Perfectionism has been shaping me ever since I was young. I’ve been working to understand it and rewire my brain to eliminate it.

How perfectionism starts

Over time, many of us learn that high performance is rewarded and failure is not. Perfectionists take that to the extreme - high performance is a necessity, and failure is dangerous.

Historically, you’ve been rewarded for performance:

• Praise, tied to achievement (straight As) over effort
• Safety, through group belonging

Additionally, they have felt punishment or pressure for underperformance:

• Routine comparison to peers, siblings, social ideals (i.e. Instagram)
• Rejection, when you try something new or outside your comfort zone

The stronger the praise or punishment, the more likely someone is to build an identity where:

• Your worth as a human = your performance.
• If you want to do something, you need to be good at it. You shouldn’t try new things - instead, you should stay inside your comfort zone and keep doing what you’re already doing.
• Failure is a threat, to be avoided. You should strive to control anything that may result in failure, and feel anxious when you can’t.

How perfectionism hurts you

1. Health - The stress and lost sleep over the wording of slide decks, the phrasing of an email or some calculation deep in your spreadsheet is rarely worth it.
2. Time - Spenting time poring over low-priority problems leaves less time for you to learn new things or do something more important.
3. Relationships - Perfectionism makes it hard to accept a solution that’s ‘good enough,’ making it difficult to set reasonable expectations and making it hard to delegate control.
4. Opportunities - Underlying fear of failure deters you from taking a chance, allowing others to seize opportunities you could have.

What’s worse, it’s difficult to change. The excessive work and effort you put in to your daily activities is often rewarded. And overcompensating often does make you feel better, regardless of the drawbacks. Over time you equate your success to your perfectionistic traits, while losing the opportunity to build experience and strength from failure.

You may perceive any change as a threat to the high standards that keep you successful and safe.

High Standards vs Perfectionism?

What’s the difference? Is perfectionism a natural consequence of having high standards? Is stress, unreasonable expectations and control part of the course we need to accept if we want exceptional performance, and should we instead focus on getting used to the side effects of perfectionism?

I don’t think so. To me, the difference between high standards and perfectionism is about choice.

Working to high standards is:

• Addressing problems that matter and exist.
• Taking the time do fewer things to a higher quality, in a genuine pursuit of excellence.
• Practicing and sharing your progress over time.
• Accepting that it’s necessary to compromise quality sometimes.

Needless perfectionism is:

• Feeling the need to make EVERYTHING high quality, when there are bigger fish to fry.
• Acting out of fear of failure or external judgement.
• Hiding your progress until it’s perfect.
• Spending so long refining that deadlines become meaningless or team morale suffers.

Having high standards allows you to keep pushing, while perfectionism forces you to.

Letting go of perfectionism

Now convinced that perfectionism isn’t a requirement to maintain the benefits of having high standards, I’m now aiming to let go of my perfectionistic behaviours.

Here are some changes I’m making to do it:

Acknowledge perfection’s shortcomings

By writing this article 😉

Work to time constraints

This changes my mindset to prioritise getting at least something done, when I would otherwise be prematurely optimising.

• Perform deep work in time blocks.
• Set targets for each block. This fights analysis paralysis.
• If you don’t get everything done, try to sacrifice scope over time, budget or quality. If the work needs more time, you can always spend more time on it later. Though more often than not, I’m finding that having something is enough to get the job done.

Check the box, and move on.

Practice doing things imperfectly

Getting many things done imperfectly is better than getting little done perfectly.

• Optimise your time for health, execution and quality. Not just quality.
• Celebrate progress to keep long-term momentum. Clock off when the work is done.
• Have something to show for the end of each time block.
• Keep publishing these articles.

Trying more means failing more, and failure hurts in the short-term. When it hurts:

• Look back at how far you’ve come, not just ahead at your lofty targets.
• Give yourself 2%. You’re only human, everyone makes mistakes.
• Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today. If you’re feeling insecure in comparison with others, use it as an opportunity to learn. Steal their secrets and copy the best parts of what they’re doing.
• Keep sharing your feelings with your close ones. They have a way of getting you out of your head.

That’s how I’m handling it from here - setting goals and maintaining high standards by default, but dropping them to match my priorities and stay healthy.

Did any of this resonate with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.