Why Perfectionism Kills Productivity: How the 70% Rule Improves Executive Performance

Are you delaying a product launch because the messaging isn't quite right? 

Maybe you’re holding off on a key hire because you want to see one more candidate?

Or perhaps you’re waiting to pull the trigger on a strategic pivot because the data may not be complete?

Every day you wait for perfection, your competition moves forward, and your team remains in limbo.

These are the costs of refining a decision from 90% to 95%: 

• critical projects stall, 
• momentum dies, 
• and your team loses weeks they'll never get back. 

Jeff Bezos refers to this as the 70% rule, which states that most decisions only require about 70% of the information you wish you had. The last 30% consumes time, energy, and team bandwidth. 

Waiting to gather more data often results in delays that do not significantly improve the outcome of the decision. In most real-world settings, speed outperforms precision.

Perfectionism triggers the same stress response in the brain as an actual threat. 

Cortisol stays high, your prefrontal cortex (which is responsible for organizing information) gets less resources, and you second-guess decisions that should be straightforward. 

Perfectionism feels like control, but it actually hinders your performance and leads to slower results.

Let’s look at the math: going from good to perfect often takes 40% more time for 5% better results. 

When that delay costs you market position, team momentum, or a critical hire, you're losing more than you're gaining. 

So what if you committed to finishing projects faster so that you can learn, pivot,  and solve problems more efficiently?

What if you stopped waiting for perfect clarity and started shipping at "good enough"? 

• Major decisions that used to take weeks would get made in days. 
• Launches would start happening on schedule. 
• Your team would move faster. 

And the best part is, your outcomes wouldn’t suffer; they’d improve, because speed and learning beat endless planning.

Chasing perfectionism slows progress, reduces learning, and often multiplies costs without significantly improving results.

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