Why Perfectionism Can Be A Waste Of Your Time

Trying to maintain a perfect image to some person or set of people is as worthwhile for you as it would be to try to direct the growing of a plant into some atypical shape by using weights and bending it daily.  Who is going to praise you for being perfect in some way?  When we see something that is near perfect, we usually look for an error and point it out to the creator.

When I think of perfectionism, the first thing that comes to mind is creating something that is the best of the best.  It reminds me, for example, of one time when I had an assignment to re-create a vivid section of a novel in an illustrative way on a piece of paper, with colored pencils used to add to the sides of the text.  The way I completed it was to forget about creating something that was the best, and to focus on making it as I went.  It came out better than I could have imagined.

Is Avoidance In Place?

When your mind tells you “no, I shouldn’t do that”, ask yourself if that is fear-based or experience-based.  You will want to differentiate those.  If you are avoiding doing something that didn’t work out well a previous time you tried it, that makes sense.  On the other hand, if it is something you haven’t tried, and you are holding yourself back, there isn’t any basis for that.

You Can Only Filter Out So Much

One of the problems with perfectionism is that it leads down a spiral that removes any interesting aspects of what you are doing, if you continue it repeatedly.  Suddenly one thing you put in isn’t good enough, and then after removing it, another thing isn’t good enough, until you are left with a skeleton of what you previously had that will provide negligible value to anyone that views it.

The Other Way To Be A Perfectionist

I have noticed that the people who say “I’m such a perfectionist” may well be, but also tend to draw the line at the end of their project way before it is perfect.  They might have a tendency to go further than the majority of people, but they certainly don’t go nonstop towards some sort of pinnacle of creation or production.  On the contrary, many such individuals fit the kind of perfectionism we don’t normally think of, in that they will put out an average creation, adjust it, put out a slightly better one, and continue this cycle of adjustment until they get close to what some might view as perfection.  They don’t have a near-perfect product the whole way through, but have each step of the process in their mind as a step of perfectionism.  This is a longer-term way to think about it.

Don’t Let Perfection-Seeking Cause Missed Opportunities

One of the toughest things about being a perfectionist is seeing someone take the idea you would need two weeks to complete perfectly, complete a decent – but not perfect – version of it in four days, and release it before you.  In this respect, perfectionists are not likely to be the first to jump on a new concept.  In these times when flexibility is crucial due to rapidly-changing conditions, products, and services, the perfectionist soon realizes they have to adjust their demeanor if they want to continue along their path.

Associate the word ‘perfectionist’ with ‘procrastinator’, because they tend to go hand-in-hand.  The procrastinator will often tell themselves that they are delaying and delaying since they are going for a near-perfect result.  The perfectionist will get frustrated with imperfection and take a long break, procrastinating on completing the project.

Tagged as: perfect, perfectionism, procrastination