When Re-Doing Your Work Is Self-Sabotage + When It’s Not (best of the podcast) Leave a comment
Our perfectionism often makes us think that the work we’ve produced isn’t good enough and that we need to re-do it. This usually turns into us doing our work over again and again. And when we get into this habit, it’s very disheartening to even approach a task so we end up procrastinating on it and putting it off.
In this episode, I’m talking about why I wanted to re-record two podcast episodes and how I came to a decision as to whether or not to let myself do it. If you find yourself re-doing your work so it’s good enough or constantly making little edits to anything you create then this episode will help.
Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode509.
What To Do Next
Perfectionists Getting Shit Done is opening for enrollment on 31 January for one week only.
If you’re ready to get out of your own way and take consistent action in your business, you want to join my productivity program for perfectionist entrepreneurs called Perfectionists Getting Shit Done. Find out more about the program and join the waitlist today by visiting: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd. Enrollment is opening for one week only from 31 January to 7 February 2025.
Listen To The Episode
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Hi, and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project, a podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown. I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.
Sam Laura Brown – (Start of episode)
[0:29] Today, I’m sharing with you an episode that is well loved on this podcast. It’s the best of the podcast episode, and this one is to help you identify when redoing your work is self sabotage, and when it’s not. Being able to discern this for yourself is incredibly powerful and incredibly important. If you are a perfectionist entrepreneur who will want to literally redo every single thing that you create, you will just see the flaws in it, the imperfection in it. You will have this vision for how amazing it could have been, and sometimes it’s productive to redo your work, and sometimes it isn’t. So in this episode, I talk through in real time an example of when I wanted to re record some podcast episodes that I had recorded, and how I made a decision about whether or not to do that.
[1:19] And I just want to share as well. It’s going to help you with this episode, and I can share it now that it’s been a little whilesince this episode was initially released, that the episodes I’m talking about wanting to re record. There are two of them. One of those episodes is the second most downloaded episode on this podcast. So there are over 500 episodes atthis point, and one of the episodes that my perfectionist brain was telling me, it wasn’t good enough wasn’t going to be helpful, is the second most downloaded episode of this podcast. Also the launch that I’m talking about in this episode that these episodes I wanted to re record we’re part of a five part podcast series, which was part of a launch promotion that we did for my program, perfectionist getting shit done, which, by the way, is opening again very soon for one week only, the 31st of January to the seventh of Feb, doors will be open for pgsd. So join the wait list if you’re not already on it.
[2:20] But with that launch, I had been wondering, do I need to re record them so the launch will be successful? What if I don’t?Anyway, I just want to share for your context, as you listen to this episode, that the launch that we did for perfectionist getting shit done was an incredibly successful launch. We had 51 people sign up for the program. We made in Australian dollars, $250,000 which is approximately, at the time, about $150,000 US. And that was done with a couple of episodes included that my brain did not want to publish. And so in this episode, I just chat you through what my thinking was with deciding whether to re record and when not to re record. And I hope you find it incredibly helpful.
[3:12] Hi everyone. I hope you’re going well. So I wanted to do the Live this week on an experience that I had yesterday, and just kind of talking it through and sharing the experience I had with recording the podcast episodes, three of the ones that are going to be part of the planning series going on the podcast in January, because a whole lot of perfectionist stuff came up for me, and I’m still kind of in the middle of figuring out whether it’s self sabotage to re record them, or if it’s self sabotage not to re record them. So I just wanted to share this, because often we share this kind of thing, or you hear about it after the fact, and after everything’s been done, and the person knows the outcome of their decision and can say yes, it was a good decision. Here’s why or not. Wasn’t, here’s why, but I thought it might be helpful.
[4:05] I know I find it helpful when others share this kind of thing, to talk about the experience I had yesterday recording the podcast episodes, and what I’m thinking about in terms of the decision of whether or not to re record those podcast episodes. So just for a bit of context and what I was doing yesterday, so as I said, I was recording three podcast episodes that are going to be part of a five part planning series that I’m putting up on the podcast, The Perfectionism Project. That’s my podcast, in case you didn’t know, starting on January 1 every other day.
