Choosing sprint goals. Overcoming perfectionism with the Definition of Done.

If you find yourself trapped in analysis paralysis, endlessly postponing the day you are done with that project, you’re not alone. Perfectionism can be a huge barrier to completing tasks, and it’s often the reason why goals remain unfinished. The good news? There’s a solution rooted in Agile methodologies that can help you break free. In this post, I’ll share how you can finalize your goals using a powerful Agile tool—the Definition of Done—which has been the best strategy I’ve found for overcoming perfectionism.

How to choose your sprint goals

Most likely, you’re about to embark on your first sprint.

The goals for this first sprint should be

1. to learn the concepts of Agile,
2. to go through all the steps, and
3. to experience the power of Agile and short-term planning.

There is no grand strategy for selecting your first set of goals. Like with everything in life, sophistication comes with experience. Right now you don’t have experience, so there is not much sophistication going on. We’re keeping it simple for the first sprint.

When you look at your backlog and highlighted sprint candidates, I want you to run them through these filters:

1. Can It Be Done in One Sprint? A sprint is a short, focused period (I do three weeks) where you commit to finishing a set of tasks. The first filter to run your goals through is whether they can be completed within your sprint duration. If not, break them down into smaller tasks.
2. Does It Fit Your Sprint Capacity? You’ll have a different sprint capacity each sprint. Make sure the sum of your sprint goals fits within your available time, energy, and focus for that sprint.
3. Has It Been on Your Backlog for a Week? Good goals have time to “age.” Don’t impulsively add tasks to your sprint. Give your ideas at least a week to sit on your backlog.
4. Are You Still Excited About It? You should still feel motivated and see value in accomplishing this goal. If it no longer excites you, it’s probably not worth your energy right now.
5. Are you the ONE who can move it to Done? Ideally, your goal should be something you can finish on your own, without relying on others. If other people need to take action before you can finish, it’s not a good sprint goal. You don’t want the valuable sprint time to go by while you wait for someone to complete their part.

Polishing your sprint goals with the Definition of Done

The Definition of Done answers one key question: What does it look like when my goal is complete? Without a clear finish line, there is no clear finish line in sight. The concept of the Definition of Done is designed to eliminate this ambiguity by giving you a clear, objective, and measurable goal to work toward.

When you clearly define what “done” means for your task, you stop moving the goalposts and allow yourself to celebrate your achievements without the constant pressure to improve or perfect.

It’s liberating to know when you can move to the next goal without all the guilt and shame that you might usually feel when the work you ship is “not perfect”.

The best products and ideas in your life improved over time. They weren’t shipped perfect on the first day. They got there one iteration at a time. 

I highly recommend finding the first version of your favoroute products. I bet they were far away from being called beautiful, efficient, simple, elegant, fast, convincing, or whatever you are trying to make your work to be.

I gave a simple example of an aspiring baker here. A person who bakes an imperfect cookie every day will be better off by the end of the month than a person who spent a month researching ‘the one’ perfect recipe before baking a single cookie.

Read other posts I wrote about the Definition of Done:

• Definition of done: Unclinging from the outcome
• How to Use Definition of Done for Personal Productivity

Why It’s Important for Perfectionists

Perfectionism feeds off uncertainty. If you don’t know what your finished goal should look like, it’s easy to keep tweaking, improving, and making it nicer, better, faster.

For example, imagine you want to launch a website.
What does that mean to you?
How many pages does it need?
What features should it have?

If you have a goal of just launching a website without thinking about the definition of done, you’ll always find something more to add or improve, preventing you from finishing this and other goals in a short sprint.

The Definition of Done forces you to establish a clear endpoint. Maybe during the first sprint, you only create a homepage with a short description of your project and your contact information. That’s it! By defining this as “done,” you’ve set a clear, achievable target. You can always build more later, but for now, you know when you’ve completed this specific task. You know when you can move that sticky note across the board to the “Done” column.

The Random Person Test

When explaining the Definition of Done to people, I’ve come up with the Random Person Test. Imagine grabbing a random person off the street, showing them your goal and its definition of done, and asking them if it’s complete. If they can look at your work and the definition of done and say, “Yes, it’s done,” you’ve succeeded.

This test helps you avoid vague terms like “improve,” “simplify,” or “beautify.” These are subjective. Instead, aim for concrete, objective terms, like “Walls have been painted and a bookshelf installed.” That way, anyone could easily confirm that the task is complete.

Examples of the Definition of Done in Action

Let’s say your goal is to submit a draft of your research paper. The Definition of Done might be: “First draft is emailed to a reviewer.” It’s clear, measurable, and leaves no room for perfectionism to sneak in. Once that email is sent, you know the task is complete. A random person off the street, can check your email and see if the email with a file attachment has been sent out without having to judge how good the first draft is.

If you are preparing for a trip, a definition of done can be “Hotels and flights are booked. One attraction is chosen for each day.” That leaves you with room for sponteneity while still having some structure built in.

I’m currently running a seasonal marketing campaign in my other business. The definition of done for that project is “Six marketing emails sent out. Six reels are published.” Anyone can check out our marketing email platform and Instagram and within seconds figure out if the goal is completed. That’s the level of clarity you want to have.

Definition of Done is not a list of sub-tasks

The definition of done is not a collection of steps you need to take durint the sprint. The definition of done is that final stage. Email is sent. Form is submitted. Video is published. But there are a lot of steps that you need to do to make it happen. But that doesn’t go into the definition of done. That would go into daily standups.

How it looks on the Scrum board

Try it for yourself

You can start using the definition of done without following the rest of the Agile and Scrum frameworks. You can apply this to your current goal-setitng routine to reduce the perfectionism-induced task paralysis in your life.

You might find these posts interesting:

1. This is how Agile makes you 2X more productive every month
2. Experimental mindset when setting goals
3. The one-way to-do list
4. Stop having this flawed assumption when setting goals
5. How to Start Side Project with Full-Time Job