When you’re a perfectionist, you’ll meet problems. Simply because reality is NOT perfect, and never will be.

It’s a problem because:

  1. You waste resources

  2. You don’t NEED to get it 100% perfect

And this is especially true when we talk about knowledge.

You waste resources

For example, let’s say that you have a plan to make your own restaurant. While planning it, you realize that you need to know how to make a company account, research health laws and fire safety laws, find a good location, understand taxes on your future earnings, know how to manage supply and demand, know what to do if an employee is caught selling drugs and so on.

If you wanted to learn ALL of this first before you even started making your business plan (there’s another thing, how to make a business plan, company motto and logo and building the company image) then you won’t ever start!!

That’s called perfection paralysis.

You don’t NEED to get it 100% perfect

Be satisfied with almost perfect.

Be satisfied with 95% and leave it at that because this will save a lot of time, money and headaches spent on knowing the full 100%.

Wait, even better. Know as little as possible before you get started.

“WHAT!! Are you mad? Knowing as little as possible!!?” I can hear you screaming already.

Yeah. I said it. But let’s get to that after we know why it happens.

Why does it happen?

**1. We fear the unknown. **

We don’t know what will happen, so we want to know what we’re up against.

2. More information is better, right?

When we know more, we feel we can make better decisions, educated guesses if you will (false).

3. We fear failure.

Who wants to fail? Even though we all know that we learn from our mistakes, we still can’t bear the thought of failure.

So what do we do?

All you need is:

1. Know enough to know what to ask.

I’m not asking you to walk in blind. Know what you’re doing. Know what kind of taxes exist, who gives out fire safety permits for a building and what kind of bank loans are offered. Now you know enough to ask the best way to handle your taxes, what is needed to get that fire safety permit and you can also ask what you need to do to qualify for the loans.

2. Know enough to know who to ask.

Once you have all these questions, make sure you ask the right people. Don’t ask people who make “educated guesses”, ask people who have been in that specific field for years and years. Ask a government tax guy about taxes, a fireman about fire safety permits and a bank loan manager what’s usually the criteria to approve a business loan.

That’s it.

With those 2 pieces of knowledge alone, you can face any problem that comes up during the course of acting on your plan.

So act on your plan now!

…right after you ask someone about it.