On Fretting and Perfectionism

A few weeks ago I was listening to an episode of the Excellence Actually podcast where Clay interviewed Nick Thompson, the CEO of The Atlantic. Nick is one of those annoying people who seems to do everything well: gifted leader, prolific writer, very good runner. Also: he does a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

In the middle of the interview, he drops this little productivity grenade:

“Time spent fretting about a task is always better spent doing the task.”

It wasn’t the main point of the conversation, but it stuck in my brain and refused to vacate. Probably because I spend a fair amount of my day fretting. The voice in my head (who is, to be clear, an asshole) is constantly narrating how hard something is going to be or how ill-equipped I am to do it.

Take my morning rides. I love being on the bike. And yet many mornings start with the same monologue: You’re legs are garbage. Traffic’s going to be bad. The route is boring. You’ll probably get a mechanical. On and on it goes. After all that worrying and brain-based suffering, guess what I usually (always) do? I get on the bike. And almost without exception, none of the catastrophes the jerk in my melon was advertising actually happen.

That would be mildly hilarious if it only showed up in my riding. It doesn’t. I see the same pattern when I sit down to write, or to start working on a tough project-really do anything I know that benefits me in the short, or long, run. My brain throws up a slideshow of anything and everything that might go wrong, and I get stuck on this idea of the “perfect” moment to start.

That’s why Nick’s line hit me so hard. It points to a simple, uncomfortable truth I’m trying to live with: most of my suffering comes not from doing the thing, but from imagining how the thing might not be as perfect as I'd like it to be. The only way through is to act anyway-to start the ride, write the bad first paragraph, ship the wonky first version—and trust that I can edit once I’m in motion.

Why starting works better than fretting

So if my brain is wired to overreact, why does Nick’s advice — “time spent fretting about a task is always better spent doing the task” — actually work?

I think it’s because the moment I start, my brain has to shut down the disaster channel and pay attention to reality. I go from imagining how terrible something might be to just experiencing whatever is actually there. And reality is almost always kinder than the trailer my brain was running.

Take the bike again. Before I swing a leg over the top tube, I’ve already ridden the whole thing in my head: the traffic is awful, the route is boring, the wind is in my face both ways somehow, I’m exhausted, I flat twice, and at some point I end up in a ditch questioning my life choices. By the time I’ve finished that little mental movie, I’m already tense and annoyed and I haven’t even put on my shoes.

That’s suffering number one.

Then, eventually, I stop negotiating with myself and just get on the bike. And yeah, maybe there is a bit of traffic. Maybe I am a little tired. Maybe the route is not exactly the most scenic thing on earth. Fine. That’s suffering number two — the real, small, physical kind that comes with doing anything that matters.

But I was always going to ride. The ride was happening one way or another. All that fretting on the front end just meant I did the same ride plus a bonus pre-ride in my head where everything was worse. When I start sooner, I don’t just become “more productive.” I literally cut my total suffering down.

The other big thing starting does is give my overprotective brain new evidence. Five minutes into a ride it can’t argue with the facts: • I’m moving. • I’m not dead. • This is not pure misery.

Same thing with writing. As long as the document is closed, my brain can say, “This is going to be impossible. You have nothing to say. It has to be perfect and it definitely won’t be.” The second there’s one ugly, clunky paragraph on the screen, it has to concede, “Okay, you did start. The world did not end. We can probably survive a second paragraph.”

Action turns the volume down on the what-ifs, because it replaces them with what is. My inner risk manager still mutters in the background, but it’s a lot harder to take him seriously when I’m actively doing the thing he said I couldn’t handle.

And the best part is that “starting” does not have to be dramatic or heroic. Most of my starts are embarrassingly small: • Put on bibs and fill bottles. • Open the doc and write the worst first sentence I can think of. • Make the empty repo and toss in a throwaway “hello world” commit.

None of that is impressive. It doesn’t need to be. These are just tiny, crappy first drafts of action. Their only job is to move me from fretting about the idea of doing the thing into actually doing some version of the thing.

That’s where all the interesting stuff lives. Once I’m in motion, I can speed up, slow down, edit, revise, steer. I can respond to reality instead of trying to outthink it from the couch.

The holiness of the bad first draft

This whole pattern of just starting, even when it feels dumb and small, keeps reminding me of something George Saunders talks about in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Saunders is this wildly decorated short story writer who has spent years teaching a class on Russian fiction at Syracuse. The book is basically that class turned inside out. One of his big themes is how unglamorous first drafts really are. There is no genius lightning bolt. You sit down, you write something kind of embarrassing, and that mess becomes the raw material. The first draft’s job is not to be brilliant. The first draft’s job is to exist so you can see what you’re actually trying to do.

And here’s the key part that I have to remind myself of constantly: that bad first draft isn’t a detour on the way to progress. It is the progress. It is the only way the good version ever shows up. The “clean, polished final thing” I want is literally built out of that ugly first pass. No rough draft, no finished draft. No shuffling through mile-one awkwardness, no strong ride. The mess is not optional; it is the material.

The trouble starts when I forget that and treat the first draft like it has to be the final product. That is when my brain really ramps up the alarm. If the very first version has to be amazing, of course I will stall. Of course I will wait for the “right mood” or the “perfect conditions.” Of course I will sit there staring at the blank page or the Pycharm icon or the bike shoes, rehearsing how hard it will be and how far short I am going to fall. I am not just imagining the work being hard. I am imagining it needing to be perfect and then judging myself in advance for not living up to that fantasy.

Saunders offers a different trick. He treats the first draft as a kind of honest, rough sketch. It just has to be true enough that future me can look at it and say, “Got it, I see what you were going for, let’s clean this up.” When I take that view, everything gets lighter. The first miles on a ride are just the first draft of being on the bike. The first paragraph of this post is a first draft of what I think about action and perfection, not the definitive statement for all time. The first chunk of code is a first draft of the solution, not a verdict on whether I’m any good at my job. In all of those cases, that first draft is not “fake work”. It’s the first real moment of progress.

And this is where the Saunders idea snaps right into Nick Thompson’s line like perfectly fit Lego bricks. “Time spent fretting about a task is always better spent doing the task” is basically the productivity version of “give yourself a bad first draft.” Both are invitations for me to act in the face of imperfection. Instead of burning energy forecasting how hard and how imperfect it will be, I can spend that same energy making a rough version real. Once there is a ride, a paragraph, a feature, there is something to edit, refine, and enjoy. Nick is telling me to stop hanging out in the pre-ride mental horror show. Saunders is telling me the first lap is allowed to be ugly, and that it counts. Together, they leave me with one option that actually moves my life forward: start, badly if I must, because that bad first draft is the first step of progress, not the price of admission.