Deborah Henson-Conant
Deborah Henson-Conant (DHC) is a Grammy-nominated composer/performer and mentor to harpists around the world. Her signature harp, the DHC-Light, was designed and named for her by Camac Harps. She composes works for solo harp, ensembles, and concerto settings, and she coaches harpists in creativity and business in her online courses.

Let’s talk about finishing things.

If your stomach fell when you read those words, then you might suffer from perfectionistic paralysis. I’m with you. I have it too. I mean, except for the times when I break through the paralysis. But, honestly, I’m so tired of having to break through the paralysis. Whether it’s an album that’s way overdue, sheet music that is waiting for “just a few changes,” or a website that needs updating, it is always a struggle to break through.

When I write that, I hear my coaches in my head telling me not to say I’m struggling, because that’s negative. And then they’re telling me I shouldn’t even be doing these things; I should be delegating them.

So here I am struggling to not think that I’m struggling to break through my perfectionism in doing things I shouldn’t even be doing! How can I possibly finish something?

Whew! It actually feels good to lay it all out.

It hurts to not finish things, and yet it can be painful to try to finish them. But the pain really comes from what we think “finished” means.

Years ago my boyfriend’s son was struggling with high school, specifically with turning in his homework on time. He, like me, struggled with perfectionism. We were working on it as a family when I was struck with a revelation:

“What would it take to always turn your homework in on time?” I asked.

He groaned and said, “I’d have to get up at 5 a.m. and work for two hours before I left for school and then…”

“No,” I interrupted him, “not what it would take to do it well, but what would it take to turn it in on time?”

Everyone looked at me. “You could turn it in unfinished!” I said. “You could turn it in wrong, you could turn it in ‘bad,’ but you would be turning it in. You would be done. You could move on to the next thing instead of constantly living in the world of potential perfection.”

Potential perfection can be so paralyzing that we can’t perform, we can’t complete. And when we can’t complete, we can’t move on. It’s like being inside one big emotional stutter.

Imperfect Completion in Action

You can see the students’ final “beginning” videos at my blog, www.hipharp.com/blog. There you can see 21 inventions by 21 harpists of all technical levels, all embracing the idea of imperfect completion. 

When we complete something, however imperfectly, we open a door to the next iteration. This is why it’s important to complete any version of your project that you can do—it keeps you moving forward.

In the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, a professor does an experiment in a pottery class. He splits the class in two. The students on the left are told they’ll be graded on the total weight of the pots they create. The students on the right are told they’ll be graded solely on the quality of a single pot. So the left-side students throw masses of pots while the right-side students focus on creating a single perfect piece of pottery. In the end, the best pots came from the group that simply kept throwing for quantity. The best work came from not even attempting quality.

I have no idea how you would determine what is a great pot, but I do know that creating a lot is what allows me to create a few things I love. When I’m stuck I’ll make myself sit down with a timer and write 10 bad tunes in an hour. Usually by about tune six I completely forget the timer and fall in love with some tune I’ve discovered.

But before I can do that:

  1. I have to remember that doing something badly is a beautiful way to begin. G.K. Chesterton was right when he said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”
  2. I have to remove the anxiety of trying to create something “good.”

In my courses, students turn in a “half-baked video project” to get my feedback before they tape their final projects. This is a term that my teaching partner, Karen Montanaro, coined, and it’s a big part of our work together in the studio. We trust each other enough to share work that is often barely formed, and the observer points out what is there rather than critiquing the work. This gives my students the courage to forge ahead, and it gives them a completed something to begin reworking.

With my one-on-one coaching clients, I am constantly telling them to “make me a crappy version,” knowing this is the only way many of them, just like me, will be able to do it at all. Doing a consciously bad version can be a lot of fun and also be an efficient and effective way to begin anything. Even when students do their final projects, we call them final beginning projects because they are, as every completion is, a place of beginning. All completions are imperfect, and the more we embrace that, the easier it is to finish…and begin again. •

Editor’s Note

This article is part of a year-long series by Deborah Henson-Conant that will explore the process, art, and craft of invention and reinventing yourself.