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How To Be Your Most Productive Self: Let Go Of Being Perfect
3 types of perfectionism
- Self-oriented: when people are highly critical of themselves.
- Other-oriented: when people are highly critical of others.
- Socially-prescribed: when people think others expect them to be perfect and then pressure themselves to be perfect in order to meet those expectations.
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Key Ideas
“Done” is always better than “Perfect”
“Perfect” and “productive” aren’t the same thing; perfectionism is actually counterproductive.
Just because society is placing a higher value on perfection doesn’t mean you’re actually getting more done.
3 types of perfectionism
- Self-oriented: when people are highly critical of themselves.
- Other-oriented: when people are highly critical of others.
- Socially-prescribed: when people think others expect them to be perfect and then pressure themselves to be perfect in order to meet those expectations.
What causes perfectionism
- Competitive work environments: If you work in a culture that demands perfection, you’ll probably start demanding perfection.
- Pride and personality: Some persons have personalities that are naturally susceptible to perfectionism.
- Fear of failure: People identify with their failure. They will strive for perfection as self-preservation.
Perfectionism and procrastination
People who are concerned about perfection often have a hard time getting started.
They’re stressed about doing things perfectly, they feel paralyzed to get started, and their work suffers. This can also stop them from trying new things, taking risks, and can suppress their ability to innovate.
Let go of the need to be perfect
- Start small: Get comfortable to let go of the need to be perfect from the beginning.
- Try an outside perspective: We're usually hard on ourselves, but not nearly as harsh with other people.
- Make a commitment to work on a project for a set period of time: Once the time is up, you're done, whether the project is perfect or not.
- Put all your perfectionistic tendencies towards areas that are truly important to you.
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Do a weekly review to reflect on your progress
Try to identify things you avoided due to fear of failure and situations where your perfectionism wasn’t worth it or moments where you did well despite being uncertain.
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Get an outside perspective on your perfectionist tendencies
Talk honestly and openly to someone about your tendencies and how you’re working on getting better.
Ask them to tell you when you are being too fussy about something so you can think about it.
Interrupting the cycle of rumination
- Take note of when you’re ruminating and what triggers it until you can see your patterns and find ways to counteract them.
- Don't trust your first reaction when ruminating. Most of the time, it colors negatively your read of the situation.
- Seek a diversion to break the rumination cycle.
- Think positively: remembering your successes and times you tried new things helps you to not be avoidant of tasks you can’t do perfectly.
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Learn To Handle Criticism
If criticism makes you defensive, an attitude change can help.
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Set Reasonable Goals
Perfectionists tend to set goals of unreasonable excellence with no learning curve or room for error.
Dividing your goals into more achievable steps and rewarding yourself when you achieve them, will make you less stressed, less likely to give up and more forgiving of mistakes.
Alter Your Self-Talk In a Positive Way
Perfectionists tend to be very self-critical but this can perpetuate unhealthy behaviors and decrease their self-esteem.
By altering your self-talk positively, you can better enjoy life and gain an increased appreciation for yourself and your work.
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Perfectionism and to-do lists
To-do lists can help perfectionists move past our paralysis. They may find making a list to be a reassuring guide to their day.
But there's also a risk: to-do lists can backfire i...
Break down projects
... into manageable tasks.
This way, you're armed with a set of concrete actions to take rather a vague cloud of high expectations.
Define the next action
... rather than all subsequent steps.
Focusing only on the next action gives you permission to work on something even if you don’t have it all figured out—which is crucial to completing tasks that in the past have left you paralyzed.
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