Picture this:

You’re at home and feeling inspired to try something new, like playing the guitar or learning Spanish.

So you do all this research on the best ways to learn guitar. You get the most popular book. You go to painstaking lengths to find the perfect YouTube tutorial. You exhaustively compare beginner guitars.

You put so much work into preparing to learn the guitar the perfect way that by the time you’re finally sitting there with your instrument in your lap, you’ve lost interest. It feels like too much.

That’s just one of many ways perfectionism stifles us. We build up the task at hand, making it unachievable. We put so much effort into something and then never share it with the world. Or we simply give up on trying new things altogether because we’ll never reach that impossible standard we set for ourselves.

Procrastination, overthinking and excessive anxiety are all the result of our obsession with perfectionism.

We want the perfect workout. The optimal schedule. The flawless meditation habit—which, when you think about it, contradicts the entire point of meditation.

But I want to ask you something: what is perfection? Is there someone on this planet with zero flaws? No. No, there’s not.

Perfection is a made-up concept. And the sooner we learn to accept our imperfections, the better off we’ll all be. Below, you can learn about a rule I apply to everything I do. It helps me grow and be myself no matter what.

The 70% Rule

I live by this rule: Get it done 70%. Never less. Rarely more. Then, I release it. Let it go. Move on. 

Every podcast I release, I get to 70%.

Every one of these emails, I get to 70%.

Every book I write, I get to 70%.

Seriously—when I was writing Think Like a Monk, my goal was not a perfect result. I knew that if my goal were to make my book 100% perfect, it would never get released into the world.

If you have a 70% passing grade at a world-class university and a 2.8 GPA, what does that mean? It means you’ve still earned a degree from a world-class university. 

“If I’m 70% there, that’s good enough. It allows me to move on.”

Seventy percent shows value, quality, work. That last 30% is subjective and requires a tremendous amount of work, most of which will go unnoticed.

Are there clips I could have fine-tuned more in the podcast editing process?

Shots I could’ve re-taken to really nail them for my YouTube videos?

Paragraphs I could have edited one more time?

Absolutely. But if I’m 70% there, that’s good enough. It allows me to move on

A perfect 100% is impossible. If I held myself to that standard, I’d never get anything done. And if I’m not releasing the things I’m starting, then I’m not giving myself the chance to connect with other people and to grow.

You can’t be the judge of whether your work is valuable. You have to share it with the world. Only by doing that can you learn where you need to improve. Only by picking up that guitar and heading to the open mic will you learn what skills you still need to develop. Only by speaking Spanish with some friends at dinner will you know what your gaps are.

Get yourself to 70%. And then let it go.

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
Host of the On Purpose Podcast
Creator of the Jay Shetty Certification School