“Practice makes perfect.”

What a load of crap.

Yet it’s one of the most popular mantras ever in business, sports and learning.

Not saying practice is anything less than essential. The only way to ace your craft, to become an expert at what you do, is to practice.

Lots.

I have no issue with practicing.

But perfection is a mirage. You keep clawing towards it, but you never get there.

And guess what? You don’t even want to, because then there’d be no more challenge. And innovators thrive on challenge.

You’d quit doing what you love.

You CAN become near-perfect. The movie “Free Solo” comes to mind.

It’s a documentary about rock climber Alex Honnold preparing to become the first person ever to free solo a full route on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. No ropes, no safety gear.

In the film, you see Honnold studying his route up the insanely sheer face in detail, mapping every move, rehearsing each individual grip, step and kick. Again and again, and again.

He knew he had to be VERY close to perfection that day.

And fortunately, his climb was. Yet everyone on his team, and every queasy soul who’s watched “Free Solo” knows that as an imperfect human, Alex Honnold could easily have fallen to his death.

He’d quit partway on an earlier attempt, because he knew conditions weren’t good enough. The pressure to finish was intense, the slow climb down humiliating. But he knew better.

Practice made him that focused, that incredibly fit, and that rational. It led him to trust his instincts and to manage, but believe, his fears. Failure was very possible.

It’s similar in business.

A recent study of more than 500 startups found that the average age of a successful founder at launch of the business is 40. The same study found that founders over 55 are TWICE as likely to achieve high growth levels.

That’s practice, in practice.

It doesn’t mean with experience you can’t fail.

Sort of the opposite, you know you can, and recognize the slip points.

You build great teams. Iterate fast, and don’t get hung up on ideas or features that don’t move you forward.

Or get hung up on perfection. Because you know it’s a trap.

It’s never the perfect time, and the product will NOT be perfect. Trying to get it there becomes stupidly expensive once the law of diminishing returns kicks in.

Plus, you’ve GOT to ship it in order to take to the next level. You need real-world feedback.

Action for today: List three things you’re waiting to “perfect” before moving forward. Now pick one and commit to shipping it at 85%. Because that last 15% is costing you way more than you think.

Laurier

Product Payoff: When James Dyson launched the DCO1, his first bagless vacuum, after 5 years and 5,127 prototypes, it still was nowhere close to perfect. The bin was too small and it sounded like a jet engine. BUT he shipped it. Those “imperfections” became part of the story — and part of a new shift in home cleaning that made Dyson billions.