the myth of the perfect plan
why “doing it right” usually just means doing it someone else’s way
every month, our real estate team sends out postcards. it sounds simple, right? gather the listings, write the copy, get it approved, send it to print. but it’s never that simple. somehow, it turns into a whole production — five versions of the same thing, endless tweaks, timelines that get tighter by the minute. and by the time we finally hit send, it already feels like old news.
the folders are neat, the emails are color-coded, but it still feels like we’re spinning. i used to take that personally, like i wasn’t organized enough. now i realize the problem isn’t organization — it’s that we’re editing life out of the work.
what i’ve learned is that “perfect” can be a really sneaky way of saying “safe.” when the plan looks flawless on paper, it gives everybody a false sense of control. it’s comforting, until it isn’t. because if you’ve ever been the one responsible for making someone else’s perfect plan happen, you know the truth — it doesn’t feel organized, it feels like pressure wearing nice clothes.
and women, especially, are fluent in that kind of pressure. we’ve been taught that being meticulous equals being credible. that if we triple-check everything, nobody can say we didn’t take it seriously enough. so we double back on our own instincts, keep polishing, keep waiting for someone to say “that’s good enough.”
the problem is, by the time that happens, the spark that made it good in the first place is long gone. you start moving like an assistant to your own ideas — always managing, rarely creating.
every creative project i’ve ever loved has started out as a mess — half-formed ideas in the notes app, scribbles in the margins, screenshots i swore i’d organize later. imperfect work gets messy. it always does. there are typos, missed deadlines, the occasional cringe moment you wish you could undo. but if you zoom out, those are the exact projects that end up changing things. the ones where you didn’t know what you were doing until it worked.
that’s where my passion for coaching came from — watching how often real, everyday people create incredible work that doesn’t look like anything you’d find in an IG reel of “how to go viral” or a perfectly lit marketing collab. i wanted those people to know they’re not doing it wrong. they’re just building in real time, not for the algorithm.
somewhere along the way, we confuse getting it right with getting permission. but those are two very different things.
the best work i’ve ever done — and the most fun i’ve ever had doing it — came from plans that weren’t perfect yet. we figured things out as we went. we made mistakes, fixed them, and moved on. clarity always came from motion, never from sitting still.
so maybe the point isn’t to build the perfect plan anymore. maybe it’s just to move toward what feels alive — the kind of progress that’s scrappy, intuitive, and yours.
because honestly? most of the magic shows up after the “send.”
so if you’ve been holding off until it’s perfect — the launch, the email, the new idea — maybe the real work is learning to hit send sooner. the mess won’t kill it. the mess might actually be the part that makes it matter.