[4:44] So it’ll go from the first to the ninth of January, or the 10th, either way, the first week or so of January. There will be a lot of specific and practical planning advice for you. And yesterday, I sat down to record those episodes. And I did record them, and I had it on my power planning that I was going to do that yesterday, and I did it yesterday, and that’s great. And then after recording them. So after recording the first one, I thought that wasn’t very good. And I keep going like I now, at this point, I have over 300 podcast episodes. I know that just because it doesn’t feel super flowy to me doesn’t mean that’s not how others would perceive it, or even if they don’t perceive it that way, that it wouldn’t be helpful. And that’s part of this whole thing that I know I’m not the best judge of whether a podcast is going to be helpful or not.
[5:39] So I felt like that wasn’t really great, and I did some self coaching on it, and really sold myself on keeping that episode and just continuing on with my plan of doing the other episodes, instead of re recording that episode and just redoing my work. And I think this topic is so relevant, because when we are in that perfectionist mindset. We have this belief that everything has to be perfect for it to work, and then when we are we then allow ourselves to do things like re recording so that we can kind of meet this criteria that everything needs to be perfect in order for it to work. And that really denies us the opportunity to have things feel imperfect and yet they still work, and to prove to our brain that it is okay to release things that we don’t think are perfect, flowy, well, articulated, whatever that looks like for you.
[6:40] So recorded the first one. I was like, that wasn’t great. Anyway. Gonna keep going with my plan. So then I recorded the second episode. And by the way, just in case it’s helpful, I record my podcast episodes with I just have, like, dot points. I don’t script them out or anything like that. And I think for these episodes, I did a lot more dot points than I would have normally, and I think that’s probably part of it as well. And I’m recording to other ones today. So I think just as I’m thinking about that now that’s something that it’s like that over planning that I was like, Okay, I want to make sure that I’m saying everything I want to say with these episodes. And so I wrote so many dot points, and then I really feel like I do my best, like, right now, I just have a little notebook. I can actually barely read my writing with a couple of dot points, and I can just chat. And that’s I feel like, really when I find it easiest to say stuff.
[7:35] So anyway, I then recorded the second episode, and by the way, that episodes all about the power planning method and exactly how that works and how to do it. So that episode felt great. And then I recorded the third episode, which is actually the fourth one that’s going to be in the series, about the three month commitment to power planning, and that one didn’t feel great either. And so after that, I was like, Okay, well, maybe I should just re record them, or maybe I shouldn’t re record them. Is it self sabotage to do that? Is it self sabotage not to do that? And so often we can be in this place where we have self awareness around self sabotage and getting in our own way that it can feel like, Yeah, but which one is it? Which one is the self sabotaging option, and I’m just going to kind of chat through what I’m thinking about in making that decision. And I saw so unposted. So my immediate reaction is, don’t we record? But yes, that’s my immediate reaction too.
[8:38] And recently, I was interviewed on a podcast, and the side of their audio wasn’t working, and they said, Oh, that’s okay. You know, my mics a bit off, but I’ll just re record my part. And I was like, wait, don’t re record. Like, why would you re record? It’s been great. Like, from my perception, I’m like, Don’t re record. And they’re probably like, great. I get to re record. Like, I want to re record. So this isn’t a problem. And so that’s the reason for my podcast that I have recorded without editing. I just hit play, hit record, and then talk. And that doesn’t mean with these episodes, I can’t edit bits if I want to, I think as well, if we’re in that all or nothing mindset of like, well, I never edit them, so if I want to change bits, I have to completely redo it. That doesn’t really make sense, like it’s it’s really important that if we have parameters or personal rules, like, I don’t edit my podcast, and when I say I don’t edit I don’t mean I don’t personally edit things out, but someone else does things don’t get edited out of my podcast.
[9:38] But if I feel like that needs to happen, because there was some point I said that kind of uses everything, and it’s better without that, that I might make that exception. But as a rule, I don’t let myself re record. I don’t let myself edit things, because I found, like back in the day when I was doing YouTube, I. I found that if I let myself re record, that was kind of like an endless task, that I would just say things over and over and over again, then I completely get out of the flow, because I was trying to say one sentence just right, and it would take hours to record, like a 16 minute video. And I love with my podcast that it takes 30 minutes to record a 30 minute episode, and maybe about five to 10 minutes of writing notes.
