If you’re like me, you have no shortage of ideas about how to improve yourself. Eat more vegetables. Cut down on sweets. Meditate. Get more sleep. Lift weights. Drink more water. Learn to cook Thai food. Practice the piano. Brush up on conversational French. [Insert your own favorites here.]

And if you’re like me, and many others, you also may have trouble following through with your plans.

Why is it so easy for us to think of all the ways we’d like to create newer, better versions of ourselves and so hard for us to make the changes happen?

I think it’s because we don’t just set out to develop healthier habits or find new creative outlets. We imagine no less than a total transformation and deem anything short of a complete makeover as insufficient—not worth the effort.

Take a writer I know. She lives alone. She works from home and can follow any schedule that suits her. She’s a night owl and has a surge of energy after 10 pm, often staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning when her creative juices are flowing. As a result, she usually sleeps until noon unless she’s scheduled a morning meeting. But she always sets her alarm for 8 because she views herself as lazy for spending half a conventional workday in bed. She starts every morning with the fantasy of getting up when she “should” and always winds up hitting Snooze five times before she turns off the alarm in disgust and goes back to sleep. When she finally does drag herself out of bed, never fully rested due to the interrupted sleep, she feels upset with herself. Not the best way to start the day.

Yet when I suggested she just face the fact that she’s not a morning person and set the alarm for a more realistic time (say, 11:30), when she actually might be able to get up, she looked aghast.

“I couldn’t possibly do that. That’s so late!”

Sure she’d like to bound out of bed at 8. But right now she’s not starting her day until noon. So why wouldn’t it make sense to try rising just a half hour earlier?

Because she’s letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Seems silly, doesn’t it? But when it comes to ourselves, we often can’t see as clearly how our visions of The Perfect keep us from even beginning to make a dent in the patterns we’d like to change.

Think about one of those self-improvement ideas you’ve had for a while but never seem to carry out. If the undertaking seems overwhelming, you might just be letting your vision of the perfect you block your path forward. So instead of focusing on where you want to be (which may seem impossibly distant), look at where you are right now, and start by taking just one ridiculously small step in the right direction.