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I wanted to talk about this concept finished is better than perfect. And I've been using this idea and some other things I'll talk about a little later,
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to take some pressure off myself, because I think
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I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this. But a lot of times, I'll have this idea of an end result in mind and wanting it to be exactly that way. A lot
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of times, it's really counterproductive. And it leads to, you know, procrastination, and all these kinds of different things, you know, sort of the
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idea of, of, I just want to get this done, and it doesn't have to be perfect, oftentimes helps me kind of get past that, that state, I'll get, I'll get into
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more details. But so for example, I can think of a couple of times, you know, when doing graffiti, there has been pieces where, by mindset going into it
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was a, you know, I was really focused on the outcome, and I wanted it to turn out a certain way. And most of the time when, when that happens, I don't
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succeed. And it's not an enjoyable project, I can think of a couple times, one particular, I think it was probably my least favorite time
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that I've ever painted outside of like when it's like really stupid hot or something like that. There was a out in San Pedro, there's a guy called WGU.
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And he had a graph shop out there. And he, they had a box truck that they let people paint, and they'll sort of cycle it out, you know, once a month
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or every couple of months. And they, they offered to let me paint the box truck. And it says pretty good sized box truck. And I don't really paint trucks too
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often. So I was pretty excited to be able to do that. And so I had this thing in my head of exactly what it was going to look like. And when I went to
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paint, I remember I had a lot of pressure on myself to do it. And then I drew my sketch. And
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it's kind of hard to explain, but it was like these sort of just simple 3d block letters, but the 3ds were supposed to go a certain way. And the letters
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were supposed to be angled at a certain way. And when I drew my sketch, I did it totally wrong. So like, was already off to a bad start. And I had all this
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pressure on myself of something that I I wanted it to end up looking like. So I ended up doing redoing the sketch and
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sort of long story short, like I just kept fucking up, and what should have taken me about two hours to three hours,
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probably took me close to eight hours to do and then at the end, I wasn't even happy with what I ended up doing. And it was, I'm fairly certain that it was due
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to the mindset that I had going into it. On the flip side, if you look at stuff, or not you but I mean, when I looked back on pieces where
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I had the most fun, and the outcome was something that I liked, I mean, a lot, it's there's always some kind of something I don't like I mean, I
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think that's every kind of artistic endeavor, you know, you're gonna see something you don't like. But as far as like the most fun painting is when I
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intentionally go into it with the mindset of, you know, I have an idea what I want to do, and I'm just gonna fucking let it go and just see what happens. And
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just kind of believe that the outcome is going to come out however it comes out. And there's a handful of pieces. Some of my favorite pieces is
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one from 1994 that I always look at. And I don't know,
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there was something about that piece, like everything just came together. And like it's not perfect. If I look close, some of the highlights are a little
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off and you know, shit like that it's graph. I remember painting, it's still after all these years, it was 30 years ago, I still remember painting it, I
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still remember when it was finished sitting there looking at it. And you know, being happy with how it came out. And then also remember really never being
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able to replicate, you know, sort of the success of that one particular piece. I don't remember exactly the mindset going into it. But I remember
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when I was painting, that there was no pressure, I was just going. And I've had some pieces just recently that I went into it like that last time I
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painted, I took the pressure off, and just kind of let it go. And the last couple times I painted I kind of went with a more old school style. And the
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first time I did that I had some pressure on myself, but at the same time, first time in a long time that I painted those old styles. I was going into it with
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some pressure and then I caught myself and realize like, if you're going to fuck it up if you go into it like this, so I took all the pressure off myself
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and I was like, Look, if it looks like shit, what's going to happen? It's not the end of the world. It was out there in public and, you know, it is what
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it is. If it looks bad, it looks bad. I don't really care. And the piece came out fine. It wasn't like my favorite but it was cool, you know? And it was
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actually
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enjoyable to paint. And then the last time I painted jabber came out, and Scott came out, and we,
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we painted some Silver's. And again, I was just like,
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just gonna let go of all the pressure, just let it happen, I have an idea what I want to do. And outside of that, you know what happens happens. And sort
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of to connect to that, I don't know if it's like a completely different concept. But I feel like it's, it's in line. Anytime I, I learned this recently, and
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I think it was the author of The Untethered Soul, if I'm not mistaken, it was on a lecture series, I'm pretty sure it was him.
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He said that, whenever he goes in to write something, he tells himself, this is just the first draft, if it's, if it's terrible, I'll just rewrite it
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and it'll be fine. And the act of doing that and allowing yourself to feel like, this isn't going out, it's kind of hard to do that with graph to a
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certain extent, like, I mean, I guess I guess it could work. I don't really use this for graph, but I use it for all my other creative stuff, like if I'm
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writing a written thing, or if I'm doing some kind of design or some shit like that, I like to use this. And I think you could probably use it for graph too,
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if you're willing to buff your shit and start all over again. But back to the point, when you go into it, and you're like, This is just the first draft.
