Perfect is a myth

Six years ago, a woman on my marketing team named Anna introduced me to an idea that would become our unofficial team motto: "Share your first pancake."

Everyone knows the first pancake is lumpy, maybe a little burnt around the edges. You eat it anyway. That's what makes your next pancake better. And sharing that imperfect first pancake is your fastest path to a delicious breakfast.

We adopted it as a team value, and then it spread across the company. It's such an accessible metaphor. People started using it to rationalize risk-taking, vulnerability, and shipping imperfect work as steps toward improvement. I might have repeated it a lot :)

Six years later, it's something I've become known for even though I didn't invent it myself. But knowing something intellectually and living it are two different things. This summer, I've been relearning this lesson the hard way.

Why we hoard our pancakes

We confuse perfect with professional.

In my marketing career, I've seen many teams kill good ideas in pursuit of perfect ones. A sales proposal we kept adjusting to support every possible variation—but the added few days meant we missed the crucial meeting where the decision was made. A marketing campaign where "copy by committee" created so many revisions that prospects told us the sales deck was confusing. We had to drastically simplify everything.

We make up dependencies that aren't there.

For me, I often get hung up on images. I'll have something important to say, but I don't have the perfect LinkedIn photo yet. I know posts perform better with images, so I just...don't post. Picking the perfect pen name was also hard for me, and it blocked a bunch of other progress. You know what, Instagram lets you change your name. 

We mistake busy work for progress.

I spent six months at one company debating a pricing model instead of piloting it with a few customers. After all that analysis and modeling, we didn't change anything. We stuck with our original pricing. Six months of theoretical perfection, zero practical progress.

When perfection becomes procrastination

This summer, working in the camp kitchens, my instinct was to ask endless questions and try to do everything perfectly. But there isn't time for that when you're feeding 200 kids. As adults, we need to trust each other to move fast and make decisions.

For every meal, I had to interpret the recipe card, make whatever it called for—tomato soup, tuna salad sandwiches, a vat of scrambled eggs—taste test, and serve. No time for extensive research or multiple drafts. Just cook, taste, adjust, serve.

The same lesson hit me when I blew several of my precious quiet evenings fighting to get my website perfect. I have limited free time for writing, and after spending multiple nights wrestling with design details in Wordpress, I realized I was falling into my old trap. I don't even need a website yet. But it feels so satisfying to get into the flow and fix small problems.

The breakthrough question

Here's what I ask myself when I find myself fixating on the small stuff:

What will you regret more, sharing something imperfect, or never sharing at all?

The scariest thing I've done recently was sending my first three chapters to my former boss and mentor. I don't think romantasy is her genre, and I don't think the chapters are very good. She hasn't given feedback yet, and I'm terrified.

But just preparing those chapters to share with someone else was transformative. Thinking through "what will someone need to know to read this?" made me look at my writing from a completely new perspective. It forced me to write for an audience, not just for myself.

That's the magic of the first pancake principle. Sharing imperfect work doesn't just help you improve—it changes how you create.

Your pancakes are ready

I'm still not great at this. Being vulnerable and sharing early work still doesn't come naturally to me. But it's like any muscle, it gets stronger with practice. I'm getting better at catching myself when perfectionism kicks in. I've done it enough times now to know I'll survive a little embarrassment.

What pancakes are you hoarding? That blog post you've been tweaking for weeks? The proposal sitting in your drafts? The creative project you're "not ready" to show anyone?

Stop waiting for perfect. Perfect is a myth that keeps your best work locked away from the people who need to see it.

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