspoken pressure to excel beyond reproach due to one or more of your identities.
A trusted elder may have insisted that you have to be twice as good to get half as far. And there may be lots of statistical data to back that up. Maybe you were praised for being the smart one or the talented one, and now the idea of not doing something to the utmost perfection of rightness could feel like a threat to that identity.
There’s also the influence of existing in a results driven culture that equates success with perfection. Many of us were taught to believe that anything less than perfect just isn’t good enough. And let’s be honest, that can create a lot of pressure. And what I also want you to take away from that is if you have this thought pattern, there are probably some very good reasons you have the thought pattern.
And not only that, this thought pattern has probably helped you in some ways. And to dig further into that, let’s look at the benefits of this thought pattern, because let’s be real, the thought pattern isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be tempting to hold onto a thought pattern like this because a lot of the time it’s gotten you pretty far in certain ways. Let’s walk through what those could be like.
First, this thought pattern drives high quality work. We love that. When you think everything has to be done right, you’ll work hard to deliver on that. And because of that, this thought pattern may have also protected you from criticism. If you consistently produce excellent work, there’s less chance you’re facing negative feedback, or you’re maybe facing less negative feedback because, let’s be honest, even with excellent work, we can’t always avoid negative feedback.
And third, this thought pattern can be something that gives you a sense of control. It gives you a tangible goal to aim towards with the promise that if you achieve that goal, if you do things right, you’ll be safe, happy, and successful.
It sounds like a great thought pattern, right? But the question is, what is the cost of this thought pattern? And is it actually able to deliver on those benefits that it promises? To answer the first question, let’s take a look at the downsides of this thought pattern.
The first downside is that it can lead to procrastination. As much as it might seem like the mindset of “I have to do this right” would lead you to getting it right, it can actually lead to so much pressure that it blocks you from doing anything at all. And if you do manage to get started, it can be easy to get stuck working on that project forever because it’s never quite as good as it could be with just a little bit more effort.
At work, most high performers will make it past the procrastination stage because the fear of failure will eventually beat out the fear of doing it poorly. But in your personal life, you might never make it to the action stage, which means a lot of dreams, desires, and potential will sit untapped for days, weeks, years, maybe even your whole life.
The second downside of the “I have to do this right” mindset is that it can lead to burnout. Trying to do everything to the highest standard all the time is exhausting. It is quite literally an unsustainable workload. And guess what? Unsustainable workload is one of the key risk factors for burning out. And if you want to learn more about that, I have a whole podcast episode about the six risk factors for burning out. But for now, we’re going to stick with this.
Okay, the third downside is that this thought pattern reduces your learning and growth. When you’re obsessed with getting everything right, you might avoid trying new things or taking risks because that would be harder to get those right, right? One, this means you’re missing out on tons of opportunities for growth. Two, you may be missing out on the things you can actually do the best, or which might be the most fulfilling for you, because maybe those are things that you’re not going to try when you think you have to get everything right.
And to answer the second question, whether this thought pattern is able to deliver on its promised benefits, I’ll say this. It’s a short-term yes, but a long-term no. The desire to get things right and the insistence that you must get them right can be useful if applied thoughtfully and for a limited window of time.
Finalizing an advertisement that will run in a printed piece of media, spend an hour or so obsessively checking its details. Performing a life-saving surgery, do your very best to get that perfectly right. Giving a toast at your bestie’s wedding, practice until you could do it in your sleep. But for the long haul of your life, personal and professional, trying to spend all your time in this mindset will prevent you from pursuing so many interesting things and drain your energy until everything feels meaningless.
So the “I have to do this right” thought pattern has a time and place, but now you need a new general mindset to help you achieve your goals and feel good doing it. Where the “I have to do this mindset often leads to procrastination, stress, and burnout, we want something that leads to action since action is actually how things get done.
We also want something that feels good, or at least good adjacent, instead of something that feels like so much stress and pressure as like having to do things perfectly. Because when we move ourselves towards action and when we can make taking the action feel neutral or even good or like less pressure, then that’s going to help us stick with it and it’s going to help us get to where we want to go without burning out along the way.
