Progress Over Perfectionism

Notes on perfection

“Untitled (Contemplation of the Chrysanthemum)”, Cy Twombly

This weekend I’m going on my first scout for Invisible Moves. After a few minor snags with a location that looked perfect on paper but ultimately fell through, we found another location to check out that’s actually closer to New York.

I’m also thinking of bringing my film camera, a simple point-and-shoot Olympus Stylus Epic, so I can have something tactile to put in a scrapbook. I’m even considering making the storyboards from the stills (that might be too ambitious, but I’ve done it once before on a personal project and really enjoyed it).

From what I’ve seen, there are many things about the property that I like, but in the back of my head I keep ruminating over the fact that there aren’t nearly enough farm animals like the original location, and that the farmhouse, even though it’s the right time period, doesn’t have the same lived-in look. I know instinctively that this location might be close, but that it might not fit the bill.

Already I’m scanning for new locations and anticipating having to go on another scout, which is tricky to schedule with other projects happening and the fact that my line producer works full-time at a production company.

My brain slowly began to spiral, as I also anticipate this location being more expensive after the owner mentioned that a large TV show had just finished filming there. I immediately went into control mode and explained that this is a self-funded proof of concept. It’s not a commercial, corporate, or feature film, in order to temper budget expectations, with the hope that he sticks to the exceptionally low Hipcamp rate.

And in the middle of my brain slowly spiraling about all of the negative possibilities that could happen with this location, I realized how this is the perfectionist side of me that served me well at one point, but not for this project, or even at this stage in my career.

Perfectionism has, without a doubt, been the biggest challenge of my lifetime. My ability to fully understand this didn’t come until a former boss called me a “perfectionist.” And in retrospect, I realize that wasn’t a compliment. It’s something I had never considered about myself. I thought I was always pretty balanced, but after years of introspective analysis, I’ve concluded that this was in fact, correct, and if I stayed on that train for too long, it would royally screw up my life.

I thought if I played by the rules, was exacting, and mastered my craft, I would get to where I was going. And to a certain extent, I did. But I also learned that you can do all of these things and not get there, too. And that’s the thing (please read this again and let it sink in deeply): you can do all of the “right” things and still not get to where you want to go. I wrote more about this a few weeks ago, but it’s this dogmatic thinking that doesn’t work for those of us spearheading projects in the middle of peak industry change.

For some, this is an obvious no-brainer. Of course you can’t play it safe. Part of being in this industry, or any industry, means there has to be some creative risk. But man, this is something I really had to teach myself to do, and more importantly, to understand.

Writing these Substack posts has been really helpful for getting out of this kind of thinking. The ability to write what I’m feeling in the moment and just post it—regardless of how good I think it is—has been a major revelation, almost healing. It’s this kind of growth mindset that I want to bring to this project.

When I was younger, through my late teens, I studied ballet very seriously. I can see the ways the foundation for my perfectionism stemmed from this practice, but also the ways it helped positively shape me as a producer. It’s not bad to be detail-oriented, but when those tendencies keep you in fear, fight-or-flight, or procrastination, it turns into a silent killer.

This is the first mental spiral I’ve had in 2026 over absolutely nothing. There is no production problem here. The location hasn’t even been scouted yet, and my magical thinking has already tried to lead me astray, back to the old version of myself that I’ve worked so hard to change.

So if you skew like me and have a tendency to overanalyze, overthink, and meditate on things that absolutely do not matter, please say this with me: “progress over perfectionism.” I’ll be the first to admit that as much as I’m a self-help junkie, I used to smirk at people who had mantras like this. And now I’m one of them. I’ve found myself inhaling deeply, fumbling in the dark on this project, quietly muttering to myself, “progress over perfectionism.”