Once I discovered the term ‘Disciplined Half-Ass’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, I immediately loved it. Learning how to become one is key to growing your business online.

Have you read ‘Big Magic’ ? I enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love and Committed even more so. I had seen the promotions for Big Magic when it came out, but it was only until I saw Elizabeth Gilbert interviewed by Marie Forleo that I ran out and bought it.

I think I read it in a day.

It had that signature Elizabeth Gilbert down-to-earthness, and earnest humor that I've come to enjoy, but what really struck me was what an excellent, accessible meditation on creativity, craft, discipline and practice this book is.

The principle that resonated with me most was her advice to be a ‘disciplined half-ass’. From the book:

The great American novelist Robert Stone once joked that he possessed the two worst qualities imaginable in a writer: He was lazy, and he was a perfectionist. Indeed, those are the essential ingredients for torpor and misery, right there. If you want to live a contented creative life, you do not want to cultivate either one of those traits, trust me. What you want is to cultivate quite the opposite: You must learn how to become a deeply disciplined half-ass.
It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: “So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun.”

This is me! Whenever I hear people talk about perfectionism, I think ‘Phew, good thing I don’t have that problem’.

I’ve never been detail oriented, and my motto is often ‘Good enough is fine’ or ‘Done is better than perfect’. This attitude has it’s own pitfalls, but it’s served me in good stead.

I do find that from time to time it’s good for me to collobrate with people that are extremely detail oriented, and push things to be ‘as good as they can be’, even if it drives me nuts.

However when I’m doing my own thing, ‘Fuck it’ is often (but not always!) the last thought before I throw something out there, especially when I’ve spent too much time futzing with it and just can’t decide if I like it.

I don’t know if this is exactly what Gilbert was cheerleading for, but I took it as such.

Why is being a disciplined half-ass good for building a business online?

Because you need to PRODUCE, a lot! You need to be regularly creating content and staying visible and that will be incredibly hard if you feel like everything you put out there has to be perfect.

Consistency is trumps perfection online. Every time.

I often tell my clients that a Launch in a Day website is not for perfectionists, but that on the other hand it’s perfect for perfectionists. It’s perfect because the enforced deadline rolls right over any perfectionist hemming and hawing.

As Gilbert writes, ‘We don’t have time for perfect.’ What we have time for is a launch, to put something out there. Don’t get me wrong, it will look professional, it will make you proud, but it won’t be perfect.

As Gilbert also writes ‘In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death’. It may run you to death, or cause you to procrastinate forever, or worse: keep you from putting anything out there at all.

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