I'm a recovering perfectionist who has read their fair share of Brene Brown, Steven Pressfield, Seth Godin, Tony Robbins, Anne Lamott, and many more.
The best metaphors I've read is in Bird by Bird. The author describes two different scenarios.
The first is that perfection & progress is much like driving late at night with headlights. You will only be able to see as far as your headlights allow. You might be going through a canyon, on a straight and narrow highway, or going the wrong way. But all you know for certain is what is in front of you.
The second is that you have to frame your perfectionism around something. That could be your loved ones, your dreams in life, whatever. If it's always framed around your past achievements, you're comparing to the past and not to the future version of what could be. Getting clear on why you're doing it is very important.
I truly believe you can devoid yourself of perfectionism. I've gone from being afraid to publish work to the public, to only publishing in the public and shaping my work based on the imperfections being pointed out in my shitty first attempts.
Your first attempt will be shitty. Your second attempt will be less shitty. Do this for long enough and you'll start to get a feel for proficiency and what others see as "perfection".
The most important aspect for me is in setting reasonable, concrete benchmarks that you can self-assess. Although good teaching and mentoring can be helpful, external opinion is also the source of many bad benchmarks - all too often nobody will be there to give advice more specific than "this is good, that is bad".
To get better benchmarks, you have to do some philosophy to set up principles that you can judge yourself with. This can be daunting but is much more effective than trying things at random. Once you have them, though, your self-assessments become much more reasonable and perfectionism will recede: You know what it takes to go from 90% to 99%, and can weigh that against developing in other respects.
I often apply it from the beginning for creative projects. For example if I am writing a story, I will need to consider "what makes a good story". If I were to develop the benchmark for this by consulting a list of "top 10 ways to make a good story," or did my research by looking at best-sellers, then I would only be capable of writing cliches. It would be very hard to get off of the blank page without just copying a complete work and then trying to modify parts.
But if I decide on particular concepts of good for this story, suddenly the path becomes clarified. And so I might select a theme to explore, a word or a phrase like "sunshine on a cloudy day", and then develop the basis of the story by making the contents abductively(as in abductive reasoning) similar to that theme - by inventing characters, settings and plot devices that would suggest similar ideas and then seeing how I could make them work together. As I add more, additional themes and principles might come up and I would navigate their use by looking for ways in which they are compatible with the primary theme. If there are contradictions between two themes, then I will have to resolve them or else drop exploration in that direction.
And you can see that there is a lot of work that would go into developing the story from a set of themes into a finished narrative, but it is also not work that would go in circles; there is a start and end to it, a point at which it definitely communicates the theme, and does so efficiently. The rest is a matter of adding some polish, smoothing out the particulars of the telling. It would only grow unbounded and become a truly "perfectionist" endeavor if I allowed too many contradictory elements to slip in and create problems, or burdened myself with too many technical constraints like those found in a top 10 or "do's and don'ts" list of quick-fixes. That advice can solve particular problems, but it comes after having a good foundation.
> The first is that perfection & progress is much like driving late at night with headlights. You will only be able to see as far as your headlights allow.
that's all you need to drive ar night though (and driving in general)
if you drive looking around you, you can become a danger for yourself and others.
What I mean is that perfectionism is doing things the right way and make the best out of the limits you encounter.
I feel like many confuse perfectionism with obsession.
> perfectionism is doing things the right way and make the best out of the limits you encounter.
My dictionary defines perfectionist as “a person who refuses to accept any standard short of perfection”. That is the standard definition you will find most people understand as the meaning of the word. For more precise use in a technical context, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionism_(psychology)
>> Perfectionists strain compulsively and unceasingly toward unattainable goals, and measure their self-worth by productivity and accomplishment. Pressuring oneself to achieve unrealistic goals inevitably sets the person up for disappointment. Perfectionists tend to be harsh critics of themselves when they fail to meet their expectations. [...]
>> Perfectionism can be damaging. It can take the form of procrastination when used to postpone tasks and self-deprecation when used to excuse poor performance or to seek sympathy and affirmation from other people. These, together or separate, are self-handicapping strategies perfectionists may use to protect their sense of self-competence. In general, perfectionists feel constant pressure to meet their high expectations, which creates cognitive dissonance when expectations cannot be met. Perfectionism has been associated with numerous other psychological and physiological complications. Moreover, perfectionism may result in alienation and social disconnection via certain rigid interpersonal patterns common to perfectionistic individuals.
