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Transcript

Bring Your "B" Game · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyRiderLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you an honest question.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you struggle with being a perfectionist?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if the answer is yes, let's talk about a strategy that can help you overcome it immediately.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: But first, let's deal with this question.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: What is perfectionism in the first place?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Perfectionism is the tendency to get paralyzed by the idea that your work is never good enough.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Perfecists imagine that there's a standard out there that they can never reach.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: They have convinced themselves that they will be an utter failure unless they reach that impossible standard.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, they never take action and instead live in this perpetual state of frustration.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me give you the strategy to help you overcome perfectionism.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you think of yourself as a perfectionist, you're always shooting for what I would call A-level work.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the problem is that your definition of an A is so far above everybody else's that it's just unreachable.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the key is to have more realistic standards.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: You need to adjust your standard of perfectionism so that you are shooting for B level work, maybe B plus at the best, or maybe an A minus, if you want to frame it that way.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now you might think that I'm saying to quote unquote lower your standards, but remember that your standards, if you're a perfectionist, your standards are so unrealistically elevated that your B is everybody else's A.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So make it your goal to do B level writing and do B level work if you really struggle with being a perfectionist.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us don't have the capacity to be objective about our work anyway, so you have to trust that your B is truly an A in everybody else's eyes.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: When you shoot for a B, you can get work done much more quickly, you can move on, and you can still be considered excellent in everybody else's eyes.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, you know, you can always improve your writing in the editing process.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what I'm talking about here is really getting through the first draft of something.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, when I'm doing client work, for example, I don't shoot for a B, I shoot for an A plus plus plus, because that is client work.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that goes through many rounds of editing, rewrites, and so forth.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm really talking about here is you've got to set aside this perfectionism that is stopping you from getting your first drafts done.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's stopping you from just getting in there and completing things that are really, really important to you.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of great writers have been sidelined because their standards are so high that they never finished a first draft.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So don't let that happen to you.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Shoot for B-level work, especially in your first drafts, and you're gonna find that really helps your perfectionism.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is what has helped to me, honestly, the last uh couple of years is I have done this podcast.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: When you do a daily podcast like this, you cannot get stuck on perfectionism.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I I will record a section a couple times.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'll record whole uh whole episodes.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now these episodes are short for the most part, but sometimes I'll record an episode two or three times when I'm starting to record a batch of episodes, but for the most part, I just get in there and I just do it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I shoot for B level work, and that has to be good enough because I can't spend, you know, two days a week uh re-recording these podcasts a hundred times to make sure everything is totally perfect.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I just get in there and I do it at B level work, and I find that my B, uh, because I tend to be a perfectionist, my B level work is good enough for 99.999% of the people.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I encourage you to adopt the same strategy.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: How could doing B level work help you get your first draft done?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that, and I will see you in the next episode.