- Is it no the stupidest thing? I know exactly how you feel.

Good post. I’ve made a conscious effort to try and tame perfectionism. I think the best way is to look at it as an external force (if i’m not mistaken, this is the same principle as exorcism). So when have an external awareness of your perfectionist habits, you can simply decide that you won’t let it effect your actions. Although this is a lot easier said than done.

I’m doing great. I’ve been hearing a lot from other perfectionists. I guess that the problem is pretty widespread. Let’s see if we can do something about it!

By the way, I am also a blogaholic. I just subscribed to your blog.

You might have a point there. I had a lot of success and achievement early on, and then it became expected of me. Around junior year of high school, I actually started to wish that I had not set the expectation level so high. I have actually made a great deal of progress in regards to my perfectionism since then. Back then, it was somewhat obsessive.

In any case, I suspect that high expectations were only a part of the problem for me. I was also extremely shy growing up, although I’ve outgrown that for the most part. However, I’m still very shy about approaching women, unless I have zero intentions about being with the woman. The point that I’m getting at is that fear of rejection is part of the problem. The funny thing is that I consciously understand how stupid the fear is, but I have the fear anyway. That’s how deeply rooted our fears can be.

Is reading self-improvement blogs like this a symptom?

Paul: I think that you have the right idea. Although I have always been very productive, I think that I can stand some improvement in recognizing when good enough is good enough.

Frydaze1: I think that one thing that we all need to remember is that we are all born knowing absolutely nothing. If others have learned to do something, then in most cases that means we can too. The people who know how to do something certainly made their share of mistakes along the way. I need to remind myself of this a lot more so that I am encouraged to take action despite inevitable mistakes.

I’m reminded of the quote from Thomas Edison (though there seem to be a lot of versions of it):
“I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

I am becoming an expert on ways that won’t work… and that’s okay.

Babe Ruth, the sultan of swat, by reputation one of the best baseball players ‘EVER’. He simultaneously held the title of the most home runs hit and the most strikeouts of any major league player.

On perfectionism in general:

I think of the 80:20 principle. Good not perfect, but good is good enough to generate 80ty percent of the return (with 20% of the effort). Perfectionism leverages that herculean and sometimes heroic level of human commitment (the remaining 80%) for that last 20% of return.

I have gotten lectures from many a co-worker over the past year. I have taught myself to never give 100% to anything; as a result I leave earlier and do less work (personal effort) than most people I work with. What frustrates many a cow-worker is that I get more done (from a project delivery aspect) than anyone in my department. My contemporaries complain; “Paul’s solutions could be better, they are not even close to perfect!” … and they are right! The project managers argue back on my behalf, but his solutions work; and the end users can’t tell the difference between ‘works’ and ‘perfect’… they just don’t know and don’t frankly care to learn.

Lately project managers are asking for me specifically to be on their teams, because I get the job done 100% of the time on time. I may not be elegant or pretty with my work, but I don’t work all that hard at it so that’s ok with me. My co-workers work many more hours than I perfecting their deliverables, making some of the most elegant solutions I have seen, that are more often than not late and over budget (project managers love that, so do the end users).