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And that's what he was talking about. He said, You know, I'm gonna sit down to write. And whenever it comes out, it's just the first draft, I don't have to
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go with it.
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Just that act alone, it takes so much pressure off that he said that the first draft is always good, because he's really free to just, you know, he's doing it
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under no pressure, because it's just the first draft, it doesn't have to be super good. And so just the act of doing that. It.
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You know, like I said, it takes all the pressure. And as I was getting ready to record this, I was looking over my notes, and I was kind of starting to feel a
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little anxious.
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Which I kind of feel like that almost every time, but I just sat there breathing. And I was like, this is just the first draft. I mean, it's not like
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this is live, like I could edit it, I could delete it, I don't have to send this out. So I guess we'll, we'll know, at the end of this if it's a good
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episode, and if that shit actually worked, but I don't feel any pressure. Because this, if this sucks, I just won't put it out. It's not a big deal.
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It's the first draft, you know. So that's another technique that I really like. So I mean, this idea of of like perfectionism, and putting all this pressure on
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yourself, it's not, I don't think it's very good for your mental health, like creating anxiety and ship for yourself, like putting all this pressure
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on yourself to pull off something exactly the way you want it to be. And when you can take that pressure off, then you're not feeling those kind of
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like, I don't know, if they're all negative, but I mean, I don't really like to be anxious. And I don't know that that's super healthy,
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to put yourself in that state. And so when you disconnect from the outcome, and take that pressure off of yourself, a lot of times that'll lead to the
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project getting finished, whether or not it's perfect, or whether or not it's exactly what you wanted. When you finish something, it gives you a sense
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of accomplishment, and then some relief, like a lot of times I'll be I'll be dreading something. And I'll be like, I don't, I just don't want to do this. And
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when I'm when I'm in that state, then I've going into it thinking, Okay, I know I don't want to do this, so it's probably going to suck, and then
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that's putting more pressure on me. But when I release that, and I just get through it and let the thing you know, unfold however it is and I'm just
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talking about any creative endeavor.
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Once that's done, there's a huge sense of relief, you know, you accomplish it, you got done what you said you were gonna get done.
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It's also kind of reminds me of something. And I don't know if this kind of mindset can be helpful, but there's something I've heard about in the like,
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sort of the tech world. It's called the minimal virus Sorry, what is it minimum viable product? I'm pretty sure I heard about this with the iPhone, you
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know, the iPhone didn't have all the all the shit that they wanted on there. But they needed to get this thing out. And I don't know the whole story. But
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that's basically the gist of what I understood. So it didn't have, you know, certain things. I think it didn't have like copy and paste, like some kind of
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basic stuff that that you would think that that would be it. My understanding is that the tech world uses that minimum viable product, a lot to get things to
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market.
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And so we do that, and my company also, I mean, it's not, not to that extent, like not some crazy huge shit, but like, for example, when I first put
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out the drip machine, that's one of our markers. When I first released that it was only available in black. I was like, fuck it, let's just put let's
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just put it out in black and see if people even like it. And so putting out this minimum
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viable product, I mean, if you're going to put out one color, I mean, if you're going to Black is a pretty, it's a pretty good color to choose for
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a mop, I mean black or silver. So we ended up doing that. And then we just started adding colors here and there. I mean, like, we have seven colors now,
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which is not a lot, but over the years, you know, we just add a color every now and then, as we feel we need it, we're going to be adding a couple more colors
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this year. So this year, we're going to have three total colors. But back to the very beginning, the minimum viable product was just one color, and
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just put it out there and see, see how it plays out. And so if you use a concept like this, and I think that tech people is part of it, I don't know, I'm kind of
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speculating on that. But, but like I said, you know, you're just getting it out there and seeing if people like it, imagine if you, if you didn't do
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that, and you were like, I'm just gonna wait until I have 10 colors, obviously the announcement, I mean, the investment would be much larger,
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you're taking a much bigger risk. I don't know this is going kind of down to product thing. I don't know if that's, that's even meaningful, but I don't
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know, apply these concepts to whatever you want, I'm sure I'm sure it could work, but but you're gonna get, you're gonna get feedback faster, you're
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gonna get, you know, the product is going to be done, it's going to be out rather than spending all this time doing all this other shit. I'm sure there's
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better ways to do it. I'm sure Montana didn't release one fucking can of black. When they did it, I'm sure they, there's other ways to go about it. But
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in my opinion, that's definitely a good way to go. When you think about if you want to take the pressure off yourself, and you want to get something out,