[10:28] And I know some people work better with a lot of preparation and having a script and that kind of thing, but I found personally, that doesn’t work for me, and that isn’t when I do my best work. And also I just don’t enjoy that either. There’s so many things I say on the podcast I didn’t plan to say, but they come out just because I’m riffing. So anyway, I didn’t feel like those podcast episodes were great ones, but I know that I’m not the most reliable source, or I’m not the most reliable, you know, I’m not able to really tell whether or not they’re going to be helpful to someone else. There’s a curse of knowledge. I already know all the things that I’m talking about, and I’m also thinking more about myself, like in that decision to re record, I’m thinking about myself and how I’m perceived, whether I’m articulate, whether it’s making sense, whether I’m going on a big tangent and rambling all that thing, I’m thinking about myself in that question more than I’m thinking about the person who is listening on the other end, and particularly when I think about our most successful PGSDers and people who’ve listened to the podcast for years now, I know that these episodes are recorded.
[11:45] They would absolutely love like, when I think about, should I re record? I’m thinking about myself, and I’m thinking and how I’m perceived, and I’m thinking about the people who don’t really get it, the people who aren’t my ideal person that I’m here to help, and so I think that’s something really important. And this isn’t to say not to re record things or anything like I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule. But the other thing that I am thinking about is liking my reasons for me re recording. And at the moment, the reasons that I have for re recording I don’t like them. Those reasons would be, I want to feel more articulate, and then I did a better job explaining. And also, this is a big point that I want to make.The reason that I might re record these episodes is because I would think that I won’t be able to achieve the goal that we have around PGSD, the next promotion that we as a team won’t be able to achieve it, and I’ll let our team members down as well if everything isn’t exactly perfect.
[12:50] And of course, that’s so subjective, and it’s just based on my sense of how I feel about myself and all of that kind of thing. But it’s this belief that it all has to be perfect in order for it to work. And so this can then bring up this kind of question about, well, don’t you want to do your best work? And isn’t it doing the best service to everyone if you do re record them, so that it is teaching in the clearest way possible, and that kind of thing, and that’s valid. But at the same time for me to really practice what I preach about perfectionism, about getting out of your own way, I feel like for me tofully be in the belief that we can achieve that goal and help the people we want to help, regardless of if those podcast episodes went out or we re recorded them, and then from that place, making the decision, okay, if it works either way. If it works with me recording them again and with me keeping the recordings I did, would I redo it? No, I wouldn’t redo it. I would just keep going with my plan. I’m on track with my plan.
[14:01] I’ve had to definitely make adjustments and make changes, and we’ve had some reno stuff going on and all of that kind of thing. But I’m on track with my plans. And so I think part of this too is not just a belief that everything has to be perfect and like feel a certain way for me to be able to achieve my goal, and trying to really rely on the circumstances for me to have that belief, but also I have in the past done so many things at the last minute. I’m particularly thinking about university and high school as well, but especially University, where I was always doing my assignments at the last minute. I remember particularly one occasion I didn’t do that. I was like, let’s just see what it’s like to do it ahead of time. And I didn’t do as well as I normally did by my perception. I don’t know if I did that the same assignment the last minute. I might not have done well on it either, but in my mind, like and this a confirmation bias, that when I do it at the last minute, I do well. When I do it ahead of time, I don’t do well.
[15:05] And so it’s taken, like I’ve done a lot of work to rewire and reprogram that, but at the same time, I can still feel this, like I’m not an overwhelm, like there’s a lot to do, there’s a lot on my calendar. There’s other things going on in my life as well, and me getting this done so far ahead of time, like the first episode I recorded yesterday doesn’t go out until the first of January, and there’s so much time to be recorded. There’s so much time to overthink it, there’s so much time to re record so that I can be behind on my plans and be overwhelmed, and for it to be to feel a bit chaotic. And I think this has really uncovered for me as well that I still have a belief there that thing I won’t do as well, like things won’t be as good if they’re not done at the last minute.
[15:55] And also, just as I still have that comfort and familiarity with being overwhelmed and being behind on plans, and that when I’m not and this is after, like, a lot of practice already, but there’s layers of work. And so when I’m at this point like I’m still feeling like, well, there’s no chaos here in terms of my work day, in terms of what’s getting done, everything’s going really physically. And my brain believes that that is a problem, like wants to give me a reason to re record this, which would then change my plans today. And I’ve got, like, a whole buffer day on Sunday. So if things need to get done, I planned nothing, and I can put anything in there, so there’s room for it. And I think that’s why my brain is entertaining it. There’s room for it. And if these episodes had gone out today, I wouldn’t have ever thought I’d be like, cool, it’s done, it’s going out. That’s that. It’s going to be helpful. But because it’s in advance, it gives my brain that opportunity to overthink it and to think, well, there’s all this time, so it should be perfect.
