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Stalling

Posted on | June 10, 2009 | 1 Comment

There’s another word for perfectionist: staller. There’s a phrase that explains this concept: “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” There’s a reason why I’m starting this post with statements like these: I’ve been using perfectionism as an excuse to stall because of fear.

I’ve known from the start that the cards are stacked (ha, cards! stacked!! I’m hilarious!) against me and GeekStack because of the limited time and money I can put into it. I let the odds against me subconsciously convince me that I wasn’t going to succeed and that it wasn’t worth my effort. Well, for the last several months that has been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since I had talked myself into believing I wouldn’t succeed, I avoided working on the important parts of GeekStack and instead tried to do a “perfect” job on stuff that didn’t matter.

When I was really honest with myself and admitted that yes, I was stalling, because yes, I was afraid I wouldn’t succeed, I had a little chat with myself. I said “Self, you might be afraid to fail, but you have two choices. You can drop the pretense of trying and choose another project to work on, or you can stop stalling, focus on the important things that will allow you to actually succeed or fail at GeekStack. Pretending to work is worse than being a failure or a quitter.” After recovering from my own stern talking to, I decided to recommit and shoot for success at the risk of failure.
As soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to start prototyping the game engine, one little piece at a time. I’m going to start with something pathetic that works and add to it incrementally until it’s ready to show off. I’ll demo it, get feedback, and incorporate that, but I always want to have something that runs. No more excuses. Just progress.