Joe offers three reframes for perfectionists: instead of “how do I make this perfect?”, ask “how do I connect with this?”, “how do I enjoy this?”, or “how do I do my best work?” All of these orient toward process and relationship rather than a fixed endpoint.
Brett uses the analogy of seeing an unfinished project as already perfect and asking “how do I connect with this?”—inspired by indigenous polyculture farming that colonizers saw as chaos but which followed the complex order of nature. The “disorder” contained a deeper intelligence that right-angled logic couldn’t perceive.
The shift from perfectionism to connection is also a shift from arrogance to humility. Joe calls perfectionism “extremely arrogant”—it assumes you know what perfection is, that you can achieve it, and that your idea of it is what matters. Connection assumes the opposite: that the material, the process, and the people involved have their own intelligence that you’re relating to, not controlling.