“Perfectionism is self destructive simply because there is no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal.” Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You are Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are"
The Burden Of Perfectionism
Perfectionism fuels procrastination, stress, fear, and crippling anxiety. It leads to feeling overwhelmed by the thought of starting a new project.
You feel compelled to find the perfect strategy before embarking on a project. You conduct endless research. You consume all the information you can get your hands on about the project. You splinter your attention and focus in a thousand directions instead of taking the first simple step. You leave no stone unturned before you start the project.
You strive to remove all uncertainty related to the outcome before you lift off. Risk and uncertainty can be reduced to increase the odds of success. However, most dreams in life carry a large dose of uncertainty that cannot be eliminated.
This mindset is not conducive to making meaningful progress. You learn exponentially more through experience than passively consuming information without applying it. Experience is a masterful teacher.
When you undertake an endeavour, you do not allow yourself to stop working until it is perfect. You make changes until you feel the end product cannot be improved. You place a paralysing burden of perfection on yourself.
You focus on the mountain ahead. You dread the substantial volume of work you will perform as you chisel away at the project until perfection. You worry, stress, and agonise over whether you will ever reach the distant summit of your dreams.
You feel relentless pressure as a result of not giving yourself permission to make mistakes. A perfectionist walks through life with 100 pound weights on each shoulder. You constantly carry the weight of perfectionism, from one project to the next.
A perfectionist does not squeeze out the lessons contained in failures. Each failure is an opportunity to learn and improve if you have a growth mindset. If you ask productive questions after failures, you turn them into your greatest teachers. What would I do differently next time? Where did the project break down? What can I learn from this?
A perfectionist obsesses over the end result instead. You mentally beat yourself up over not producing the desired outcome. The perfectionist mindset prevents you from looking at the situation from the most advantageous angle.
The Cost Of Perfectionism
Perfectionism is hard to kick because it produces results. It supplies fuel that propels you to put in the thousands of hours of work required to succeed for the biggest life goals. However, perfectionism is not a free ride towards your dream life. It carries psychological baggage.
Perfectionism comes with a side of anxiety, stress, and constant worry. You agonise over every mistake and replay the failures in your mind on a loop.
The weight of perfectionism leads to procrastination in your work and personal life. You put off starting many projects and dread the amount of work and struggle it takes to complete projects to your level of satisfaction. You feel that you have to create a masterpiece every time. It becomes a grind, but you succeed despite the friction caused by your mindset.
Dream of a road to success without the heavy price charged by perfection.
The Power Of Good Enough
Shift your mindset and realise that every project does not need to be finished at a 100% quality level. It frees you to focus on the task ahead instead of the end result. It takes a huge burden off of your shoulders to know that 80% is good enough. You do not have to hit the perfection target every time you step up to the plate.
80% to perfection is better than 0%. It is better to finish a project with flaws and mistakes than to procrastinate for years.
There are additional benefits to targeting 80%. It takes a significant amount of effort to improve the end product from 80% to 90%. Usually, the marginal time and effort outweigh the value gained from that additional 10% of quality. The cost-benefit analysis leads to the conclusion that 80% meets the needs of the project.
Perfectionism should be reserved for the most important goals that produce disproportionate, massive results. Learn to reserve being surgically precise, methodical, and meticulous for the highest leverage projects.
The perfectionist says, “I need to produce great work without any mistakes or errors. It has to be just right.”
The better strategy is to treat the first pass of the project as a practice run. You will edit and review your work several times before it is final. When you embrace this mentality, the first pass carries a low level of pressure.
You start the project with peace of mind knowing that the product will improve significantly in the second and third passes. This mindset allows you to make progress quickly as you work with a clear mind that is not burdened by perfection.
When you transform your mindset from perfectionism to growth and improvement, you enjoy the process. If your standard is perfection, you will disappoint yourself continually; it is not attainable.
If your standard is continuous growth, you simply have to be willing to put your ego aside so that you can strategically evaluate results and incorporate lessons learned on the next attempt. The only requirement is to be better than you were yesterday.
That is doable. It is achievable, stress free and the way forward towards living your dreams
With thanks to Jose Ramos http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/3-lessons-from-a-recovering-perfectionist/
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