“Doing things the right way” is an idiosyncratic personal definition. You should find a different word for this if you want people to understand you. Or perhaps you could use “competence”, “proficiency”, “fastidiousness”, “judiciousness”, “practicality”, “adaptability”, “success”, or some other existing word, depending on the context.
"I feel like many confuse perfectionism with obsession.
Perfectionism = not bad
Obsession = bad "
It just depends how you define terms. What most people here mean with perfectionism, would be probably a obsession with perfectionism under your terms.
I am also fine with my perfectionism, after I learned the concept of "good enough".
Mental health issues too often remain untreated among high-achievers who are able to maintain a surface appearance of holding it together. It's a good trend that nowadays we feel able to talk more openly about struggles like this.
I see myself in this article but for me, the word that was the key to find resources to get better was the broader acronym RNT, "Repetitive negative thoughts". Perfectionism themes are one common type of thought for me, but I also have several other categories that don't fit in that frame. Two resources I found particularly useful:
* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672052/ "Constructive and Unconstructive Repetitive Thought" A survey in the clinical literature which I found particularly helpful for identifying the subset of negative thoughts which has been actually helping me. This helped me ease up on the majority of unhelpful thoughts with greater confidence that I'm still preserving the small subset of my thought pattern which has helped me succeed.
I agree. I think there are several reasons high achievers' mental health issues go untreated:
- like you say they maintain a healthy surface because part of their perfectionism is no one knowing about their anxiety / having a good image
- if they do share, often their goals / expectations will be inflated compared to that of their peers such that for others it feels like they're bragging or being ridiculous, instead of taking their pain seriously. I notice this especially with when I share dissatisfaction about my school results - disparate expectations create a true divide.
As a tangent I would add that the damage isn't limited to the perfectionist. At some point one has to consider how the rigidity of perfectionism affects their relationships. It can be a self-indulgence in which one engages at the expense family or friends.
> It can be a self-indulgence in which one engages at the expense family or friends.
It’s even worse if the perfectionism is applied to those around you directly. The thought process is something like “well I hold myself to a high (but maybe poorly defined and changing) standard, so why not hold those in my life to that same standard!?”
Of course it is impossible for anyone to live up to your nebulous and nonverbal “standard”, so you see your close relations primarily in terms of how they are deficient. And because what comes around goes around, you assume others are perceiving you in the same way.
You may actually find yourself surrounded by people with obvious issues like addiction and depression so it easy for you to perceive exactly how much more perfect you are than they are, and of course you remind them of this frequently through backhanded comments that let them know that they are almost good enough to be your equal. It takes a certain kind of person to regularly take that abuse, so your warped reality self-selects for friends that are obsequious puddles or anxious wrecks. Thus begins a feedback loop that reinforces everyones mental health issues, with you being the pump that brings water from the well.
> The thought process is something like “well I hold myself to a high (but maybe poorly defined and changing) standard, so why not hold those in my life to that same standard!?”
Seems like a lot hinges on your parenthetical.
If Bob has a well-defined and consistent standard that works for him, what's wrong with filtering Eve out of his life with it?
Oh no of course we should all be discerning. But TFA talks about pinning self-esteem to the outcomes of projects in the world. I was describing a situation i saw where an individual’s “projects” were their close relationships. People are not projects to be worked on.
I think mostly everyone’s mental health issues go untreated. High achievers and otherwise, maybe for different reasons in different cases. Even people whose mental health issues cause them obvious distress often don’t get treatment.
Yeah, exactly, I think this article or the general consensus in this thread relates to the fact that high achievers' (or other positive-on-the-surface kinds of people) mental health is often overlooked due to the fact that they "don't have any real issues".
Sad to say, it's still a somewhat uphill battle to get diagnosed with something, if you've been able to graduate, can hold a job, and have an otherwise "normal" life.
The first time I went to a psychologist, they couldn't rule out things like ADD/ADHD, but simply ended the examination (after 3 interviews), and concluded with "could be due to traumatic childhood" - which I did not have. In the journal, they noted that I had graduated from University, had a steady white-collar job, no crime record, in a relationship, and other things which ADHD patients would apparently struggle with.
Went for a second opinion, and got diagnosed with non-hyperactive ADHD (previously called ADD).
I believe, in every system, that includes humans, the ability to pause is key.
