Consistency over perfection

I won’t pretend to be an expert at building communities, but November marks one year since I organized a few people to revive the BC Government design community and we’re still meeting regularly, sharing and collaborating both in meetings and on our online channels.

Our community is, at this point, a side-of-desk initiative that I do when I have time. It’s this reason that the previous version of the community lost momentum and was de-prioritised. I’m hoping that will change in 2023 and I’m starting to have conversations about making that happen.

I truly believe the only reason this community is still going is this one principle I have lived by since I started doing this work:

Consistency is more important than perfection. The main thing is to keep showing up.

Our community meetups are very informal, usually hastily put together at the last minute. They’re not polished or well-edited. But they’re happening and that’s the main part.

So if you’re struggling with not being able to find time to do something that feels important, these things have helped me:

• do it in the easiest, low-touch way possible
• ask others to help
• just focus on showing up
• remember that you are adding value, even when it doesn’t feel like it