How To Kick Your Perfectionism To The Curb
This post digs into a topic which often comes up in conversation with clients about their work: perfectionism.
We’ll explore its pros and cons, the three types of perfectionism, how it shows up and how you can better manage it.
As always if you have any comments or questions in response to this topic do send me a message to discuss. And if anything is particularly triggering or you feel you may need more support, it could be that you’d benefit from professional help such as working with a therapist or a certified coach.
The pros and cons of perfectionism
Ahh perfectionism.
The holy grail of acceptable answers to the interview question “what’s your biggest flaw”?
In some ways we are all a little bit perfectionist. Whether about our work, our home, our car or latest banana bread recipe, the trait can show up in different areas of our lives and have a largely net positive affect.
It can drive us to achieve more, be more productive, have higher quality standards and encourage the same in others.
But the dark side of perfectionism is the browbeating voice in our heads that tells us we are never quite good enough.
That we can always do better.
Perfectionism has been proven to increase levels of depression due to the unrealistic expectations it places. They say happiness is about closing the gap between your expectations and your reality, and if you expect things to be perfect its hard to be happy.
Before we can tackle perfectionism on its head; let’s look at how it shows up.
The three types of perfectionism
The research has shown how perfectionism can reveal itself in different ways, you might recognise one or two or even all three of these types in yourself.
Self-oriented perfectionism
This is the classic one we’re all aware of, associated largely with greater work productivity and career success. Such perfectionists hate to see errors in their work, set exceedingly high standard for themselves and push themselves to their full potential.
Other-orientated perfectionism
This is holding others around you up to your high standards. You might notice yourself being judgmental and critical of their work or performance — “if I ask someone to do something, I expect it to be done flawlessly”.
Socially-prescribed
This is where you sense the pressure to be perfect in everything you do; meaning your self-worth is tied up with what others think of you. There is a perceived or real need to meet their standards. This often begins in childhood with parents or school teachers giving implicit messages that you need to be or act a certain way to deserve praise.
The warning signs of perfectionism showing up
So if perfectionism has both good and bad aspects, how do you know if it’s helping or hindering?
Read on for the key themes that tend to show up.
Procrastination
Often when you are delaying working on something, it is a clue. You may procrastinate around the work that feels core to our identity or purpose. Here the stakes are higher because the impact of it being ‘bad’ is greater. Many describe themselves wasting time on ‘urgent’ tasks when they have looming deadlines for important projects.This is the brains sneaky way of trying to save face by avoiding the things that involve a degree of reputational risk.
If something is important to us professionally you’ll want it to be the best example of our abilities as possible. So you can justify really taking our time on it. Take writing this newsletter today for example, I’ve spent more hours not writing it than writing it even though my diary is carved out to work on it this morning.This might also show up as indecision — delaying make a choice about something until you are 100% sure you’ve made the right choice. This might be a tall ask: you are rarely certain about something until after it’s happened.Staying in your comfort zone
This might look like avoiding anything in your ‘growth zone’ for fear of getting it wrong. Perfectionists don’t want to be ‘okay’ at something, they want to be the best. When something is too hard or they don’t master it on the first try, they may feel shame and self-doubt and avoid going near that thing again.In ‘Mindset’ author and researcher Carol Dweck explains the difference between people with a ‘growth’ mindset, who know there is always scope to grow and get better, and people with a ‘fixed’ mindset who believe you are either good at something or not and it’s better to stay in your lane.
In her studies, people with a fixed mindset perceived that it wasn’t enough to simply succeed, but that they also had to be seen as flawless in the process. Fixed mindset children would respond to the question ‘when do you feel smart?’ with responses such as ‘when I don’t make any mistakes’.You can only be perfect in your comfort zone, but the growth zone will always bring new challenges and room for improvement.Reluctance to put out work into the world
For perfectionists, creativity becomes collateral damage. They are wary of sharing work that is personal or unique, as they can feel it exposes them to criticism. Anything creative tends to involve a degree of risk, which for a perfectionist, is uncomfortable because they cannot control the outcome.Instead they will hold onto their work, feeling that it’s never quite ready to go live or be shared with others.
They may experience slow progress and over-editing, doing everything meticulously or revisiting it over and over. The worst culprit? Not even starting in the first place.
Treating your perfectionism
Now you might have identified how your unique form of perfectionism is showing up and potentially holding you back, let’s kick it to the curb.
If this is deeply entrenched, there could be some work to do, overriding neural pathways and changing the way you think (brain plasticity is a thing) through coaching or therapy to begin the process of untangling your self worth from achievement.
The good news is there are some more immediate steps you can try today:
1. Enforce Deadlines and Accountability
If you’re prone to delaying getting work out there into the world, seek accountability in the form of deadlines. Whether that’s asking a friend or peer to check in on you, or setting reminders for yourself.Sharing publicly can work well for this: if you tell the world you’ll be doing something by a certain date, you’ll be more motivated to get it done.
2. Focus on the Minimal Viable Product
In tech, before launching a new product to the market, product managers will build the simplest version first to get market feedback before building additional features.If you’re procrastinating or releasing important work, the big picture end result can be daunting. So focus on the minimum version of this, get that out before you develop it further, thus building confidence and momentum along the way. This might an Instagram page before a website, an outline, a plan or a prototype.
3. Hypothesis Testing
‘Fail’ or neglect to do something perfectly on the small scale and see what happens. Did the world stop turning?
Hypothesis testing is the process of making an observation, then forming a specific question based on the information that you’ve gleaned, followed by an attempt to solve that problem.In this context, observe what you are trying to tackle, ask what is at stake, and attempt to prove or disprove this. If you are able to see that your job/business/relationship doesn’t depend on something being delivered perfectly each time you begin to trust that you can act without all the shame and judgement holding you back each time, and see that it might not be as big a deal as you have made it in your head after all.
Good luck — let me know how you get on kicking your perfectionist tendencies to the curb and finding more freedom and joy in your work!
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