Wanting to do your best work and avoid mistakes is completely natural. And admirable. The right dose of a perfectionist attitude can push you to do your best. But when diligence strays too far into perfectionism, it can swiftly undermine your productivity and your well-being.
A line is crossed when you lose the balance between doing great work and perfectionism. So, how do you balance the paralyzing effects of perfectionism and still produce and deliver high-quality work?
The True Cost of Perfectionism
Perfectionism can feel like a double-edged sword – there’s a reason it’s become an infamous humble brag (and the worst thing you can say in an interview). You know it slows you down and makes you second-guess yourself. But on the other hand, you assume that it must help you perform at your best.
Well, a meta-analysis of forty years of perfectionism research found that perfectionists don’t actually perform better than non-perfectionists. The researchers suggest that this may be because the downsides of perfectionism counteract any benefits it might bring.
While a perfectionist attitude can encourage people to be more engaged and motivated, this often also means working longer hours. And while this might sound like a benefit to some, working more doesn’t always mean better. Unfortunately, the same things perceived as benefits of perfectionism can also lead to “workaholism” which can cause stress and burnout.
And aside from the impact on your mental health and wellbeing, perfectionism can also negatively impact your productivity by causing you to procrastinate. It includes a fear of falling short, overthinking your ideas, and taking longer on certain tasks (or not getting to them at all). This can place additional stressors on your colleagues, harming your working relationships.
So, while striving to do excellent work is good, seeking perfection could undermine your performance (and your health) far more than you realize. As perfectionism researcher Dr. Andrew Hill puts it: “Perfectionism isn’t about high standards. It’s about unrealistic standards.”
How to Overcome Perfectionism
Overcoming perfectionism isn’t something you can do overnight. There may also be deeper psychological reasons behind your perfectionist tendencies that need to be addressed. However, there are some practical strategies you can use to start gently challenging your need to achieve perfection in your work.
The Two Key Types of Perfectionism
Thinking about what drives your perfectionism may give you a better idea about how to start addressing it.
The authors of the meta-analysis into perfectionism research identified two main types:
- Excellence-seeking perfectionism: Where we hold ourselves (and others) to incredibly high and rigid standards.
- Failure-avoiding perfectionism: Here, perfectionism is a response to believing there’s something wrong or substandard about our work and wanting to avoid humiliation.
The simple act of questioning these thoughts, why you have them, and what evidence you have to support or disprove them could help to chip away at them.
Weigh Effort Against Benefit
Perfectionism can cause you to overlook the fact that not all tasks are created equal. Consider prioritization here. Dr. Rajani Katta recommends considering the effort to benefit ratio. The idea is to not let the effort you spend get out of step with the impact or benefits the task will bring.
For example, if you’re creating a quick presentation for your team, you probably don’t need to spend hours agonizing over it. If you’re presenting to company leaders or potential investors, then the benefits are greater, and it may warrant more of a “perfectionist” attitude.
It’s still important to consider the point of diminishing returns, though. At some point, the time and energy you’re spending trying to get the work perfect is going to overtake any possible advantage your minor tweaks would bring.
Contextualize the Task
The task you’re trying to perfect probably isn’t the only thing you have on your to-do list. Is there something else you could be doing that would be a more impactful way to spend your time?
Weigh the opportunity cost of your top-priority tasks to contextualize the appropriate amount of time to spend perfecting something.
Try to keep in mind that your time and energy are limited. If you spend extra resources on this, there are consequences for your other commitments. A prioritization matrix or chart can help to sort this out.
Focus on Adding Value
Remember that something doesn’t have to be perfect to provide value. The value of your slightly-less-than-perfect work likely outweighs the loss from delays caused by too much time spent revising it over and over.
Find that balance between adding value and knowing when it’s time to move forward.
This is also the case if you’re holding back from sharing an idea or making a point because you don’t think it’s fully fleshed out yet. As psychologist Dr. Alice Boyes puts it: “What you’re saying doesn’t have to be the final word, it just has to contribute something useful.”
Use (And Respect) Deadlines
If you find yourself missing deadlines trying to deliver perfection, divide projects into stages and introduce a deadline for each one.
This helps you cut down on procrastination, limit the scope for overthinking, and avoid endless tweaking at the end.
It’s likely to take some trial and error to find the right balance between leaving yourself enough time to do the work well and not so much that perfectionism takes over. Keep experimenting.
Develop a Routine Finalization Process
To stop agonizing over a task rather than calling it complete, leadership expert Matt Plummer advises developing a routine for finalizing things.
This process should include multiple stages, allowing you to check different aspects of the work. For example, you might do an initial pass to make sure it completely satisfies the brief, another to check the formatting, and a final pass to check for errors.
With a concrete structure to follow, you can trust the process. You know when something is done and be confident that it’s ready to ship. As Plummer says: “As long as you trust the process, you can trust the output to be as perfect as it needs to be.”
Ask for Feedback
Getting someone else’s perspective on the work can help to short-circuit your perfectionism as they’re able to be far more objective. This is particularly useful if your perfectionism is driven by a fear of not living up to the expectations of others.
Plummer suggests doing this as early as possible, even if it feels uncomfortable to share an initial draft, as you might discover you’re already much closer to “good enough” than you think.
It’s just as important to seek and get feedback when you’re in the final stages of a project. Late-stage feedback can help you decide if the work can be handed over or whether you really do need to spend more time finetuning it.
Make sure to ask questions like: “How close to done is this?” and “Does this meet the objective?” – the responses you get might surprise you.
The author Julie Morgenstern, who writes about thriving in the workplace, cites a conversation she had with a successful professional speaker who found that an audience could never tell the difference between a “seven” performance and a “ten”. As long as he hit a seven, he’d done well enough.
Remember, it’s entirely possible that your manager’s definition of perfect will differ from yours.
Observe Your Inner Dialogue
Being overly self-critical is a common symptom of perfectionism. If you can intentionally try to move away from negative thoughts towards more positive ones, it can help to shift your perspective.
A simple way to do this is to imagine what you’d say to a colleague or a friend in your position. If you wouldn’t say it about someone else’s work, try not to say it to yourself.
Embrace Your Mistakes
A study found lower levels of perfectionism in people who intentionally practiced making mistakes. A good way to do this is to try something new, like a new hobby or sport, where mistakes are inevitable at first.
Mistakes are rarely as cataclysmic as you think, and they can be an incredibly valuable source of information. If you can get used to making them, being mindful about how you react, it should help to reduce your failure-avoiding perfectionism.
Moving Towards Good Enough
Managing your perfectionism involves thinking critically about your need to be perfect and about how you can best use your time and energy. It also requires you to develop techniques that will help you draw a line under a task and move forward.
Overcoming perfectionism can be a long journey and we’re really only able to scratch the surface here. However, if you can commit to starting to challenge your perfectionistic tendencies, the benefits could be huge.
