High Standards or Hidden Fear? Learning to let go

I hear this quote all the time: “Done is better than perfect.”
Honestly, for a long time, I couldn’t disagree more. There was no way I was putting something out into the world unless it was perfect. No rough edges, no “close enoughs,” no half-formed ideas.

Was I always like this? I don’t think so. Maybe the seeds were always there, but they really started growing when I launched my own business. Suddenly I was putting my work out there, day after day, in front of paying clients and total strangers on the internet, when really, I was quite content flying under the radar.

When I first started out, Instagram was all about the curated grid. That actually worked in my favour at the time, it gave me permission to overthink every decision and analyse every post within an inch of its life. Now thankfully, things have become more relaxed and real, and I love seeing that in other people’s feeds. But me? I’m still a bit too conditioned to obsess over the grid. It’s 2025 and yep, I still do it.

But here’s where things get murky. In client work, you can’t just hand over something half-baked and call it a day. They’re paying you to deliver a polished result, and rightfully so. So where does “done is better than perfect” actually apply? And should it apply?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about all the ideas I’ve had that never made it out into the world, not because they weren’t good, but because I didn’t think I could execute them perfectly. That’s when it hit me, maybe this perfectionism thing isn’t the helpful little motivator I thought it was. Maybe it’s actually been standing in the way.

I used to believe perfectionism was a good quality. I held onto the idea that having high standards meant I was driven, that it would help me stand out in a saturated industry. To a point, that’s true. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with high standards. But when those standards start holding you hostage, when they stop you from starting or finishing something, that’s when they become a problem.

How do I know this? Because I’ve lived it. I’ve had countless projects that never saw the light of day. Some I poured time and energy into, then gave up on halfway through. Others I sat on for so long that someone else went and launched the exact thing I had dreamed up. I’ve procrastinated my way through plenty of tasks simply because I couldn’t stand the idea of putting out something that didn’t match the perfect image I had in my head.

I would get so caught up in the tiny details, trying to make everything just right, that I’d stall myself entirely. I wasn’t creating, I wasn’t finishing, I wasn’t growing, I was stuck.

I’ve been working hard on shifting that mindset lately, and I’ll be honest, I still have a few half-finished projects sitting on my desktop, but this time they’re going to make it out into the world. Because as much as I love the idea of perfection, I’m learning that it doesn’t serve me in every situation. The pain of looking back in a year and seeing that I never even tried? That’s worse than any imperfect outcome.

So where does all this come from? For me, I think it’s a mix of childhood beliefs and a fear of failure. It’s not that I want to fail, quite the opposite. I want to succeed. But when fear of failure is running the show, you never even give yourself the chance to succeed. You stay small. You play safe. You wait until things are “ready” and in doing so, you miss the very thing you were reaching for.

There’s that quote: “What if I fail? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?”
It gets me every time. Because we so often focus on the worst-case scenario, when we have just as much chance of things going right. What if it actually works? What if you put something out there and it changes everything?

That’s what I’m learning to lean into now. Yes, I still have high standards, and I’m proud of that. But I don’t want them to stop me from experimenting, from creating just to create, or from starting something that might lead somewhere unexpected. If I fail? So what. There are lessons in that too. There’s growth in that. Every time I step out of my comfort zone, it gets just a little bit easier. The first step is always the hardest, but once you get a taste of what’s on the other side, it’s hard to go back.

So, is done better than perfect?
For a long time, I would have said no.
Now? In most cases, yes.

Done means you’re in motion. It means you’re showing up, learning, evolving. It creates momentum, opens new doors, and takes you places perfectionism never will. In a blog post a while back, I shared that my word of the year was adventure, and honestly, letting go of perfectionism has been one of the biggest adventures of all.
Because when you stop resisting and start moving with the flow, you open yourself to a world of unexpected possibilities.

You don’t want to miss the boat.