Okay, the thought I’m going to offer you is not super sexy. It doesn’t sound super high achievery, but it will get you moving. And that’s what we want. Here it is. Taking action is better than doing it right. Yeah, the high achiever in you might hate that because we’re all still very attached to doing things right. We’re all still very attached to excellence.
But I think you’ll find that this thought pattern actually leads to excellence as much as, and if not more than the other thought pattern. But because each thought hits each person a little bit differently, I’m also going to offer you a few variations to try on as well.
So the original thought I offered was that taking action is better than doing it right. And because each thought hits each person a little differently, I’m going to offer you a few variations to try on as well. If you’re struggling with getting started, here are some you could try.
Getting started is best. Getting started is good enough. Getting started is the right thing to do. The way to get it right is to get it started. You know how to get started. You’ve got this.
And in case you’re a person who easily gets started, but finds yourself struggling with the middle or the finishing touches, here are a few more. For the messy middle you can say things like the way to get it right is to keep working on it, even though this part is hard. Or just keep going until it makes sense again.
That’s actually when I use myself a lot when I’m writing, because there’s always a part in writing anything, whether it’s a blog post or a short story where I’m just like, what’s even happening here? And I get so frustrated. But I know if I keep going past that things will start to make sense again.
Okay, some other ones you can try are, you know how to do this. You’ve got this.
And if where you actually struggle is in stopping and in not perfecting things to death at the very end, here are a few more you can try. The right version is the completed version. This is right enough. This is good enough to, fill in the blank with whatever the stated goal of the product is. Like for my work as a coach, I’m often like, this is good enough to change one person’s life. Like that is one of my stated goals in making the podcast and the other content that I make.
Here are some more, sharing this final product is how I learn to make even better final products. You know how to create good finished products and you’ve got this.
You might notice that you’ve got this is on every single list. And I just think it’s a really powerful Swiss army knife thought that you can use at any level of like putting it back into your confidence and your capability, versus like the pressure for you to achieve a specific outcome. You’ve got this implies that you know how to achieve the outcome and all you have to do is start working and do the things you know how to do, do the good work.
Shifting from, “I have to do this right” to some version of one of those thoughts that we just listed through is incredibly powerful because it moves you from a place of paralysis and a place of pressure to a place of action and a place of confidence. It allows you to focus on progress rather than perfection. And guess what? Focusing on progress is actually what often gets things moving and then gets things done.
So let’s talk about the benefits of the new thought pattern. One of the biggest benefits of this new mindset is that it actually addresses the things you thought were benefits of the old mindset. Remember how we talked about maintaining high standards? When you focus on doing the work rather than getting it right, you actually have the chance to iterate and improve as you go. This will likely result in better work. Now you’re in motion, making real progress rather than being stuck in your head or stuck in that kind of perfecting mode.
And guess what? You’ll still have control, but now it’s over your actions and your learning process rather than over a static, unrealistic idea of perfection. And when you spend more time doing the work, you’ll still very likely create high quality, compelling work.
And it turns out doing things this way can also protect you from criticism as well. At least as well as anything can, since sometimes criticism rears its head, no matter how well we do. And even if you’ve been doing things, trying to get everything right, I bet you’ve still experienced some criticism along the way. And criticism isn’t fatal. There’s actually a whole podcast episode about how to transform criticism into a blueprint for success.
This new mindset also helps you overcome the downsides of the old one. First, by doing the work, you combat procrastination. Action begets action, and the more you move forward, the easier it becomes to keep going. Second, it helps prevent burnout. Instead of stressing yourself out trying to be perfect, you can approach your work with curiosity and a willingness to learn from whatever happens.
You’ll also be more willing to break your work down into doable chunks, rather than expecting each working session to produce the final product. And third, this new mindset opens up new learning opportunities. When you’re willing to do the work, even if it’s not perfect, you’ll find yourself learning and growing in ways you never could have if you were putting so much pressure on yourself to always, always get it right.
So what can you expect if you make this mindset shift? You can expect to see real tangible progress on the projects that matter to you. You’ll find yourself working on and achieving goals that once felt out of reach because you’ll be taking consistent action, instead of waiting for the perfect moment. You will very likely also find that you’re less stressed and more energized because you’re no longer carrying the heavy burden of trying to be perfect all the time.
