Stop Chasing Perfect: Treat Your First Attempt as a Throwaway
I used to spend hours, sometimes days, crafting the “perfect” spreadsheet. The formulas were dialed in, the formatting looked beautiful, and the data was impeccable. But for one reason or another, it just wasn’t coming together. It didn’t feel good enough to share. It was clunky to maintain, hard to update, or I’d realize I should have structured the whole workbook differently.
What would I do? Throw it in the trash and start over from scratch!
Would this make me sad, frustrated and feel like I had wasted a lot of time? 100%!
The second time around, however, everything moved faster. I knew what I really wanted, what wasn’t working, and how to get to the final result more quickly.
The first dozen or so times that I did this I felt very frustrated. But eventually, I realized this was simply part of my process for getting things right. And it wasn’t limited to spreadsheets. The same pattern showed up with anything new I tried—podcasts, presentations, videos, whatever.
It’s like a recipe in the kitchen, except Step One for making something really good is: “Throw Version One in the garbage.”
Here’s why building “throwaway” into your process actually leads to better work:
You’ll start - Instead of waiting until you have everything perfectly figured out (aka Never), you get something 70–80% of the way there on your first pass and use the second attempt to close the gap.
You’ll learn something - What worked, what didn’t, what could be better, smoother, faster or easier? You’ll learn the answers to these questions as you work your way through Version One.
You won’t be disappointed - If you’ve already decided the first version is disposable, you’re not shocked when you “open the garbage can lid.” Disappointment turns into: “Great, I’ve made it past Step One. Now I’m ready to get this done.”
Now, there may be rare times when you nail it with Version One. For example, check out the not-so-well-known album “#1 Record” by Big Star, a debut album often described as a bona fide masterpiece. But you’re probably not trying to hit the top of the charts. You just want people to use your spreadsheet, understand your slide deck, or enjoy your presentation.
So give yourself permission to treat that first attempt as disposable. Get to the throwaway moment faster. Then trust that Version Two (or Three) is when the masterpiece will show up!
