In January, I made significant progress in my development journey, primarily relating to my focus on overcoming perfectionism and procrastinating. By focusing on deconstructing my perfectionist mentality, I increased my productivity significantly. Pure awareness of when I was falling into perfectionist traps allowed me to gently re-align my thoughts. Instead of wasting time each morning, I worked on various tasks which I previously had given up.
Progress Mindset
A progress mindset, where I acknowledge and appreciate the progress I make each day, creates a stimulating mental environment. Before changing my mindset, I was self-limiting. Now, I am eager to put in the work to make progress at things I love.
Dirty Windshield has decided to integrate audio into our growing platform in the coming months. With this exciting decision, I decided to self-teach audio recording and editing and co-learn ukulele while learning guitar. In the last entry, I mentioned guitar had taken a brief backseat, but this has changed. As of yesterday, I committed to daily lessons on both guitar and ukulele.
The realization that even the smallest progress daily grows to considerable improvement in a short time has fired me up inside. I do not have to be the best in the world, but I will be the best I can be. I enjoy and appreciate the process of my tasks much more now that I am not anticipating the result.
Creativity Progress
When I left my career as a project manager five months ago, I quickly realized how challenging it is to be consistently creative when the skill had not been suitably utilized for a while. Sure, managing medium- to long-term projects for clients from small mom-and-pops to Fortune 100 companies required creativity, but not in a way that mattered to me. My creative juices were flowing toward someone else’s dream for far too long.
Initially, I had some great ideas, but I would shut them down because I did not know how to complete it. With the new, healthier mindset I have been working on, I finally see significant increases in the number of creative ideas I can come up with. Now, one idea expands into pages of deconstructed information. I imagine the subconscious mind blocks specific plans when you are not ready to receive them. That mindset that you will fail or won’t be perfect at something prevents you from expanding the thought further. I am glad to be away from this misery.
Dirty Windshield Platform Expansion
The Dirty Windshield team has been hard at work this month brainstorming discussion topic and ways to enrich our platform. Quality content is so important to us and to reach a greater audience that we decided to expand our audio and video budget. My husband and I are both very excited to bring our real voices to the site and the world wide web. This month alone, we chartered six new internal projects which will result in an episodic Dirty Windshield podcast. This exciting endeavor shoves us way out of our comfort zones. There is so much to learn, but we are already making excellent progress.
Committed to Daily Progress
As the first month of 2018 nears its end, I am grateful for the progress I have made in so many aspects of my life. The steps taken to overcome perfectionism and procrastination unlocked a more emotional response than one would think. When you become aware of the self-created roadblocks in your life, you start to realize how they affected other areas of your life. In the past, I desired the immediate results, where now I crave the process and making progress.
Each day, I journal about my accomplishments, ideas, and inspirations. I always note at least three unique things I am grateful for that day. When my words cannot express, I spend time drawing or working on graphic design. In fact, I am learning a new program to enhance my capabilities. Although I am early on in the instrument learning process, I imagine my ukulele and guitars will also progress to the point where I self-express through them as well.
Final Thoughts on January’s Progress
Looking back, I admit that I was very critical of myself and others and not in a positive way. This habit is ingrained in much of society today. And, the pattern is not easy to break. The key is that it is ok to make mistakes, slip up, even criticize by accident; it is all part of being human. No one is perfect. We should not expect ourselves or others to be perfect. All we can do is learn from our experiences.
Life is meant to be experienced and enjoyed; not enough of us, do that. Worrying about unrealistic expectations will never spawn greatness. Live your life with honesty and integrity while working on self-improvement. Many people never reach their full potential and give up on their dreams.
I encourage you to work on breaking the habits of perfectionism and procrastination starting today. These two undermining habits are sabotaging to innovation, progress, and growth.
Links:
Entry 1 The Perfectionism Epiphany and Initial Days of Breaking Away
Entry 2 Creativity To Overcome Perfectionism
