Any perfectionists in the room…? ✋

I’m writing to you from my couch today. It’s 12.30 pm and I’m done working (after this email) and celebrating! My new website is up and running 🥳

Also, there are at least 10 things I still want to change…

It wasn’t too long ago that any one of those 10 things would have stopped me from publishing the website. “It’s not finished yet.” “The blog section only has 1 article.” “Also, the background of the blog post needs to be white.”

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Any perfectionists in the room…? ✋

Fun fact: my website was originally supposed to be a portfolio blog. Back when I was a researcher and aspiring writer, I bought the domain name for that purpose. I figured that I could neatly use my last name Franker (which is a German name meaning something like free, courageous, open(hearted)). The Franker Message would be my “openhearted” message to the world: a blog site where I would write anything that sparked my interest.

Very poetic, right?

I wrote article after article, well researched and greatly detailed. The topics were varied. I wrote about our trip to Iceland where we spent our honeymoon and it being one of the most alienating and simultaneously humbling experiences of my life. I wrote a 3 part article about sleep and the question why some people sleep 9 hours and are still tired while some get by on just 5 refreshing hours.

You won’t find these articles, though. Because I never published them. They’re safely tucked away in a digital graveyard on a dusty hard drive somewhere. Why did I never publish, you ask?

Some of them were 70% finished but all of them were “not quite good enough”

My perfectionism held me back for a long time and fueled my inner critic. Never good enough, never quite ready to take action.

I know now that it really wasn’t so strange that I felt glued to the ground around my blog back then. Everywhere I looked, people kept saying: just get clear on what you want and then just do it.

What’s often overlooked is what gaining clarity about something really looks like.

Gaining clarity isn’t always about designing a detailed plan. It isn’t always about knowing steps 1 through 10 before you start. It can be for some but it isn’t for most.

Introverts have a different process when it comes to making decisions and taking action. “Just do it”, although well meaning advice, can cause more anxiety than real progress for a lot of introverts.

What’s important for YOU to take action depends on your Natural Advantage®. Knowing what your natural advantage is and what you need to take action without forcing yourself, goes a long way to shedding those perfectionistic tendencies while still feeling confident about your next step.

x number of things still to change, my website is up! version 1.0 that is 😆