After writing this post, I decided it warranted two parts: an explanation of what I've seen about perfectionism, mastery of the craft and commercialism.
I thought I needed to include something I'd learned from Josh Sharpling in his extraordinary lecture at the Learning from Failure Conference we hosted.
As an aside here, I wondered whether we would host this conference and then never host it again I wondered whether we would ever go back to hosting a DES Conference (Dentistry, education and Scones instead of a TED conference so we don't get infringed on copyright), I wondered whether that would be it and in fact, all of us came out of it knowing that we had to do both next year (so watch this space).
Josh's lecture came from a discussion, from a genesis of thought that he and I had over a Zoom call after he had put his hand up to say that he would be happy to speak.
As he explained beautifully and humbly in his lecture with a photograph of the car that he was sat in, he arrived home from work one day after two significant failures and sat in his car before he could get out and go into his house because he felt so sh*t (for many reasons).
He explained that perfectionism was killing him, perfectionism was driving him mad, and perfectionism was, in his own words, "stealing money from his daughter" (slight paraphrase there).
What I have found in watching people in dentistry and in having such a huge network of friends and colleagues that I've been able to meet and talk to and compare notes with are, broadly speaking, two routes that dentists take.
The first is they try to be brilliant, but many who try to be brilliant try to be too brilliant, and they go too far into the abyss of perfectionism, wrecking their lives, losing their time, affecting relationships, working too many hours for too little return, casting family relationships aside just to be better and better.
This is the most false of false economies. It is fine to be 'good enough'.
The second is people who try to be rich first before they're good; they almost never get good; they get married to the lifestyle and the wealth. They have to cut corner after corner to make more and more, and they surround themselves with people who are as wealthy or wealthier than them; therefore, they're always on the chase.
Affluenza is rife in this group.
And so, what do we say to the new graduates? Some of the ones that I'm charged to speak to on Friday in Birmingham.
You should always start out trying to be good because if you are good, you may also become rich, but if you start out trying to be rich, you will never be good.
Understand that in your pursuit of perfection, if that is the route you take, you're unlikely ever to make the money you think the quality of your delivery deserves.
Blog Post Number - 4009
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