“Don’t be a perfectionist”

This statement would have raised few eyebrows and lot many apprehensions in your mind, but believe me this is exactly what I wanted to write. Who is a perfectionist? A person who refuses to accept any standard short of perfection. I am sure everyone agrees to this statement, but for all practical purposes there are two important things which are missing in its definition, namely- the sense of time & the relative comparison of perfection.

Let me explain each one of these.

 Firstly, sense of time. A perfectionist strives to achieve the state of perfection continuously but the time required to reach that state is not mentioned. What is the time required by an individual to reach the state which you call as a state of perfection is critical. Let me take an engineering example, if you had to work on designing a transmission and you perfected the design but in this process you took so long a time that the edge over market got lost, then what good was that perfection for business.

What should one do? Break your task into acceptable & time bound state of perfection and then go forward to achieve it i.e. in place of looking at perfection as a upward moving ‘curve’ split it into steps and make it time bound.

 Secondly, relative comparison of perfection. The state of perfection is an relative state; why I say so? Because what’s perfection for you may be the norm for someone else and vice versa, hence it’s a relative state. So it’s important that what you do for organisation is seen as a perfectionists work.

What should one do? You need to pause and seek support in defining- what’s the state of perfection as expected by the organisation? Once this is known then you can calibrate your expectation of perfection with that of organizations, but remember this is a dynamic state and you need to calibrate yourself constantly.

 Concoction. Let me blend both the points stated above, calibrate and define what’s the expected state of perfection and the break it to make it time bound in form of steps rather than a ‘curve’ and your recipe to perform  at the organizations expected state of perfection and you deliver results which is time bound.