And perhaps most importantly, you’ll start to build a sense of confidence and competence that comes from knowing you can handle whatever comes your way and go after the dreams and goals you want to pursue, even if you’re not quite sure how to do them well yet.
To wrap things up, shifting from “I have to do this right” to some version of taking action is better than doing it right. It’s a game changer. It’s a shift that can help you break free from procrastination, avoid burnout, and start making real progress towards your goals. It’s not that there’s no place for working hard to get it right. It’s just that most of the time taking action is what’s actually going to get you where you want to go and get you there without burning out.
So the next time you find yourself caught up in the need to get something just right, ask yourself, is this a short-term situation where it’s really necessary to get it done perfectly? Or is this a situation where it’s better to just take some action and learn along the way, even if it’s not perfect? Most of the time, just taking action is going to be the thing that allows you to achieve your goals and enjoy yourself along the way.
If this episode resonates with you and you want to work on your thought patterns with a trained and certified coach, I’d love to support you in that journey. Reach out and let’s have a conversation about working together to get you feeling satisfied AF because you deserve nothing less.
Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend or leave a review. It helps others find the podcast and get the support they need too. Until next time.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. It’s Kori Linn, welcome to another episode of Satisfied AF. Today we’re diving into a thought pattern I see a lot of people struggling with, especially those of us, and yes us, because sometimes I’m one of them, those of us who tend to be perfectionists or high achievers. It’s the thought, “I have to do this right.”
If you’ve ever found yourself procrastinating on important work, stuck in the middle of a project, asking everyone around you what the best possible way to move forward is, or just perfecting your work to death because you feel pressure to produce the very best work possible, then this episode is for you.
This thought pattern often shows up for folks who are ambitious, who care deeply about their work and who have high standards. This could be you if you’re a solopreneur trying to get your business off the ground. I’ve been there, it’s tough. It could be you if you’re a creative stuck in the planning phase of a new project. Or it could be you if you’re someone working in a high pressure job where the stakes feel really intense.
This thought pattern can hit hard for people who are used to excelling and who don’t want to put something out in the world unless it’s top quality. In my experience, this is especially true for women, people of color, queer folks, and anyone who’s had to work a little, or let’s be honest, a lot harder to prove themselves in environments that weren’t designed with them in mind and where most of the high performers don’t look like them or don’t reflect their identity in some way, because identities are not just about how we look, obviously.
But where does this thought come from? Often this thought is rooted in our upbringing or societal conditioning, but it can also be something we learned from our own lived experience. Many of us grew up in environments where making mistakes was frowned upon, and sometimes it might have even been downright scary. There may have been spoken or unspoken pressure to excel beyond reproach due to one or more of your identities.
A trusted elder may have insisted that you have to be twice as good to get half as far. And there may be lots of statistical data to back that up. Maybe you were praised for being the smart one or the talented one, and now the idea of not doing something to the utmost perfection of rightness could feel like a threat to that identity.
There’s also the influence of existing in a results driven culture that equates success with perfection. Many of us were taught to believe that anything less than perfect just isn’t good enough. And let’s be honest, that can create a lot of pressure. And what I also want you to take away from that is if you have this thought pattern, there are probably some very good reasons you have the thought pattern.
And not only that, this thought pattern has probably helped you in some ways. And to dig further into that, let’s look at the benefits of this thought pattern, because let’s be real, the thought pattern isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be tempting to hold onto a thought pattern like this because a lot of the time it’s gotten you pretty far in certain ways. Let’s walk through what those could be like.
First, this thought pattern drives high quality work. We love that. When you think everything has to be done right, you’ll work hard to deliver on that. And because of that, this thought pattern may have also protected you from criticism. If you consistently produce excellent work, there’s less chance you’re facing negative feedback, or you’re maybe facing less negative feedback because, let’s be honest, even with excellent work, we can’t always avoid negative feedback.
And third, this thought pattern can be something that gives you a sense of control. It gives you a tangible goal to aim towards with the promise that if you achieve that goal, if you do things right, you’ll be safe, happy, and successful.
