Sometimes, life becomes more about what we have done than anything else. People become walking lists of accomplishments and skills with an ever-growing pressure to do much more. The subtle after-effect is that your worth quickly starts to equal your productivity. There is no rest from this equation once you're trapped within it; one must grind consistently to raise their productivity to new heights because self-worth dislikes stability. Self-worth, by itself, is only worthy when one aims to improve it. After all, there is no gain to be found in maintaining your worth at the same level for infinity.
One must wonder, is that really true?
At different points in your life, even during the random moments of no importance, you face a difficult choice: it's either all-or-nothing or anything in between. When your worth depends on your productivity, you can't help but pick the black-and-white first option. It's what everyone else does; how can anyone be satisfied with anything less than perfection? What worth is there to be found in mediocrity? However, chasing after perfection means that most of us don't really start anything and even if we do, we often find it worthless. The fact is, we find doing 0% of potential perfection more desirable than achieving 20% of mediocre work. In this world, the future is as rosy as the present is grey, such that tomorrow's potential always wins over today's work.
Think of the time and effort you spend in creating a piece of art. Your novel needs a couple of flawed, three-dimensional characters. You create elaborate stories for your characters but you never finish that novel. Your song needs a few lyrics that strike the soul. You write a couple of lines that bring you to tears but you never finish writing that song. You don't display it and you don't perform it because incomplete works don't make the cut. This may be true in a world that puts productivity on a pedestal. But what about the parts of you that were inspired to create those characters for your novel and those lyrics for your song?
Consider this:
is an inspiration that was never pursued worth the cost of regret? Is it worth it to lose that inspiration to perfectionism every single time?
Life's too short. Write those characters, write those lyrics for an unfinished song. 20% is always better than nothing; it's definitely much closer to 100% than 0%. One does not have to pursue inspiration to absolute completion for it to be worthwhile. It's faster to achieve your goal if you've achieved some of it than if you've not started at all. Even if you never achieve your 100%, the 20% you reached will always be worth it. After all, it holds more potential than never starting and tomorrow's potential always wins over today's work.