Want to be less busy AND more brilliant?

Work this out and everything gets better!

One of my more recent learnings which has really helped people become less busy and more brilliant is the concept of ‘100% perfect and 66% awesome.’

If we attempt to be 100% perfect at everything we do, we will tend to overthink, over-analyse and are at risk of procrastination and even making changes for the sake of making changes. The result can be we extend the amount of time to get even the smallest of tasks done. This can lead to burn-out and a lack of balance across all the important areas of our lives. For leaders it can impact our desire to delegate and when we do we can ‘over manage’ as oppose to empowering our people to run with actions and projects. Our desire for perfection, can mean we lose our sense of priority and focus, often to the neglect of our team.

In the arena of sales/service, perfectionism can mean we are too slow, miss opportunities and lose our competitive edge.

Equally, if we accept 66% for everything (the number is not the most important thing here, it is the concept), we are too sloppy and don’t set a high enough standard for ourselves and those around us. Avoidable mistakes are accepted and we lose our winning edge in the eyes of our customers.

The idea of ‘100% perfect vs 66% awesome’ is to work out where we need to be near perfect and where we can ‘decide - commit - go’ without having everything worked out or all of the answers.

For example, I will start a new project without knowing all of the actions I need to take to get to where I want to go. I want and need to be in the arena of action, then I will work it out. This is so much better than writing and rewriting a project plan and avoids meeting after meeting. From experience, I have found that once you are in the arena of action, the plan needs to change anyway!

Another example of ’66% awesome’ is that I post regularly on LinkedIn without re-reading and over-finessing every post, saving me significant time and ensuring I can be on the platform consistently.

By contrast, when I am sending a proposal to a potential new client, I want it to be as close to 100% perfect as possible. I will save it for my next high value action time-block when my mind is fresh and my energy is strong.

Finally, a great guide is to look to map HVAs to 100% and the LVAs to 66%. The things that matter most are done to the best of my ability, other less valuable actions can be done with speed and without overthinking and constant reworking.

Need help? Have you accessed our free Less Busy, More Brilliant’ winning guide and registered for our free webinars? Contact me today for details!