When I talk with my high school students about initiative, I explain it as not being satisfied with “good enough.” I’ve learned only relatively recently that for me (and for my students saddled with the same perfectionist tendencies), a modification is necessary: “Good enough is good enough.”

I have a terrible propensity to focus on a perfect – and usually overly ambitious – end product. I overwhelm myself to the point of doing nothing, or, when I can’t avoid a task, putting much more time and effort into it than it requires.

It is thanks to Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, that I am able to see how perfectionism is often the root of my procrastination, particularly when it comes to things I really want to accomplish.

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” she writes. Though this isn’t Rubin’s insight, it’s her preferred version of Voltaire’s statement, “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” I am so grateful for her reflections on its message for her.

In one of her earliest blog entries, she continues: “It’s better to do something imperfectly than nothing perfectly.”

I know this. I coach my students along these lines all the time. Just get something down, I say. Brainstorming isn’t a commitment. That’s what drafts are for. Just get started. Handing something in for a poor mark is better than receiving a zero. Be brave.

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