Tuesday, August 4
Send it and leave it alone
The rough version is done.
Key takeaways
- Send the rough version before you polish it again
- Close the file and shut the laptop lid
- Write down one thing you will fix tomorrow
TL;DR
The rough version is done. Send it today, then stop touching it.
Close the file tonight
You already know how to make something badly on purpose. The harder part is letting somebody else see it while it is still ugly, and then going to bed without reopening it at eleven to move three words around.
Hit send while it stings
There is a window between finished and perfect where the thing is useful and you hate it. Most men spend that window sanding. You will tell yourself one more pass makes it respectable. It does not. It makes it late, and it makes you tired, and the work stops being work and becomes a hiding place. Send it while it stings. The sting is not a warning. It is just what it feels like to be seen before you are ready, which is the only way anybody is ever seen.
Photo by maxx foto on Unsplash
Stop reopening it tonight
Here is the part nobody warns you about. After you send it, your hands will want the file back. You will reread it looking for the typo that proves you are a fraud. You will find one. You will find three. Then you will lie there ranking your own competence at midnight like that is a hobby.
Don't. The thing is gone. Whatever is wrong with it can be fixed in daylight with a note, not fixed at night with dread. Write the fix on paper if you have to. Then close the laptop and let the day end.
Let someone else read it
You do not get to decide alone whether it was good enough. That is somebody else's job now. Their read will be less brutal than yours and more useful. And if they come back with real problems, good. You found them in one day instead of three weeks of private polishing.
Today
Send the rough version before dinner, then close the file and do not open it again tonight.
Go deeper
Perfectionism looks like high standards and works like fear. It keeps the unfinished thing in your hands where nobody can judge it, and where it also cannot do anybody any good. What you are actually protecting is your own reputation, and you are paying for that protection with the work.
There is a promise for men who are still rough and sent out anyway. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. Philippians 1:6. Completion is not your job tonight. Faithfulness with today's rough version is. Send it, sleep, and trust that being finished is somebody else's department.
Remember Yesterday
Put the day down. Tonight, one hour before your bedtime, stop whatever you are doing mid task and leave it for morning.
Remember Lasterday
Finish it to the last step. Take the one ungraded task you left at ninety percent and do the last step tonight.
Tomorrow's memo, every morning
One a day. No noise.
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