It sounds like a great thought pattern, right? But the question is, what is the cost of this thought pattern? And is it actually able to deliver on those benefits that it promises? To answer the first question, let’s take a look at the downsides of this thought pattern.
The first downside is that it can lead to procrastination. As much as it might seem like the mindset of “I have to do this right” would lead you to getting it right, it can actually lead to so much pressure that it blocks you from doing anything at all. And if you do manage to get started, it can be easy to get stuck working on that project forever because it’s never quite as good as it could be with just a little bit more effort.
At work, most high performers will make it past the procrastination stage because the fear of failure will eventually beat out the fear of doing it poorly. But in your personal life, you might never make it to the action stage, which means a lot of dreams, desires, and potential will sit untapped for days, weeks, years, maybe even your whole life.
The second downside of the “I have to do this right” mindset is that it can lead to burnout. Trying to do everything to the highest standard all the time is exhausting. It is quite literally an unsustainable workload. And guess what? Unsustainable workload is one of the key risk factors for burning out. And if you want to learn more about that, I have a whole podcast episode about the six risk factors for burning out. But for now, we’re going to stick with this.
Okay, the third downside is that this thought pattern reduces your learning and growth. When you’re obsessed with getting everything right, you might avoid trying new things or taking risks because that would be harder to get those right, right? One, this means you’re missing out on tons of opportunities for growth. Two, you may be missing out on the things you can actually do the best, or which might be the most fulfilling for you, because maybe those are things that you’re not going to try when you think you have to get everything right.
And to answer the second question, whether this thought pattern is able to deliver on its promised benefits, I’ll say this. It’s a short-term yes, but a long-term no. The desire to get things right and the insistence that you must get them right can be useful if applied thoughtfully and for a limited window of time.
Finalizing an advertisement that will run in a printed piece of media, spend an hour or so obsessively checking its details. Performing a life-saving surgery, do your very best to get that perfectly right. Giving a toast at your bestie’s wedding, practice until you could do it in your sleep. But for the long haul of your life, personal and professional, trying to spend all your time in this mindset will prevent you from pursuing so many interesting things and drain your energy until everything feels meaningless.
So the “I have to do this right” thought pattern has a time and place, but now you need a new general mindset to help you achieve your goals and feel good doing it. Where the “I have to do this mindset often leads to procrastination, stress, and burnout, we want something that leads to action since action is actually how things get done.
We also want something that feels good, or at least good adjacent, instead of something that feels like so much stress and pressure as like having to do things perfectly. Because when we move ourselves towards action and when we can make taking the action feel neutral or even good or like less pressure, then that’s going to help us stick with it and it’s going to help us get to where we want to go without burning out along the way.
Okay, the thought I’m going to offer you is not super sexy. It doesn’t sound super high achievery, but it will get you moving. And that’s what we want. Here it is. Taking action is better than doing it right. Yeah, the high achiever in you might hate that because we’re all still very attached to doing things right. We’re all still very attached to excellence.
But I think you’ll find that this thought pattern actually leads to excellence as much as, and if not more than the other thought pattern. But because each thought hits each person a little bit differently, I’m also going to offer you a few variations to try on as well.
So the original thought I offered was that taking action is better than doing it right. And because each thought hits each person a little differently, I’m going to offer you a few variations to try on as well. If you’re struggling with getting started, here are some you could try.
Getting started is best. Getting started is good enough. Getting started is the right thing to do. The way to get it right is to get it started. You know how to get started. You’ve got this.
And in case you’re a person who easily gets started, but finds yourself struggling with the middle or the finishing touches, here are a few more. For the messy middle you can say things like the way to get it right is to keep working on it, even though this part is hard. Or just keep going until it makes sense again.
That’s actually when I use myself a lot when I’m writing, because there’s always a part in writing anything, whether it’s a blog post or a short story where I’m just like, what’s even happening here? And I get so frustrated. But I know if I keep going past that things will start to make sense again.
Okay, some other ones you can try are, you know how to do this. You’ve got this.
