Turn the Perfect Off
I procrastinate sometimes.?
Sometimes it's because I am doing too many things and can't prioritize as well as I'd like to. But sometimes, it's avoidant.?
Have you ever put something off until the last minute? You think about starting the project at several different times, but think to yourself, "I've got plenty of time." Then, with little time left, you realize time is running out. You stress out and rush and pull everything together at the very last minute.?
It's almost like a rush to have the pressure of completing a project at the last minute, with all that pressure to motivate you. As much as I'd like to say that since I "know" all of the tricks to end procrastination, I would be better at preventing it. But I'm not.?
There's a big part of me that is competitive. I competed for most of my life in sports. Now, I compete in business. I can quickly gather the motivation to do lots of things, even large projects, in a short amount of time because of learning how to push myself. The competitive part of me wants to say that procrastination is a choice. I often say these words to myself when I have trouble getting started on a project:
Procrastion doesn't exist. It's just not important to you.
While that is sometimes true, I find myself with projects I think are very important that I struggle to start. I don't struggle because I think it's not a big deal. I struggle because I think it's too big of a deal. That, and I don't want to mess it up.
Procrastination is often driven by perfection.
But what makes something perfect? There are very few defined times when things in life can be perfect. In bowling, I can bowl a 300. That’s perfect. You can pitch a perfect game in baseball. You can put together a lego set perfectly. But given a long enough timeline, none of those things end up staying perfect. You have to bowl again, or pitch again, or if you have a toddler at home like me, that lego set is not long for this world. What about the more subjective things in life? What does the perfect home look like? How will you know if you have the perfect job? How do you find the perfect partner? If those last few things sound impossible, that’s because they are.
Perfection will ruin your life if you let it.
Definitions of PERFECT from the Oxford dictionary:
Perfection could be defined as having all of the things you want or nothing you don’t want.?
领英推荐
It’s all or nothing.
I often have clients who engage in this “black and white” thinking. People think of things as good or bad, right or wrong, correct or incorrect. The problem with thinking this way is that often it doesn’t leave room for the gray. Life is clearly more nuanced than this, very often. It’s very common way of thinking, especially for us addicts. We are very much all or nothing thinkers. I can think of many times when things didn’t go my way, it was worth giving up completely. When I was trying to recover from alcohol addiction, my tolerance for failing at things was pitifully low, and I often used it as an excuse to go drink, because I couldn’t tolerate the disappointment of failing at things. I couldn’t tolerate imperfection. It prevented me from continuing to try. The problem of imperfection intolerance is not confined to addiction, though. A good example of a bad place to expect perfection is long-term relationships.?
People have a lot of ideas about what a relationship should look like (don’t get me started on the shoulds). Whatever your definition of a perfect relationship is, I’m willing to bet it isn’t exactly like your partner’s (if you have one). The fact that the two ideals are different alone can be a source of conflict. People come into relationships with different ideas about roles in the home, how to parent, how to show affection, or how to manage finances. For God’s sake, people can’t even agree on which direction to set the toilet paper to roll.
In couples counseling, I see so many people come in, completely entrenched in their worldviews and unwilling to see things from their partner’s perspective. They focus on their own needs and wants, and if they don’t feel fulfilled their shields go up. They become defensive and irritable with their partners. They engage in passive-aggressive communication. They actively look for and find reasons to feel slighted.
John and Julie Gottman can be considered the foremost experts on relationships on this side of the globe. They are both therapists, and they are married to each other. I imagine this was brutal early on for them. You can find their website here. It has so much great information about relationships as well as their podcast. They have four major signs of a negative trajectory for relationships, which they dubbed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
The antidotes to these are quite simple: good communication, owning your faults, and managing your own emotions well. These require effort not perfection.
While some relationships are unhealthy, I’m strictly talking about relatively normal ones here. Unhealthy relationships are a topic for another day. People spend a lot of time behaving outwardly like their relationships are perfect. But if you ask anyone, especially with a long-lasting and healthy marriage, you will quickly find they have been through some stuff. It has not been perfect. ?People suffer miscarriages. People experience infidelity. People take out their childhood traumas on each other unwittingly. People say and do many kinds of hurtful things to each other. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a great relationship. But you will never have a perfect one.
My wife and I went on our honeymoon to Emerald Isle. It appeared that we had planned a "perfect trip." We took a trip out to Shackleford Banks, and if you've never been, they have wild horses and untouched island for 9 miles. We found out that 9 miles is long when the heat is over 95 degrees, there's no shade, and the humidity is near 100%. We ended up hiking for 4 hours, being stuck on the wrong side of the island and having to wade through a 5 foot deep inlet with our bags over our heads like the movie Platoon, and my wife had heat exhaustion. What started out as a journey for some awesome seashells (which we still have) turned into an emergency situation that was about 30 minutes from being a call to the Coast Guard. I won't say which one of us vomited. Fortunately, we made it back, and we did see the horses (see pictured above). But it became dangerously close to a medical emergency. Not even remotely close to perfect.
In the end, the idea of perfection will stop you from doing a lot of things or doing them well. Trying to find the perfect house will prevent you from looking for or finding a great one. Trying to have a perfect relationship will prevent you from creating a long-lasting and fulfilling one. Only trying at something when you can’t fail will keep you from trying many things that are worthwhile. Most of the time it will prevent you from starting at things.
So my advice? Turn the perfect off.
Accept great, but imperfect.?