Is Perfectionism Just Procrastination in Disguise? | Jon Youshaei | TED

46,410 views ・ 2025-02-07

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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I have a confession.
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As a YouTuber, I make videos for a living,
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yet I still get severe anxiety every time I go to hit the upload button
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to post my next video.
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My desktop looks like this.
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I finish my video and I go to save it as "FINAL."
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But then I notice that I could trim off a few parts of it
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and make it even better.
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So I resave that file as "FINAL_FINAL."
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But then I'm like, wait, I can make the audio a bit better.
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I can make the color more saturated. Let me resave it as "FINAL_BUT_ACTUALLY."
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(Laughter)
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And then I repeat this process 29 more times
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until I save 29 more versions of that same damn video.
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until sometimes I honestly still don't upload it
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because it's still not good enough.
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My obsession with perfection got so bad that in my first year on YouTube,
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I only uploaded six videos.
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But hey, as they say, quality over quantity, right?
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What started to bring me out of my spiral was something I remembered
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during my eight years working at YouTube and Instagram,
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where I met many creators and artists before trying to become one myself.
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And specifically one person who completely changed my perspective
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on how creativity actually works.
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And that one person is none other than the one and only James Corden.
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Yeah, the guy from "Cats."
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(Laughter)
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You see, James did something so profound and different
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with his late night show and YouTube channel
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that he often doesn't get enough credit for it.
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For years, late night hosts had primarily structured their shows
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around two formats, two segments:
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monologues and interviews.
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But Corden came along and he's like, you know what?
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I'm going to experiment with 109 different formats,
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from Carpool Karaoke to Crosswalk the Musical to Riff-Off,
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to the point where he uploaded a staggering 5,700 videos,
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and he soon surpassed
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nearly all the other late night shows in subscribers
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despite starting from way behind.
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And while many of us may remember Corden
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for his popular formats, like Carpool Karaoke,
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which has now totaled over one billion views,
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we don’t even talk about and forget about the many, many flops he’s had.
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Like formats like Musical Chers,
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an actual format where he played musical chairs with Cher impersonators.
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(Laughter)
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That happened.
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And all of this got me thinking
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that maybe I should be creating more like Corden.
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Maybe I should be prioritizing publishing my work
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instead of just perfecting it, because you never know what will take off.
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And then it really hit home
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when I started seeing this trend across different artists,
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innovators and entrepreneurs throughout time.
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And I came across perhaps the biggest badass in history,
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Wolfgang Amadeus I'm-going-to-kick-everybody's-ass Mozart.
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Because Mozart wasn’t the masterpiece-making machine
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that history makes him seem to be.
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No. Some of his early critics called his music far too noisy.
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But Wolfie just brushed that dirt off his shoulder,
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and he proceeded to make over 600 compositions in his career
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before dying at age 35,
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which was far, far more than his peers,
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who only averaged 150 compositions despite living way longer.
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That was Mozart's method.
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He was obsessed about quantity as much as quality.
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He was committed to creating countless compositions
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that we have now forgotten
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to get the just small handful of masterpieces we now remember.
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But let's talk about another example.
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How about the guy who created this creepy cyborg doll?
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He got a ton of public ridicule, but by the way,
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he’s also the guy who invented 1,092 other inventions,
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including a little thing called the light bulb.
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So yeah, Thomas Edison didn't even have the best light bulb moments,
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yet he persisted past his imperfections and bad ideas, too.
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Or how about Monet, the legendary artist?
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Most people don’t know that he created over 2,000 works of art in his career.
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But here's what crushes my soul about Monet.
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Because that number should be way higher.
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You see, Monet was such a perfectionist
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that one time he worked on a set of paintings
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for over three years.
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Until at the last moment,
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when they were supposed to debut the paintings in Paris,
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he saw slight imperfections in the corners,
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so he took out a butcher knife
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and he slashed through every single painting he made.
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Because it wasn’t perfect enough for him.
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But curators and scholars today say that he destroyed
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over 3.4 million dollars worth of art that night,
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just because it wasn't perfect enough.
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Which got me thinking,
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how many of us are too much like Monet instead of Mozart, Edison or even Corden?
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How many of us slash our work at the last second
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instead of just shipping it?
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And how many of us have unknowingly left masterpieces on the floor
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because we got too in our heads?
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For me, it was only once I started shifting my mindset from Monet to Mozart
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that I saw a real change in my career as a creator.
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That after posting an embarrassing six videos in my first year,
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we went on to post 173 videos that got over 300 million views,
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and somehow our channel became one of the fastest-growing on YouTube.
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And yes, we had tons of flops, even more than ever.
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But I now realize that cringing at your past work is proof of progress.
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And sometimes perfectionism is just procrastination in disguise.
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And a lot of our most popular videos were actually our most imperfect.
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We had videos with not the best coloring, not the best lighting, not the best audio.
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Some shots were blurry, yet they still got millions of views.
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So next time you're working on your next big idea,
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I beg of you, for the love of God, put down your knife.
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Be Mozart, not Monet.
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Every artist, every entrepreneur,
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anybody who's ever pushed the envelope even a millimeter,
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has experienced anxiety.
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You're going to have flops.
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You're going to have critics.
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But I hope no matter what, that you keep creating,
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you keep putting stuff out there.
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Because the only thing worse than something imperfect
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is something that doesn't exist.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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