If you can't stop whatever is fueling negative habits / emotions, even if it looks noble or whatever (learning, art, sport, perf, love) .. it's probably not good.
Regarding negative thoughts - I escape them thinking we all are temporary. People around us forget/forgive the unconscious mistakes we do. So we too need to ignore them for greater good of tomorrow.
Great article. I saw myself a lot in it. I find myself on this orange site multiple times a day largely for some of the reasons outlined.
> She dwells in puddles for fear of the ocean
woah. Beautiful line. Great writing can really make the content more impactful. I find myself regularly absorbed in the minutia of a technology used in a project. I tell myself it's because I find the subject fascinating and knowing it deeply will make the solution (and me) better (which is partly true), but I often have that thought niggling in the back of my mind, "Am I spending too long on this detail because I'm avoiding tackling the bigger problem because I'm worried I might fail?". This punchy quote sums that up nicely.
Everyone's experience is different, so it is unsurprising that are parts of this article that resonate very strongly and other parts not at all — overall, very valuable to have read this.
The philosopher John Perry has a humorous essay called "Procrastination and Perfectionism" that gets to the heart of the matter in a different way:
> Many procrastinators do not realize that they are perfectionists, for the simple reason that they have never done anything perfectly, or even nearly so. […] Perfectionism is a matter of fantasy, not reality.
Minor pedantic point about the aticle: IIRC, the quote about Gauss from E. T. Bell was more about Gauss "hiding his tracks" like a fox with its tail ("Had he divulged what he knew"…) rather than taking too long because of perfectonism.
(This comment was typed with a 5-minute timer! It feels very uncomfortable to just hit submit without cleaning it up, but I've come to realize that that discomfort is part of growth.)
That and the previous Structured Procrastination essay which I have read but forgotten about are great complementary essays to the posted article. Thank you for sharing them. I am in a deep hole due to these problems and serendipity has it that I came upon these resources at the best of times. Thank you again
Interesting that the behavior Perry describes is now being called “maladaptive daydreaming”. It’s not in the DSM yet, but it probably should be. It’s highly comorbid with obsessive compulsive disorders, which is also associated with perfectionism.
I had a professor once that said he found his most professionally successful students weren’t the ones who got A’s but the B students and he calked it up to the notion that the B students were better able to know where the maximum return on their invested effort was where as the A student invested whatever it took to get the A even if the incremental effort required wasn’t proportional to the incremental benefit of the next hire grade.
The notion that perfectionism can be harmful reminds me of that.
The article is correct, in that attaching our identity to an outcome is a problem.
It doesn't just have to be perfect results. It can also be emotional relationships with other people, getting a job or a promotion, winning a contest/game, an imagined endgame, etc.
I don't think there's a damn thing wrong with setting a high bar; possibly unreasonably high, as long as I have a healthy reaction to that bar not being met.
I remember reading about "fuzzy logic," way back, when that was still a thing. One description had "levels," where you had things like "On, almost on, not on, cat in a box, not off, almost off, off," etc. Basically, a continuum, with "detents."
That's sort of how I work. I set a bar for "perfect," but will settle for "almost perfect," or maybe even "very good." I will not settle for "good," or lower.
My identity is not tied into my work, but I am constantly striving for approaching perfection in my work.
If I don't at least get "very good," I don't beat myself up, but the job's not done.
I understand your methodology but struggle to understand how you draw the line for the different levels? Is there a measure to realize that what you have got at the moment is just good and not very good?
In my case, it's very much a "gut feeling," but I work on my own stuff.
I like to stay at a 1-digit bug count, with that digit being "0," if at all possible.
I have a development technique that is afforded by the tools I use, and the platform. I call it "Constant Beta." I also do what I call "Evolutionary Design," where I refine the actual project plan and design, as I proceed.
Basically, I keep the app at ship quality, from the very beginning. If I encounter bugs -any bugs- at any time during development, I stop all forward development, until the bug has been fixed.
I test a lot. I tend to use test harnesses, or the integrated app, as opposed to unit tests. Unit tests are applied, once functionality has been established; and only for those parts of the system that makes sense. I like to break projects out, into standalone packages, with discrete lifecycles. I often publish these, as open source.
I like to do full integration testing, as soon as possible. Almost all of my testing is done on the whole system (which might be incomplete, with stubs and mocks).
