Worrying that your work will not be good enough is a common reason for procrastination.

Most worthwhile endeavors take time and practice to master, so early attempts can fail to live up to expectations. When starting a project, we often use work produced by experts as a reference point. This highlights the inevitable difference between the quality of the expert’s work and our own. It is no wonder that we can be quickly discouraged from new projects. It is also unsurprising that we can lose confidence in our ability to produce high-quality work.

Fortunately, completing a task and receiving feedback can help improve the quality of your next attempt. At the start of a challenging endeavor, aim to create something imperfect and get feedback so you can improve your next try. Repeating this process is how mastery is attained.

Here are a few strategies to help your brain manage expectations:

Train the skill of finishing

Learning to finish and show others your work is a skill that can be trained.

• Start small. Redesign your goal into stages that must be completed in a short amount of time, for example: rather than aim for something like a completed novel, aim to complete a blog or short story each week.
• Once you have completed that stage, show the work to others and seek feedback. Then move to the next stage.
• The time limitation forces you to produce imperfect work, allowing your brain to let go of minor issues and produce work that doesn’t need to be perfect.
• By finishing and getting feedback on your work, you can learn to refine your skills and use what you learn to do better work in the next stage.
• With repetition, you will become more comfortable finishing imperfect work and showing your work to others. Over time the quality of your work will improve.

Focus on output, not quality

Rather than trying to produce high-quality content immediately, aim to produce content of any kind and refine it later.

1. Set a modest and recurring goal, for example: 500 words per day.
2. Focus on quantity, not quality.
3. Understand that this is just the first draft. You can do as many edits as you want later.
4. Repeat frequently and build over time.

The 70% rule

Start out with the aim to produce work that is 70% of the best you can do. Understand that 70% is enough and that once you’ve reached it, you can always refine it, correct your course or begin the next attempt.