How AI freed me from perfectionism
Two ways AI is helping me ship work faster and embrace the 80/20
Over the weekend I read a feature piece on Lady Gaga in The New York Times Magazine.
In the interview she spoke about her battle with perfectionism:
"The person that puts the most pressure on me is me. Sometimes I have to warn myself to do something at 70 percent because 100 is going to bang you up."
This resonated.
This idea that sometimes you have to force yourself to not give your all to preserve your wellbeing.
For Lady Gaga this looks like losing sleep over her Coachella performance.
For you and me maybe it's working late into the night getting the wording of that high-stakes meeting request just right to secure a meeting with a VIP.
You have to remember the opportunity cost
Incidentally just a few hours after I read that piece, an excellent email on perfectionism hit my inbox from Justin Welch.
He makes the point that by focusing intently on polishing every detail of one piece of work, we inevitably sacrifice time we could invest in other high-value projects — this is the real, often overlooked cost of perfectionism. The opportunity cost.
Yeah, maybe the sacrifice is your sanity — that 100% that’s going to bang you up.
Or maybe it’s your relationships. Your health. Or the 17 other projects on your plate that you’re neglecting that are actually way higher-value to your exec and the bottom line.
How I’ve used AI to shift my own perfectionist tendencies
All this got me reflecting on how far I've come with my perfectionism these past two years with ChatGPT's help.
I've been a recovering perfectionist for some time, and now with AI I’m really pushing the edge of my comfort zone.
Knowing that many EAs have perfectionist tendencies like me (are you with me??), I had a thought that my top tactics might be useful to some of you, too.
So here are two ways AI pushes me out of a perfectionist rut on a daily basis:
1. By producing a rapid first draft
Starting is always the hardest part — with AI you’ll never have “blank sheet syndrome” again.
Speed and doing more with less is a big theme for 2025 for me. In particular I’ve been pushing myself to ship work in tiny pockets of time.
20 mins to spare between meetings? Before I wouldn’t even bother trying to get into a chunky piece of work.
But with AI I can easily produce a client proposal in that time — I feed in the AI-generated transcript and a sample proposal, and..
⏱️ In 10 seconds I have a draft
⏱️ In 2 minutes I’ve iterated with some back-and-forthing with AI
⏱️ In 10 minutes I’ve popped that draft into a doc, tidied the formatting and added personal touches
⏱️ In 15 minutes I’ve written the email, double-checked it all and hit send
So a workflow that used to take me 90 mins now takes me <20 🤯
I also love using ChatGPT’s advanced voice feature to brainstorm when I’m out walking in London — it transforms the messy, unstructured ideas floating around my head into a coherent first draft I can work with when I’m back at my desk.
Using AI to sketch that initial work product doesn’t have to mean handing over the reins. With the right prompting the ideas are still yours — AI just brings them to life (actually I wrote about this a few months ago).
💫 Prompt tip: dump your own thinking into your prompt, no matter how rough it is. And attach samples of work you’ve created longhand if you can — this is the best way to get high-quality outputs.
2. By giving me early feedback to get me unstuck
Sometimes when I’m in flow state on a piece of work, I can feel myself spending way too much time optimizing and obsessing over getting a part of it just right.
That’s when I pull up an AI chatbot to give me some feedback.
99% of the time it’s reassurance that I’m going in the right direction. But I sometimes get really valuable suggestions for improving it, too.
This one’s a great tactic to speed up the process of shaping & shipping work that you still want to handcraft yourself (which is totally fine btw — there’s a fair amount of stuff I don’t want to outsource to AI either!).
💫 Prompt tip: AI chatbots are usually like cheerleaders. But that’s not what you need right now. Add this line to your prompt for more candid feedback: I want you to be completely candid and direct with your feedback. Don’t be a cheerleader. Tell it to me straight.
Ready to really learn AI?
I’m thrilled to say I’m opening the doors to the spring cohort of Carve AI tomorrow. Seven weeks of practical, actionable AI learnings & real-world projects — from Apr 29-June 10. Join the waitlist to be the first to hear when enrollment is open and get exclusive offers & discounts.
Wishing you a lovely weekend when it gets here,
Fi