"Constant Beta" means that I start releasing TestFlight beta to my team, as soon as possible. As an example, I have been working on the project that is my current obsession, since September 5th, of 2020 (first commit). I have been making TestFlight releases, since October 6th, 2020. I've made well over 500 TestFlight releases, in that time. I'll have to count the tags, but it may be over 600, by now.
If you know anything about TestFlight, you know that Apple vets the releases (but not as stringently as for release into the App Store). They won't approve a TestFlight release, unless the app is already quite substantial, and doesn't crash. In fact, in one release, Apple helped me to spot a bug, because they made it crash in a way that had escaped my testing, and rejected the build.
I can scare up a full-fledged, "shippable" app, in a few days. All the time since, has been spent adding functionality to the app, testing, refining, testing, pivoting, testing, refactoring, testing, removing functionality, testing, going back to the drawing board, testing, etc.
All the while, keeping a cadence of multiple releases per day (once the first release has been made of a version, builds are approved almost immediately).
From my experience, I wonder how much "perfectionism" is itself the self-deception to cope with an executive function disorder. Most narratives of perfectionism start with the person having unrealistic outcome and that leads to procrastination, difficulty starting, etc. I wonder if it is likely that the problem is an inability to get started and stay on task, and then the person does a 180 and tells themself that they just can't get started the right way, or it wasn't going to be perfect, and so they abandoned the task.
The current scientific literature of procrastination supports your idea.
Procrastination appears to be determined by interactions between the cognitive-related (prefrontal cortex) and affective-related (limbic system, default mode network) functions. There is a trade-off between the top-down cognitive and bottom-up affective systems.
It appears that affective processing can override top-down control signals for short-term satisfaction, or worst since the hyperactivity of the default mode network was observed in mental disorders.
Perfectionism could be how the mind copes with the failures of top-down control.
Makes sense, I had an unfortunate childhood, and it took a long time to gain control over my hyperactive affective functions, and I'm a recovering perfectionist. Self-compassion works.
The most apt description I have come across of perfectionism is that it stems from some unresolved trauma that led to a fear of not being accepted and resulting lack of confidence.
I know that you didn't exactly invent the term unresolved trauma, BUT...
As a person with a lot of unresolved trauma (and perfectionism issues), I hate the term "unresolved trauma". I've been working hard with a therapist and a psychologist for years, and I've made a ton of progress, but my trauma will never be truly resolved. Every few years some new facet of damage will pop up that I won't expect and will have to work through.
It's a never ending process, and (imo) the term unresolved trauma implies that there should be a point where it becomes resolved. That's just not realistic or true for a lot of people.
I've even seen therapists who claimed that I could completely 'heal'. But that's a perfectionist attitude itself, which had me banging my head against the wall for too long.
I think the truth is far closer to 'able to live a satisfying life in spite of'
"Resolution" of trauma is generally nothing but an imaginary "perfect" state. It doesn't exist and usually chasing that is another form of the same dynamic rather a departure from it.
Kudos to you for identifying that for yourself and trying to distance from it!
One could argue that there will never be an accurate term, and thus hating the term for not being completely accurate is perfectionism.
But I could be wrong.... (Says the perfectionist, letting himself off the hook if he is wrong, which he may very well be because he's talking out his ass)
Or being required to do something really important, but failing and suffering/seeing bad things happen in part because they or someone they depended on was unprepared (even if knowing how to be prepared, or being prepared was not really realistic in the circumstance).
It can come from something as simple as the family losing their income and having serious problems due to economic issues, to a parent dying, or a major childhood illness, death of a friend, etc.
Over preparing/over doing it to the point where most would call it ‘perfectionism’ has saved my ass many times, because it meant when I got put in a situation that turned out to be much harder or scarier than I had imagined or knew was possible, I actually had the bare minimum necessary there to pull it off or get out of the situation successfully.
Many, many people I have known over the years have not been so lucky.
Pretty sure it never hit a pathological point though, which something like OCD definitely is.
The way to turn it into a better coping skill is to evaluate where it is and is not helpful - it’s almost certainly has not always been wasted effort, though for folks in particularly bad places, maybe it has. CBT has a really useful ‘Worry Worksheet’ which can help walk people through and reality test things like this, which can help tease it apart.