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what's the minimum viable product, and that could be like your T Shirt Company or any of that kind of stuff. So the last kind of ideas I wanted to talk
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about? Well, there's a few different things. One of them, I also wanted to say like it doesn't really give you a pass to half ass shit. But at the
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same time, like, like, I'll give you an example. Like, I'd prefer to do the workout that I want to do, you know, like I have like these, I sort of have this
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weekly routine that I'm doing right now. And so when I get to like, you know, today, for example, I'm going to do this back and biceps workout. And so
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every now and then what will happen is all procrastinate because I don't really want to do it. So I'll be sitting there going like, Man, I gotta get
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this workout done, I gotta get this workout done. And then I start thinking, okay, the warmup is gonna take this long, then then the workout is going to
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take this long, and then I got to maybe do some stretching and all in it's like 45 minutes. And then the longer I procrastinate,
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the easier it gets to say fuck it, you know, like, my mind just is constantly trying to create reasons to, to not do it. So a lot of times what I'll do is,
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well, not a lot of times, but when I'm,
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when I'm about to say fuck it, I'm not going to do shit. Oftentimes, what I'll do is all say, All right, I'm just gonna do something, I'm gonna get
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something done, so that I don't fuck off this whole workout. So like, what I like to do is say, Okay, I'm what's really causing me to not want to do it is I
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don't want to spend 45 minutes to an hour or whatever, doing the workout that I had planned. So rather than say, Fuck it, I'm just going to do something
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intense for 15 minutes. So like the Navy SEALs, burpees or something that, you know, it's a full body workout, it kicks your ass. You know, if you do those,
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you know, several sets of 10
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Oh, I mean, they kicked my ass. I mean, maybe you're in better shape than me. But so if I do that, that I know, I got something, got something done.
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Like I said, it didn't give me a pass to say fuck it and, and half ass every day. But at the same time, if I have to choose between nothing, and that I'd
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much rather have that. And at least when I'm done, I may not be as satisfied as I would be had I done what I initially said I was going to do, but at least
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I didn't completely say fuck it and did nothing at all. So if you think about that, in terms of art, or graph or something like that, a lot of times I
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don't want to, like I do want to keep it as part of my routine is to like get up, you know, do sketches and draw and try to come up with new letters and
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shit like that. And so even something like that, if you had something that you wanted to do regularly, you're like, I want to I want to make sure I'm
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drawing you know X amount of times per week. You know, if you don't really want to do a full drawing that you can sketch out in pencil and then fill it in
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and ink it and do all that shit. Maybe just knock out a quick sketch, you know something set a time time limit, I'm gonna I'm gonna draw for 10 minutes and
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try to do something as fast as I can, you know, like get something done. So along these lines, there is psychological benefit
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It's too, you know, consistency. And that's what I really like about the power list. I mean, it's like,
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you have five critical tasks that are going to move your life forward. And sometimes, you know, sometimes that power list doesn't take me very long to do
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so like, I'll get all of my shit done by noon. And, you know, there's two schools of thought, like one you can say, okay, you know, I got all my shit done, I
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got my wind for the day. So I can kind of do whatever I want.
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I'm trying to grow this business. So a lot of times, I'll just add some more shit. But, you know, they say, like, Andy says, not to put like 15
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different things, or 10 different things, because you're probably going to get more losses than wins. And so I don't do that. But if I finished my
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five critical tasks that I set out to do, and I still feel like working, I'll just add some more on, you know, but but the point was, like, using this kind of
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idea to stay consistent and get wins, even if they're small. So like, that idea of like, the first draft, like if you have to write something, or if you have
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to do something creative. And, you know, you have to get it done, or what is it, you told yourself, you were going to do this, right, like, I'm gonna
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write this thing, I'm going to do this drawing, I'm going to do whatever it is.
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And you you're sitting there putting pressure on yourself, because you want to do it a certain way, and you want it to be perfect, and all that kind of
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stuff. And you say, You know what, I'm just, this is gonna be the first draft, I'm gonna get it done, then you're gonna get that done, and you're going to
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accomplish a small win. And then if you, you know, continue doing that, and you keep stacking up those wins. Like, that's really good for your mindset, really
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good for motivation, and keeping yourself moving forward. So I mean, at the end of the day there I don't think there's anything wrong with with
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striving to get something perfect. I'm just saying like, for those occasions where that drive for perfection, or you know, that drive for doing
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something exactly the way you want to want it to be, if that's taking all the fun out of it, and making it like tedious and painful to accomplish. Maybe try
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something like what I'm talking about, maybe try saying, I'm just gonna get something done, and I'm gonna get me a win for the day
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all right, I
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appreciate each and every one of you guys who are supporting the cause and continue to spread the love and yeah, stay up.