The problem with perfection

The problem with perfection is simple: it doesn’t exist. No matter how good you are?– as a leader, employee, business person, parent, partner, friend, whatever – you can always improve and do better. And therein lies the problem. If you strive for perfection, you set yourself up for failure.

It took me a long time to learn this. By nature I’m a perfectionist and for many years I thought that was something to be proud of. After all, it helped me achieve some great results, particularly at school. But it also held me back, threatened my success, and saw me self-sabotage. Perfect is the enemy of “good”, “great” and “done”.

These days I call myself a recovering perfectionist: overcoming my impulse to perform perfectly is something I continually work on. It’s one of the reasons my big theme for this year is SEE: “Space, Ease, Enough” and why “Have a crack” is my top business pillar. Deprogramming myself remains a work in progress.

Here are seven problems with being a perfectionist:

1. You set unrealistically high expectations for yourself. You put more pressure on yourself than anyone else ever would. You expect to be perfect at everything you do, and if you’re not, you beat yourself up about it and get angry or distressed. This leads to brutal self-talk. You link your self-worth to what you do, not who you are and failure – real or perceived - is devastating. You’re always striving for the next thing rather than appreciating your achievements.
2. You take on too much. This one’s familiar… Perfectionists tend to overload themselves with work, responsibilities, and commitments. It’s part of that unrealistic expectation thing. You keep adding balls to your juggling act?but still expect to keep them all in the air and deliver a perfect routine. For the record, this is stupid. You’ll drop one eventually. A wise and successful woman once told me that you can only do three things well at any time in life, and if one of them is your family, and one of them is work, you only have room for one more major commitment. Sage advice.
3. You become a people pleaser. Perfectionists don’t like to say no and this ties into the point above about taking on too much. In your bid to be perfect, you forsake your own needs for those of others. You put yourself last and try to be everything to everyone.
4. It can make you obsessive and sick. When I was a teenager, I had an eating disorder. I started off trying to lose some post-puberty weight and ended up starving myself. It became an all-or-nothing approach. If I was going to lose weight, I was going to be in complete control and do it the quickest way possible. It was a horrible time. The link between perfectionism and eating disorders is well established but it’s not just weight that can be a problem for perfectionists; it might be exercise, cleanliness, a strict diet, or a range of other things that start off being healthy and end up becoming an all-consuming and damaging obsession. It can never be perfect, so you’re never satisfied.
5. You’re easily overwhelmed. Not surprisingly, perfectionists load themselves up so heavily, with such high expectations, that they often become overwhelmed. This can lead to feelings of anxiety, paralysis, or explosions of anger. The interesting thing is this feeling of being overwhelmed is an entirely self-made construct because of the pressure you put on yourself, rather than what’s going on around you. It’s your perception of the task or situation that's overwhelming, rather than the task or situation itself.
6. It leads to procrastination. Yep, rather than help you get work done, perfectionism holds you back. When you’re feeling overwhelmed and under pressure to perform at such a high standard, you tend to avoid doing things. You make excuses, put tasks off, or leave things until the last minute. “I’ll write that article on perfectionism after I do the dishes. Oh, and I better check my emails. My office needs tidying too…” Sound familiar? The pressure to do your task perfectly holds you back from doing it at all, or at least until the point when you have no choice but to do it.
7. It kills dreams and stops you from achieving goals. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to write a novel, but it didn’t happen for a long time. I started my manuscript many times over the years, but never got more than about 10,000 words in. Why? Because every time I sat down to write I would go back to the start and read over what I’d written. I’d play around with the words. Fiddle at the edges. Edit and re-work. And get nothing new done. I was stuck because my perfectionism was crippling. After almost?10 years of this, I finally removed my perfectionist roadblock and forced myself to write in a way I never had before. I set myself a daily word count and wrote without reading back over my work and without editing a word. The freedom was invigorating and the momentum incredible. In the space of seven months, with a new baby and two toddlers under 3.5, I wrote the draft of a 90,000-word novel. I achieved my dream. Not only that, but I achieved it in the busiest year of my life. I didn't care whether it ever?got published; I'd proven to myself that I could do it.?Nothing highlighted the benefit of not aiming for perfection more perfectly. This was the game-changer that allowed me to get out of my own way and go on to write my two business books.

Instead of being a perfectionist, I now strive to be a completionist – someone who gets stuff done. A person who still delivers exceptional, high-quality work – but one who knows that done is better than perfect.

Could this article be better? Of course it could. I could stew over it for days, re-working and rewording to the point of not being able to see it clearly anymore. In years gone by, that’s what I would have done. What a waste of time.

Instead, I’ve churned this out in under an hour. Truth be told, I’ve updated an old article I wrote years eight ago. I’ve read over it a few times, made some changes and corrections, and decided it’s good enough. And you know what? That’s enough for me.

*Leah Mether?is a communication specialist obsessed with making the "people part" of leadership and work life easier. She is the author of two acclaimed books - Steer Through the Storm: How to Communicate and Lead Courageously Through Change (Ingram Spark, $25.00) and Soft is the New Hard: How to Communicate Effectively Under Pressure. Renowned for her engaging and straight-shooting style as a trainer, speaker and facilitator, Leah helps leaders and teams shift from knowing to doing, and radically improve their effectiveness. Visit?www.leahmether.com.au