Prioritizing self care is also key, as when it is a problem it’s usually because other important things aren’t getting addressed (like rest, or positive social interactions) because someone is hyper focusing on perfecting one specific thing, and necessarily unable to tackle the other things that are important to be functional. This leads to a spiral of less and less ability to be functional, which rightfully will trigger anxiety and the maladaptive behavior even more. Hopefully the person is able to snap out of it, or environmental/external factors stop it, but that doesn’t always happen.
If someone was in a situation where they ended up in a unexpectedly bad situation or emergency as a kid, this is probably one of the better ‘bad coping skill’ ways of handling it.
Other, even less helpful but common coping skills for that kind of trauma include:
- pretending that the problem is not or could never actually be a problem (delusion)
- avoiding any reminders of the problem (avoidance)
- attacking others as the cause of the problem, when they aren’t (deflection, finger pointing)
- making the problem someone else’s problem in a destructive way (usually using manipulation, gaslighting, abuse)
> Over preparing/over doing it to the point where most would call it ‘perfectionism’ has saved my ass many times, because it meant when I got put in a situation that turned out to be much harder or scarier than I had imagined or knew was possible, I actually had the bare minimum necessary there to pull it off or get out of the situation successfully.
That bit really resonated with me. Having a fixed mindset in certain cases has allowed me to get away in some extreme challenges where a growth mindset surely would not have.
Nod, the challenge with it, like many things, is if it is appropriate/helpful/most useful for the actual situation at hand.
There are a whole class of issues, including PTSD, Anxiety, Depression (and related or semi-related stuff like perfectionism), that are not so much that the behavior or feeling is bad or wrong in any absolute sense - it’s just not useful or appropriate in the current environment and it is causing distress and life problems because of it. There are plenty of life circumstances where any of those states could be appropriate and would help the person. PTSD in the checkout line at the grocery store is clearly not one of them.
More nuanced research over time seems to be discovering it’s sometimes less about ‘smash the symptoms with a hammer forever’ (heavy medication) and sometimes it’s more about unblocking whatever is stuck that is stopping the person from learning and adjusting appropriately to what IS actually happening, and process whatever was going on before, so they can get out of the ‘stuck’ bad state.
This does include medication, among other things sometimes. Sometimes it’s also changing environment, removing bad influences/people, living support, etc.
Definitely not applicable to everyone. But applicable to a surprising number of cases.
The unresolved trauma part seems plausible but at least from personal anecdote the corresponding fear may not be of social ostracism in particular but any of a larger family of undesired social consequences (self-image could be considered "social" insofar as it concerns one's relationship with oneself)
Yea, I find when I seem to be the most plagued by it is when I want to control how other people are feeling (and also behaving as a result). I fear that if I publish a thing, people may feel confused or angry or sometimes worse: indifferent. But also that someone will feel so smitten and overjoyed that they come to me saying that I'm a god or a superhero/savior. I can sometimes deeply fear people feeling things that I don't want them to feel, and more so, responding in ways I don't want them to.
I think a lot of it comes down to uncertainty: I don't know what will happen and I want to know what will happen. I don't know if people will love me, hate me, or ignore me, and if so, how they'll do it, and so much of that uncertainty can drive me into trying to control as much as I can (or think I can).
For me, perfectionism seems to lie in that fear of the unknown and trying to mitigate as much (read: squash/eliminate) of the uncertainty instead of recognizing that we're human beings and so many things are outside of our control.
To share a contrarian view, what I have always observed is that if an organization has an ingrained culture of 80-20, then by the time something percolates 3-4 hand offs, the org half-asses the execution and more often than not fails. Organizations that can execute even somewhat more consistently instead run rings around and completely destroy the 80-20 organization over time and people lose their jobs.
The secret is to figure out from an organization standpoint what is really a "good enough to succeed" end-deliverable or end-execution and organize to deliver that "good enough" thing consistently with perfectionism. Paired with this , there needs to be a process which continuously stretches what it means to be "good enough" over time with productivity and feature enhancement investments.
Power laws and fractions man, they'll get you every time.
(I'm actually pitching the reverse situation at work. People keep chasing big wins to improve our system and then taking forever to deliver half of what they suggested at the start. Especially where performance is concerned. Meanwhile I'm knocking out little gains that are 20% of what they're chasing but doing it every fortnight to a month. Six months of 2% a week is 40% overall, and that would beat anything these jokers have delivered in four years.)