[17:11] And that’s why we love living things the last minute, because we have less of an expectation on ourselves for what we can produce. And I posted just before on Insta Stories The perfectionist power up that I sent out yesterday that was saying, maybe you don’t do your best work at the last minute, maybe you haven’t yet experienced your best work. And for me with this, I really want to not re record them, so that I can prove to myself that it didn’t matter. And if I rerecord them and we achieve the goal, I’m gonna say, Well, it’s because I re recorded them like that’s where my brain’s gonna want to go, and then that reinforces that habit and saying, Well, that was what made me successful, and this is why it can feel really scary to start doing the work on perfectionism and getting out of our own way, because it like our brain has confirmed. That’s why it worked.
[18:09] So to let go of re recording things and redoing things and having everything be perfect feels like, well, that’s like, how will it work then? Because that’s the reason it worked. But we have to give our brains and ourselves this opportunity to like, for our brain to lie to us and then for us to prove it’s a lie, instead of listening to that and then acting upon it and then reaffirming that. So I know as well if I re record the episodes and then we didn’t achieve the goal that my brain would also say, Well, you would have done even worse. If you didn’t redo the episodes. You would have been able to help less people. You would have had less people join PGSD. Because you didn’t re record them. And so that, to me, is telling me that there’s a belief that I have, that things need to be perfect in order for a certain outcome to happen.
[19:05] And I don’t want to buy into that belief, which I feel like I’d be doing if I’m re recording. I instead want to spend the time that I would spend re recording, doing the self coaching and that kind of work on believing deeper in my goal, believing deeper in our program, believing deeper in who I help, who we help, that is more productive work for me than me spending the time re Recording, and if I then get to, you know, the week before, when everything’s being done, and I have time, I’m twiddling my fingers and, like, actually, I really feel great about the episodes, and I want to re record them, just because I can. Then I will let myself do that. But at the moment, it’s not. Just because I can reason that I would re record, it’s because I think these ones wouldn’t be good enough, and that’s just based on my perception, which is completely warped. I’m not the ideal person for pgsd because I’m already integrated power planning fully into my life I’ve been doing it for years like I’m not the ideal person that we’re helping.
[20:25] My past self is for sure, but my present day self, who was the one judging the episodes, isn’t who they’re designed for. And so I just wanted to share a bit about that,because we can hear this kind of thing after the fact. And I think decision making and self trust, if I talk about this all thetime, we work on this in PGSD, it’s so important. It’s everything. And what needs to happen for me to further build my self trust in this situation is for me to decide what I’m going to do. And I’m just going to say, right now, I’m just right now, I’m deciding not to re record and then back myself on that decision, so that if say we didn’t achieve the goal, that I wouldn’t, then blame my past self and say I should have made a different decision with that. Because the reality is it’s it’s ever one thing that’s not going to be the case. But my brain wants to go there and beat me up and say, Well, you shouldn’t have made that decision.
[21:30] But if I instead can do a review, a reflection, which is what we do every time we do a launch of what didn’t work, what to do differently, then I might say, Well, next time, I might do something different with the podcast episodes, and it would be these specific things. It wouldn’t be just based on my hunch about how the episode went, which is based on really how well I feel I articulated the ideas and whether I felt like it was hard to find words, which at times it is, especially actually, Lydia’s been sleeping a little bit the last few days. But when I haven’t had much sleep, it is much harder to find the right words and to bring things together. And that’s okay. And so with re recording and anything. So with this I’m talking about, it might be, you know, you’ve written an Instagram post, and then it comes time to post it, like, actually, I should just redo it. Or you’ve done a live and then you’re like, actually, I’m just gonna re record that and post the one that I wish I’d done.
[22:38] It’s so helpful to not allow yourself to do that and to only allow yourself to do that if you’re at the point where you’re doing it just because you want to, not because you feel like it needs to be a different way in order foryour business to grow, in order for you to achieve a goal, and all of those different things, and that can be really hard to decide you needdefinitely a certain level of self awareness. And I don’t know that I’m right on this, but I do know that the best option for me is to make a decision back myself, whatever that decision is, to not allow myself to be in this should I? Shouldn’t I kind of energy, but this morning to just have made that decision, and then go all in on that decision and make that decision, the right decision. Or my in this mindset that there’s like this right decision out there, and we just have to figureout which one it is. It’s so challenging. We end up deciding nothing at all. I could easily spend the next three weeks re recording these episodes and doing that again and again and again. And again. Like last night, I was talking it through with Steve, and I was like, I don’t even know if the episodes I would re record would feel any better than the ones I recorded yesterday.
