It is often quoted that Gilbert K Chesterton wrote "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly" and while that is a wild misquote and completely out of context, there's some truth there I think.
There are many, many hard skills to learn in the course of graduate work, but one of them is to tolerate the discomfort of creating something (a draft, an email, a course session, a syllabus, whatever) and knowing that it isn't the ideal version of that thing. I can see what it could be......but not how to get there in that exact moment. I feel it in my body - it makes me anxious, it makes me doubt all kinds of things like whether I'm smart enough or whether this is done. It doesn't even really matter if I tell myself that I DO know things and that I am capable of learning and growth - I still HATE the feeling of doing something imperfectly - even if it's just a draft, or for me.
So, if just saying to yourself "anything worth doing is worth doing badly" works to help you get out of your head and into your work - awesome!!!!! yes!!!! Feel free to stop reading and use the extra four minutes to listen to a good song or doodle or something!!
But if that wasn't enough, here are a few ways that I put that idea into practice and tolerate the discomfort! Feel free to mix, match, or add your own in the comments!
Opposite day! - Sometimes, I need a sharp reset out of a perfectionistic swamp, so I do the complete opposite! If I've been ruminating over the same sentence for two days, I try and write as many new sentences as I can in two poms. If I can't decide how to respond to an email, I write six drafts in six different ways! Let's be real, I don't have time for opposite day all the time because it is a lot of labor but if I have a little time, it appeals to the inner eight year old in me that enjoys doing things on opposite day.
Track "failure", not completion - This is popularized in the 100 rejection challenge, but the idea is simple - swap what you're tracking for a better sense of how your work is actually going. If you are aiming for x number of acceptances in a year, it's really easy for your brain to be like, "okay, divide that by 12, that's the number I need to hit a month, it's currently the 25th day of this month and I haven't gotten any therefore I'm going to need to do double next month and that's a lot of work wow better get on Twitter!" (or at least that's how it goes for me!) By tracking the effort rather than the outcome, you can get a better sense of how much you're showing up. So maybe you track the number of books you skim and don't include, or the number of words you freewrite and don't use, or the amount of writing you cut from a draft. If you have books you've skimmed, you've freewrote, or you've cut things from the draft, that means you had material there to work from, and that means you're showing up, and that often means that things are progressing, even if it isn't a straight line.
Find the sneaky gremlins and ask them some questions - I work with clients all the time who are perfectionists, and I myself am one, and one thing that's really hard is that rarely is my brain saying "well, I can't be perfect so better go hang out on Twitter!" My gremlins are A LOT sneakier than that! They hang out in plain sight, or they say things that SOUND helpful but actually keep me stuck in the swamp, like:
Because I'm so behind on this draft, I don't have time to do anything but a really clean first try.
I don't have time for this to be in rough shape because it's due in x days.
I don't have time for a messy freewriting process because I have 1223898231 things to do.
I don't have enough useful material to send this out and get feedback on it.
What's the most efficient way to do this? I have to be efficient!
Almost all of these gremlins sound logical and clear! But the result is that they often keep me locked up in the stages before I actually try something - the research, the planning, the task creation, etc - because my brain feels that if I just nail the thinking, the doing will be effortless, flowing, and efficient. But, I also have SO MUCH DATA that I think really effectively WHILE I'm doing things - and that often that learning and growing happens way more effectively when I'm trying at things rather than thinking about how to try at things.
So when my gremlin says "we don't have time for a bunch of messy drafts of this" I ask it: "would we rather have lots of time to polish and play with a messy draft, or more time to perfect the plan and maybe risk having less time to polish it?" And sometimes, let's be honest, it does say PLAN MORE - but more and more often, it sees the logic in the discomfort, and I'm at least a little more willing to try.
Sometimes, the best way to do something is to do it, rather than think about it. When so much is feeling stuck, sticky, and frozen - I like to move where I can. I believe that objects in motion tend to stay in motion (so does Newton.) It's rarely comfortable! I don't leap out of bed in the morning excited to confront the uncomfortable space between something that exists in my head and the first (or fifth) version that I create that isn't anywhere close to the ideal! But, the more I practice, the easier it gets. And the more I practice, the better I get, too. <3