I think the author kind of has it backward. Most people I know (specifically younger people that I work with) that struggle with perfectionism are afraid to fail enough to master something. They end up king of the bunny slope because they don’t want to do something imperfectly, so they stick to the easy stuff and eventually give up. Like being really really good at something requires, like the author said, that you continue to do things at the outer limits of your abilities, and if you’re doing that you’re going to spend the majority of your time performing below the standard you set as perfection. If you have a healthy relationship with failure and imperfection, that drives you forward, and if not it stops you from progressing.
I would add: if your goals don't exceed your skill level you either have reached enlightenment or (more likely) you are in a situation where you can't care about them (e.g. strongly time constrained, in a job, etc.)
Your standards are just the quality you can still live with without feeling bad.
The author doesn't get the most common problem with perfectionism. "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Perfectionists often give up entirely, because of some perceived deficiency, instead of powering through to the end.
Of course, keep practicing to get better. Nobody says otherwise. But don't stop practicing just because you can't get it right every time. It's the ALL or NOTHING attitude that's the problem, where getting past failure requires SOMETHING in the pursuit of the ALL.
I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, there's some problematic etiology of perfectionism that can be healed, like needing to avoid criticism and shame for supposedly doing a bad job and wanting to please people excessively to your own detriment. But striving for excellence because you get social recognition and praise for your work is maybe healthy? If you enjoy what you do and want to make the client happy because it makes you feel good to know you did something great for someone, idk, that would motivate me to be perfect.
Perfectionism is just the excuse that people tell themselves when they fail and don't want to do the hard work and try again. Nowadays people use this as the standard excuse (along with "i was considered gifted as a child") to explain away their failures. This pernicious habit can destroy one's future and life.
I definitely agree with perfectionism being used as an excuse. But how do people use "I was considered gifted as a child" to provide a similar excuse? Are they saying that was an incorrect assessment?
They are implying that because they were already told they were "gifted/special" when young (IMO this is wrong encouragement of self-esteem which causes them to lose touch with Reality) the world owes them the same consideration when grown-up and they face failures i.e. the failure is not their fault.
One thing i see on HN/Reddit/etc. forums is that people nowadays are not willing to admit their failures/mistakes but eager to use excuses like a) I am a Perfectionist b) I was a "gifted" child c) Everything was easy for me when i was young and i did well d) I have Asperger's/Autism/ADD/ADHD/etc. Other than in rare cases none of the above excuses hold water. We are all of "comparable" Intelligence (bell curve, two std. deviations and all that) with enormous potential if we learn from our mistakes and put forth effort to do better next time. The insidiousness of the above excuses is that it saps our very motivation to do something better and change the status-quo but falsely cocoons our "ego" thus making us lose touch with Reality and destroying our own lives.
I know people that suffer from perfectionism, which is unhealthy for them. Maybe I'm talking about a different kind. I wish I understood what the author really meant.
The author doesn’t know what perfectionism is. They are using the word in “I like to do things well” meaning, which is basically never the version people are concerned with.
Author might not be able to, but it's hasty to generalize this to everyone. I, for example, can. It's simply a matter of knowing one's self enough to know where taste originates and what principles and beliefs it's founded on.
I had to stop reading at this point as I couldn't take the rest of the piece seriously.
i liked the article from an artists perspective. I resonate a lot with the "your tastes are better than your skill level". I have music i write which i think sections of punch right up there with the pros. But not all of them do. And i have fooled myself into thinking i have ALL the skills required to roll with the pros before. It's humbling - but i fully endorse the "perfectionism isnt your problem" idea.
Technology has advanced so far, and the possibilities, and permutations of ideas is endless. Just like coming up with a theory as grond breaking as the theory of relativity is super hard, so is coming up with really novel new art....we have so many examples of it - and so much in high quality - the bar is high.
A parallel issue is societies obsession with "shipping"...specifically speaking of music/art - i remember 15+ years ago, folks working a lot longer on music before it saw the light of day - folks are very happy to show off loops on tiktok...and - the results in finished music equate to half finished/underbaked music which everyone is patting each other on the back over.
This reminds me of the a quote by Ira Glass which resonates strongly with my experience.
> “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
There's a certain amount of anxiety and sense of defeat when you can clearly see what it is you want to create but don't yet have the skills to execute that vision. It can be very demoralizing to build a shitty app when you can recognize that it's a shitty app and you know much better is possible but don't yet know how to close the gap.
I love that quote - it's the original quote i read which reminded me to shake off the "dont worry about being a perfectionist" idea in the first place.