And if where you actually struggle is in stopping and in not perfecting things to death at the very end, here are a few more you can try. The right version is the completed version. This is right enough. This is good enough to, fill in the blank with whatever the stated goal of the product is. Like for my work as a coach, I’m often like, this is good enough to change one person’s life. Like that is one of my stated goals in making the podcast and the other content that I make.
Here are some more, sharing this final product is how I learn to make even better final products. You know how to create good finished products and you’ve got this.
You might notice that you’ve got this is on every single list. And I just think it’s a really powerful Swiss army knife thought that you can use at any level of like putting it back into your confidence and your capability, versus like the pressure for you to achieve a specific outcome. You’ve got this implies that you know how to achieve the outcome and all you have to do is start working and do the things you know how to do, do the good work.
Shifting from, “I have to do this right” to some version of one of those thoughts that we just listed through is incredibly powerful because it moves you from a place of paralysis and a place of pressure to a place of action and a place of confidence. It allows you to focus on progress rather than perfection. And guess what? Focusing on progress is actually what often gets things moving and then gets things done.
So let’s talk about the benefits of the new thought pattern. One of the biggest benefits of this new mindset is that it actually addresses the things you thought were benefits of the old mindset. Remember how we talked about maintaining high standards? When you focus on doing the work rather than getting it right, you actually have the chance to iterate and improve as you go. This will likely result in better work. Now you’re in motion, making real progress rather than being stuck in your head or stuck in that kind of perfecting mode.
And guess what? You’ll still have control, but now it’s over your actions and your learning process rather than over a static, unrealistic idea of perfection. And when you spend more time doing the work, you’ll still very likely create high quality, compelling work.
And it turns out doing things this way can also protect you from criticism as well. At least as well as anything can, since sometimes criticism rears its head, no matter how well we do. And even if you’ve been doing things, trying to get everything right, I bet you’ve still experienced some criticism along the way. And criticism isn’t fatal. There’s actually a whole podcast episode about how to transform criticism into a blueprint for success.
This new mindset also helps you overcome the downsides of the old one. First, by doing the work, you combat procrastination. Action begets action, and the more you move forward, the easier it becomes to keep going. Second, it helps prevent burnout. Instead of stressing yourself out trying to be perfect, you can approach your work with curiosity and a willingness to learn from whatever happens.
You’ll also be more willing to break your work down into doable chunks, rather than expecting each working session to produce the final product. And third, this new mindset opens up new learning opportunities. When you’re willing to do the work, even if it’s not perfect, you’ll find yourself learning and growing in ways you never could have if you were putting so much pressure on yourself to always, always get it right.
So what can you expect if you make this mindset shift? You can expect to see real tangible progress on the projects that matter to you. You’ll find yourself working on and achieving goals that once felt out of reach because you’ll be taking consistent action, instead of waiting for the perfect moment. You will very likely also find that you’re less stressed and more energized because you’re no longer carrying the heavy burden of trying to be perfect all the time.
And perhaps most importantly, you’ll start to build a sense of confidence and competence that comes from knowing you can handle whatever comes your way and go after the dreams and goals you want to pursue, even if you’re not quite sure how to do them well yet.
To wrap things up, shifting from “I have to do this right” to some version of taking action is better than doing it right. It’s a game changer. It’s a shift that can help you break free from procrastination, avoid burnout, and start making real progress towards your goals. It’s not that there’s no place for working hard to get it right. It’s just that most of the time taking action is what’s actually going to get you where you want to go and get you there without burning out.
So the next time you find yourself caught up in the need to get something just right, ask yourself, is this a short-term situation where it’s really necessary to get it done perfectly? Or is this a situation where it’s better to just take some action and learn along the way, even if it’s not perfect? Most of the time, just taking action is going to be the thing that allows you to achieve your goals and enjoy yourself along the way.
If this episode resonates with you and you want to work on your thought patterns with a trained and certified coach, I’d love to support you in that journey. Reach out and let’s have a conversation about working together to get you feeling satisfied AF because you deserve nothing less.
Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend or leave a review. It helps others find the podcast and get the support they need too. Until next time.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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203. You Don’t Have to Be How You’ve Always Been
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