Overcoming Perfectionism

How we do it in The Armed Forces

4/8/20251 min read

In the army, perfectionism is easy to creep in.

The solution is to look at where you are, look at where you want to go. Then you get a general idea of where you are heading.

But if you only focus on the end goal, that's maybe a week or month into the operation, you will get panicked, too many thoughts.

So instead, if you know your end goal, and you focus only on today and tomorrow, you will start seeing the small steps you can take, just for today and tomorrow. Because a week from now, you dont know what the situation is going to look like. But you can kind of predict what is going to happen tomorrow. And that gives you something thats a little bit predictable to work with and you will see actionable steps.

Focus all your anxiety into what tomorrow, just tomorrow is going to look like.

And give yourself a limited time to plan. Maybe just 1 hour, maybe 2 days if its pre operation planning. But once that timer is up, start executing. Always set timers!

Excellence through execution, not planning!