Avoiding my 4th Step

I know it's bad when I am posting to my blog rather than doing what I should be doing: working on my 4th step.  I haven't posted since May, but suddenly I have many thoughts to share with the internets and it simply must happen right now.

Christ, if it weren't for the anonymity principle of AA and if I had any balls at all, I'd just complete my 4th step here on the blog.  As if anyone is just dying to see the inner workings of my hamster-on-an-exercise-wheel brain.  Where does this stuff come from?

I need to get past this point.  Actually, what I'm really dying to get to is my fifth.  I'm feeling the need to purge.  See!  Immediately the fourth is simply an obstacle to getting to my real destination.  An inconvenience to be tolerated, like a closed train crossing in the way of getting to a meeting.

It is my nature to skip to the end.  There is nothing I like more than a decision made, an issue closed, a goal achieved.  Recently, I have been wrestling with the fact that I also tend to do things just in time, then feel inadequate for not doing my best work because I crunch the effort up against a deadline.  I want a deadline because it, in itself, is a decision of sorts (good), but then I set myself up to meet it under the gun, in a headlong rush to deliver, get there on time (bad).  Inevitably, I end up a few minutes late, a bit unfinished.  It's a character defect.

Then I flip it and ponder if I'm striving for perfection and just need to be gentler with myself. When is good enough (we refer to it as the 80/20 rule at work) enough?  I'm sick of saying, sorry I'm a few minutes late or sorry, this is still "in draft" or just to start the discussion.  I feel like I'm saying some version of "sorry, this isn't my best effort" one way or another more and more often and that just isn't ok with me.  I need to apply the 80/20 rule to offering my best effort: 80% of the time I'm on time and delivering a complete draft and chalk the other 20% up to progress.

So now I will go apply that to my 4th step.  Thanks for hanging in, I needed to process that.