Procrastination does not make perfect

Confession time. I’m a seasoned procrastinator. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a stickler about deadlines, and I’ll oftentimes turn projects in a little early just to be safe, but if there’s wiggle room, I’ll take almost every inch.

I’ve long known this about myself, but it wasn’t until I was piecing together my first quilt that I realized something about myself. There’s a reason I procrastinate, and it’s not what you’d think.

First, a little about the quilt. I help make quilts for a ministry that builds and delivers beds to children who don’t have ones. The idea is that no child sleeps on the floor in our community. I joined a group of women who come together and sew twin-sized quilts to support this effort, providing homemade blankets for those same children. I hadn’t sewn anything beyond hemming some pants in years, so when I signed up to help, I was nervous about my abilities to put together something as complicated as a quilt.

Fortunately, the quilting ladies have been patient and are teaching me what I need to know, but much has been learned the hard way. The first quilt top I made, I began the project at a group sewing day and then brought it home, thinking I’d have more time to work on it. That’s when procrastination shimmied onto the scene. The project sat untouched at my house for weeks at a time. I’d work on it a little bit and then stop. I’d come up with reasons to tackle some other project first.

One day, I realized what was happening. I realized I was afraid of doing it wrong, of screwing up something that would be given to another person, a child. Of making a mess of up something that mattered. I was letting my perfectionism get in the way of progress. It’s something that often happens when I write, trying to craft the perfect sentence, the perfect scene, the perfect story, and it means making progress comes to a grinding halt. It’s hard to move forward when you’re constantly rewriting the same paragraph or avoiding writing something new altogether.

The thing is, putting off something that makes you anxious doesn’t make it any less fretful. At some point, you have to do the thing that scares you or abandon it all together. Quitting wasn’t a choice for me.

The day I realized why I was hesitant to work on the quilt, I decided the only answer was to get busy and finish it. I set to work, determined to see it through to the end. And I did. Was it perfect? Far from it. I had to rip out dozens of seams I’d sewn because the pieces weren’t matching up and then resew them, and even then, it wasn’t perfect.

The thing is, putting off something that makes you anxious doesn’t make it any less fretful. At some point, you have to do the thing that scares you.

But something wonderful started happening along the way. I could see real progress. Beautiful scraps of fabric began to form a colorful mosaic, and a blanket top began to take shape. Consistency led to momentum. I finished the task at hand, and I was proud of the imperfect masterpiece I’d created.

I’m now on my third quilt top. I’m still making mistakes and fixing them. I still worry I’m doing it wrong, but I’m doing it. My quilting friends support me along the way, and it’s getting easier each time I try a new pattern. And knowing a kid will find some comfort with something my hands have made has made all the difference. The biggest lesson I learned was not to let my quest for “perfect” get in the way of progress.