[23:49] And there are so many things like I hear all the times in DMS and that kind of thing, that there will be something I said in an episode that I don’t even remember saying, or that I felt like was a completely uninteresting point, and that really shifted someone’s way that they think about themselves, or they think about their business. And so I’m not the best judge of it. And so in this situation as well, it could be like, Okay, well, I’m going to give it to someone on my team to listen to, and they can tell me. And I might do that if I got to the point that I might, I’m going to change it just because I want to, but I really feel like as well, in this situation, with the mindset that I’m in around it, that that would just be looking for validation, and then what’s going to happen is that’s going to reinforce that I need someone else to tell me ifit’s good Enough. And I don’t really want to reinforce that.
[24:42] That’s not to say that we’re not a collaborative team. And there’s definitely things I ask for feedback on, but it’s not fromthis place of I need confirmation that it’s okay. I need confirmation that this is going to be helpful. And yeah, I think we just. Whenever we’re faced with this kind of thing, it’s really making that decision with our personal growth and businessgrowth in mind, and not just the next thing that we’reworking towards, but having that bigger picture vision. And when I think about the vision for the business and for PGSD, and what we’re helping people with in terms of perfectionism, that ifI think back on this, like if I go into my future self and I think back on this experience, which one would be better for my growth, for me to have kept the episodes I recorded and done the personal development work around believing in my goal so hard that it doesn’t matter if those episodes went out or they didn’t go out at all, or like something else happened.
[25:48] Or would it be better for my growth if I redid those episodes and asked others if they’re good enough, like that’s not really going to help my growth. That might, in the short term, potentially change the result of those episodes and how many people join pgst, but in terms of my personal growth and the business growth in the long term, and also part of that is me practicing what I preach and living what we teach inside PGSD. And I know for sure that if I was coaching someone on this inside PGSD, I would say, Do not re record them. And I would really have to fight for me to be able to say that sounds like a great idea. And I know this can be tricky when we think no, but it’s in the best interest of the listener for me to deliver that best work. But I know that I’m not a great judge at that. I don’t think many of us are. We’retoo close to the value of what we do to be able to see it.
[26:56] So yeah, that’s all I really wanted to chat about today. I hope it’s been helpful to hear about, like, when you’re in the thick of something like this, what you can be thinking about. And really, I think for me, the biggest thing that’s helped has been thinking about, if we achieved the goal, either way, what would I do? Because that then reveals that I have that lack of belief that I still need to work on, and I need to work on that belief that we can achieve the goal regardless of like everything feeling exactly perfect, and that part of my work as well, is that doing things ahead of time feels reallyuncomfortable in a lot of ways, and especially when it’s not even like, like, there’s no deadline pressure at all, not from my team, not like, for the date that it’s going up on the podcast. Like, I could get these to Eloisa, who puts up our podcast in like two weeks time.
[28:02] And so because this is so much time, it’s like, Well, I do have the time to record them. So it’s easy to to fantasize about that and think about doing that, but I don’t think that it would be me doing what is best for the growth of the business, for my personal growth, and also for our PGSDers because I really want to be an example of what we teach, and that I can really back myself with my decisions and practice doing that, and not then just be looking for validation and someone tell me it’s good enough, or buying into this belief I have that it needs to be perfect and exactly right for us to achieve the goal. So I want to achieve that goal, regardless of the episodes that go out and do that work instead. So I’mgonna wrap it up and aim for 20 minutes. We’re at 26 but I hope it’s been helpful. And if you have any questions and you’re watching the replay of this, leave them in the comments. But I’m gonna wrap it up here. I hope you’re having a beautiful day, and I’ll talk to you soon.
Outro [29:19] If you enjoy this podcast, I invite you to sign up to receive a short daily perfectionist power up from me. These are little notes and reminders sent to you via email that’ll help you plan properly as a perfectionist and get you out of your own way so you can go to samlaurabrown.com/power, to sign up today and you’ll start receiving motivating perfectionist power ups this week.
