I’m sitting with my vocal coach.  Talking about what is and isn’t working right now.  Where I see success, and where there are still “opportunities”.  I notice there are times when I seem to just lose my concentration and go back to my old habits.

Then he says this…

“There has never been one singer in my studio who didn’t want just one more take.  No one, no matter how successful, has ever felt what they did was perfect.  You have to just let it go.”

#boom.

And here I thought I was the only one.  Or felt that way because I’m not a professional.  I’m not up to their standard.  Well, maybe I’m not up to their standard.  But it’s good to know they feel that way too.  That some of our most celebrated artists, actors, or musicians always feel like they could do more.  That it could be better.

In one sense, I guess that’s what drives us to keep improving.  But in the end, we do have to let it go.  We have to ship our work.

There’s a constant tension between wanting to wow and shipping it.  And I guess knowing when we’ve reached that proper balance only comes as we keep shipping.  Because at some point the incremental gains in quality or wow-factor are miniscule compared to the effort to get there.  And it simply becomes a delay tactic.  A way to hide.

Seth Godin talks about this all the time.  He knows we have a propensity to hide.  He does too.  It’s just that he’s practiced shipping to the point where it’s become natural for him.  And he’s gotten better at determining the appropriate standard for shipping.

That’s something I’m still learning.  Having a blog and podcast schedule certainly helps.  Yet, every time I do something new, I seem to have to practice this discipline all over again.

I wrote a new song.  And I went to record it to send to my voice coach for review.  I think I did about 10 takes.  And then deleted them all.  I wasn’t happy with any one of them.  There were too many mistakes.  Or there was a noise in the line between the keyboard and the mixer.  Or I couldn’t get the right balance between my microphone and the keyboard.  Or my voice sounded hoarse.  You get the picture.

I never shipped it.  I ended up singing it live in the studio.*  And probably made more mistakes there than I had on some of the recordings.

So today I’m practicing again.  With something even more scary.  Video.  I recorded it at my friend Ruth’s house.  We were rehearsing for an upcoming event.  We had a few practice rounds, and then I turned on the camera.  Now I’m sharing the result.

It isn’t perfect.  Not by a long shot.  I won’t even begin to go into what I see when I watch it.  And it’s good enough.  It shows how I felt as I sang this song.  It communicates what I intended.  This is me.  With Ruth.  Alive and sharing this moment.

Here’s the link.

Is there something you want to do, and are holding back because it isn’t perfect?  Maybe you’re waiting for the right picture for your sales page.  The right ending for your keynote speech.  The right theme song for your podcast.

Or maybe it’s not work-related at all.  Maybe you’re waiting for the perfect body.  The perfect house.  The perfect words.

There’s no such thing as perfect.  And everyone feels their “less than perfectness”.  So what do you want to do with that?  What do you plan to ship, even though you feel like it’s not ready?  Leave a comment.

* P.S., After I posted this, I edited my last lesson recording to take out the song.  Listen to it here.  It's definitely not perfect.