How would 90-10 work vs. 80-20 -- even less work for 10% more gain? Perhaps you could have 90-25 or 90-30 but it seems to me like 90-10 is impossible in comparison to 80-20 unless the 10 is not a subset of the 20.
Great article, in which I find myself partially. I have tried for many years to be quite perfectionistic but mostly because of the feeling of not being good enough. It's a pretty destructive behavior as you're always anxious and imagining the worst. At some point at university, I was able to slowly discard this behavior, although this development is certainly not over yet. What helped me most were good friends and a part-time job in a consulting firm, which I absolutely hated btw. But overall I learned to focus more on the important things and generally to care less. I'm generally happier with my work and don't let setbacks get to me as quickly. Rather, I take them as a challenge to become even better. (Starting my first job as an engineer after university soon btw! :))
Perfectionist is an overindulgent term that fails to capture the experience of its debased realities. Dealing with perfectionists you never see an attempt at perfection as much as you see neurosis and control issues. "Perfection" is a fake endeavor with no contingent expression that can even verify its attainment. The concept of perfection is dehumanizing and anyone attempting to have it materialize keeps themselves stuck in a false reality that plays exclusively in their own imagination. To be seduced into the perfectionist narrative is to be subject to a fantasy that can do as much to paralyze an endeavor as much as it purports to cultivate it.
I kind of wish I could train myself to be a bit more towards perfectionism than I am. I know it is a different problem than y'all are having, but sometimes it feels that when everyone is stressed about a project I am the only one laid back like "it will work, even if we're a little late" or, which is worse, "readers will point out a mistake if we missed it on the overview". I call it "community feedback", but others see it more accurately as "forgiving errors before tgey are even made".
Real perfectionism doesn't mean you do perfect work. It means you never (or rarely) ship, or perhaps never start. You don't ask for help, you feel anxious about perceptions. You reduce the scope until a task is trivial, or increase it until it is impossible. In both cases you give the job up as worthless or unreachable.
You don't want perfectionism.
> "It will work, even if we're a little late"
We should all aspire to reach this attitude in development teams. As long as you keep putting the work in until the product is polished we're fine.
perfectionism, like many other behavioral styles, is a spectrum
Most of the "perfectionists" are people that simply care a lot more than the average about details, not sociopaths.
Katsuhiro Otomo is a perfectionist, but he also enjoys his life and creating his art.
p.s. perfectionists most of the time acknowledge that thinks will work anyway, they simply also believe (and rightly so) that things could be better than they currently are. Most of the times they also know that perfection (or an incarnation of it) takes a lot of time.
We only talk about the extreme cases because of survival bias: they are the ones who will make extreme sacrifices, while the others will give up on perfection sooner or later, because they are not actually obsessed with it.
Nope. The Rust community’s embracing of version 0.x is what did it for me. 1.0 is a big deal. It’s what you get judged by (in my book). 0.x? You can bungle that. It’s ok.
> So she feels threatened by moderate setbacks and finds any number of excuses to procrastinate: she's not in the mood, not in the right place, too busy, not inspired, too hungry, too full, too alert, too tired. So she retreats into the safe and familiar. She checks her email for the hundredth time.
My wife is a perfectionist, she spends unreasonable amounts of time even in little tasks (like making the bed) to make sure it's "perfect". We all talk about perfectionism in the workplace or job-related activities but in reality it's a PITA in every aspect of life.
+1. I can't imagine how many hours I must have wasted on perfecting something only to realize that most of them don't matter, at least not more than the other aspects of life. It is a PITA and there are times when I feel that it could be due to this CS field I am in. I had been ignoring it for years and only recently decided to think about switching fields that are less demanding.
Even this quote implies that reaching perfection is a process. One in which you create a rough solution and remove imperfections and extra parts until the minimal and perfect solution remains.
Superb article. One thing though, it's difficult to reconciliate job markets / interview tests with not being a perfectionnist to an extent. Hopefully not a crippling but a mature for of skillfulness.
It will massively help you to be a perfectionist when preparing for an interview, but once you get the job, becomes unnecessary or even counterproductive to pursue perfectionism on the job. (for the most part IME)
As someone with diagnosed OCD, this is a great article.
I'm glad CBT and mindfulness is coming more to light, because it really did change my life. I no longer let my thoughts control me, but rather, I control my thoughts.
