There is a difference between perfectionism and production, and I’m confused between the two.
Why am I confused? I will tell you.
I’m confused because, at times, I feel that people who do things perfectly, even if they take more time, become much more successful than people who just keep producing things.
For example, there are YouTube channels where people upload videos every day. The videos are not particularly high quality. There is no editing, no B-roll, nothing special. They just switch on the camera and start talking. And yet, they don’t have too many views or subscribers.
Then there are people who upload videos occasionally, perhaps once a week or even once in a month, and somehow their videos get far more views and subscribers.
But then I see the opposite as well.
There are people who upload videos every single day and become extremely successful. They get millions of views and thousands or millions of subscribers.
There are exceptions on both sides.
And those exceptions are what confuse me.
What is the right path?
Should I just pick one path and start doing the things I want to do? Or should I first figure out what the right path is for me?
As far as I am concerned, I’m not a perfectionist.
I don’t like writing a script and then reciting it. Some YouTubers do that extremely well and become successful with it. But that’s not how I naturally speak. I’m more of an impromptu speaker. I’m not an actor who can memorize a script and then deliver it naturally.
At the same time, I have this hunch, this inner feeling, that if I actually wrote a script for a YouTube video, learned it, and then made the video properly, it would have much more impact than the videos I make when I speak impromptu.
And that is where another layer of confusion comes in.
I have never been a perfectionist, but I want to become one.
I want to be someone who does things in a detailed manner. I want to be someone who pays attention to small things and finishes what he starts.
Why?
Because I’ve observed something in my life. People who work that way seem to have much more control over what they are doing than people who simply do things on the spur of the moment.
When I look at my parents, I realize that they aren’t perfectionists either. So sometimes I wonder whether I have inherited this tendency from them. Maybe I’m simply wired this way.
I don’t know.
What I do know is that I have a very specific pattern.
I work hard, but I fall short toward the end.
I’ll do 80% of the work. I’ll put in the effort. I’ll get excited about something. I’ll spend days or weeks working on it. And then, when I reach the final 20%, something happens.
I don’t make the same effort.
I’ve seen this pattern in myself again and again.
And that is probably more important than whether I’m a perfectionist or not.
My confusion itself has become a problem.
I don’t take action because I’m confused.
Somewhere, I have to make a decision and say, “I will do this.”
But instead of doing that, I keep thinking about whether this is the right thing to do.
And then I see somebody else doing something completely different and becoming successful.
Then I question my decision again.
I think a lot of this confusion is coming from the data I consume on the internet.
There is a book called The Science of Getting Rich. The basic idea is that if you are reading this book to learn how to become successful, you shouldn’t keep reading other books on the same subject because they will confuse you.
He’s right about that.
Once you are about to enter a particular direction, too much conflicting information can make you lose your direction.
And I lose my direction every day.
That’s the problem.
My previous experience has been doing things just for the sake of doing them.
I can’t say that those things gave me nothing. They did give me something.
I made more than 700 videos for my YouTube channel.
I got views.
I got to know people.
I received comments.
I eventually got around 5,000 subscribers.
So it wasn’t a complete failure.
But it wasn’t what I wanted.
It wasn’t a breakout channel. It wasn’t a channel that made me feel that I had built something meaningful. It wasn’t a channel that gave me the kind of happiness or satisfaction I was looking for.
And then there are the books.
I’ve written a screenplay, an acting book, a short-story book, a poetry book, and other things. I’ve published nearly 16 books on Amazon Kindle.
None of them sold anything significant.
And this is where I get stuck.
Should I continue doing things simply because I want to do them?
Or should I make them better?
Should I spend more time on the script? Should I learn how to write better? Should I research the market? Should I make the cover better? Should I study YouTube? Should I learn how successful people are doing it?
Or should I just finish the damn thing and put it out?
I don’t know.
There are two more books I’ve already written sitting in my computer room, and I’m not working on them.
Why?
Mostly because somewhere inside me I feel that they won’t become successful.
And that’s a terrible place to be.
Because I know what I have to do.
I have to finish them.
I have to put them in front of the world.
Then the world can decide whether they are good or bad.
But I’m not making the effort.
Deep down, I feel very demotivated by all of this.
The confusion is killing me.
I don’t want to be confused anymore.
I want to make a decision.
I want to wake up one morning and say, “This is what I’m doing now.”
But I know myself.
I’ll make that decision today.
I’ll feel completely convinced today.
And then I’ll sleep.
I’ll wake up tomorrow morning.
And the doubt will be back.
I’ve seen this happen again and again.
I don’t seem to have the willpower to stay committed to my own decisions.
It has become normal for me to be confused every day. I decide to do something, then I see something else, then I start thinking about that, and eventually I stop following the original thing.
Maybe that’s the reason for my failures.
I don’t know.
Maybe I haven’t stayed with anything long enough.
Maybe I keep changing direction before something has had enough time to work.
Maybe I haven’t put enough effort into the final 20%.
Maybe I have been producing without enough thought.
Or maybe I have been thinking without producing enough.
I don’t know.
I don’t know anything anymore.
I’m still trying to understand why I haven’t become the kind of successful man I thought I would become.
Maybe it’s genetics.
Maybe it’s luck.
Maybe it’s discipline.
Maybe it’s my personality.
Maybe I’ve simply spent too much time consuming information and not enough time committing to one direction.
Maybe it’s something else entirely.
I don’t know.
I still don’t know.
But I do know one thing.
I cannot continue being confused forever.