If you enjoyed this I'd recommend Simone De Beauvoir's book; The ethics of ambiguity. It's short and accessible and describes a number of character traits, which hinder personal and collective freedom, focusing on the outcome of projects rather than the ongoing process is discussed, but additionally she wraps an ethical framework around these discussions so that it becomes more about how to live in general.
Arun is describing almost every flaw a human being can have and wrapping it all in what he calls perfectionism. A good way to see if the scenarios he paints qualify you can just ask the question, if I did those things differently would I then be less of a perfectionist? I'm not sure the answer is an emphatic yes.
I disagree, I can think of a whole lot of other human flaws that don't fit under the umbrella of perfectionism the author describes. Narcissism, hypocrisy, abuse, violence, anger-issues, being Scottish, etc. Fear of failure/uncertainty seems to be a common thread under the umbrella of perfectionism, as well as an inability to really see ourselves and our conditions for what they really are.
As I was reading the article there were sentences where how I view myself and the reality clashed and it elicited a familiar feeling of avoidance and discomfort. I am not that biased towards action as I'd like to believe. Let me hide from that ugly truth.
I just think that if you dig one level deep you'll find the root cause is the same. If someone's narcissistic they're doing that probably because they have a certain self-image that is all tied up to their self-worth that they want to preserve.
I use the term "perfectionism" to describe the space of behaviors around the traditional description. Like any generalization it can be expanded so much that it includes everything. But what separates perfectionism from normal fallibility, to me, is the degree of identity investment in the outcome. Disappointment per se is not perfectionism. What makes it a tendency worth naming is the intensity of mental stress and self-recrimination that follows.
I don't disagree that any clearly defined tendency that causes intense mental stress and self-recrimination would be worth naming. It seems to me a lot of various behavior can lead to or stem from "identity investment" in the outcome and therefore be called perfectionism.
If you like this article, you will like this book, which is very similar: "How to be imperfectionist" by Stephen Guise. It helped me tremendously to heal from perfectionism.
I like the concept of "defining a spec to meet for achieving a goal". Perfectionism is spec for "flawless" and that may very well be what's required to achieve one's goal but usually it's not necessary.
What spec you need is based on the goal. You can build cars using different specs and you may achieve a luxury car or an every sedan and both have "succeeded" if they meet their specs and sell to their respective markets
1. Make sure to find a launch customer. It’s easy to get stuck in endless trade studies without a real customer. Real customers bring real constraints that make decisions easier.
2. Focus on improving upon the baseline rather than achieving perfection. It’s still important to ask if the improvement is big enough to warrant the investment, but don’t get trapped into rejecting better solutions simply because they aren’t perfect solutions.
Great article. Incidentally, CBT, ERP and mindfulness with self compassion are also the same therapies prescribed for people suffering from various forms of OCD
Does the state of being someone who strives for excellence instead of perfection not carry with it it's own downsides? I know the article is more about unlearning perfectionism, but I'd also want to know what I was getting myself into if I did decide to change and if I would prefer it: e.g better the devil you know, though this is probably tinged by my resistance to change...
1- "Done is better than perfect" ... I read that phrase from an article posted in HN last year (I guess)
2- Incorporate the Agile mindset into my life for any kind of achievement. MVP oriented and always thinking "what can I done today with the amount of energy/resources I have for today/this week?"
Just read through this and my first thought is Scott Adam’s book “how to fail at almost anything and still win big” which I feel like is a humorous adaptation of the authors suggestion to focus on process not outcomes.
Instead of spending all this time and effort "unlearning perfectionism" so you can let yourself off for half-assing the thing, just do the thing perfectly
The best metaphors I've read is in Bird by Bird. The author describes two different scenarios.
The first is that perfection & progress is much like driving late at night with headlights. You will only be able to see as far as your headlights allow. You might be going through a canyon, on a straight and narrow highway, or going the wrong way. But all you know for certain is what is in front of you.
The second is that you have to frame your perfectionism around something. That could be your loved ones, your dreams in life, whatever. If it's always framed around your past achievements, you're comparing to the past and not to the future version of what could be. Getting clear on why you're doing it is very important.
I truly believe you can devoid yourself of perfectionism. I've gone from being afraid to publish work to the public, to only publishing in the public and shaping my work based on the imperfections being pointed out in my shitty first attempts.
Your first attempt will be shitty. Your second attempt will be less shitty. Do this for long enough and you'll start to get a feel for proficiency and what others see as "perfection".