41. Pefrectionist Tendenices

Ahhhh, perfectionism. Hello old friend.

If you happen to be a perfectionist, you’ll be very familiar with the fact that it can, at times, be a good thing.

And probably even more familiar with the fact that it can also be a right pain in the arse.

On one hand, by being conscientious, paying close attention to detail, taking pride in our work, and generally doing it to the best of our ability can mean that the quality tends to be better than if we had rushed it.

On the other hand, by obsessing over every single minutiae, we can waste a load of time, and arguably worse, a load of mental tranquillity.

Firstly, time. Naturally, trying to make something ‘perfect’ takes longer than just trying to make something good enough for purpose.

Though for a lot of things, the returns on that additional time investment seem to be minimal.

For a professional basketball player trying to get their free throw percentage (I think that’s the right terminology) from 79% to 81% it may be worth it, as that could be the difference between winning and losing a game.

For us trying to write a typo-less email to Sharon in Finance, it may not.

That’s the trade-off. Is the potential improved quality of the output (of whatever thing that is; some report at work, a side hustle, a social media post etc.) worth the additional time spent crafting the thing. It obviously depends on what that thing is, but possibly not.

For mostthings in life, people don’t notice.

For example, do you care that that ‘mostthings’ in the previous sentence didn’t have a space between it? If this whole post was littered with typos then possibly, but as a one-off, I’m guessing not really?

To Author & Business Owner Tiago Forte’s point, “A paradoxical thing about people who consistently choose the most high leverage activity is their efforts have a rough-edged, half-assed quality. Because polishing things to perfection is a low leverage activity.”

Basically, people who do a lot don’t tend to agonise over every last detail. Instead, they often value and optimise towards efficiency, and just rattle stuff out.

We see this when we email a CEO type person:

Dear Bla,

Hope you’re well Bla-Bla-Bla

I’m just emailing because Bla-Bla-perfectly-crafted-email-Bla.

Kindest regards and best Bla,

Howie

The response? “Yes. P”.

Naturally, quality is important. But so is efficiency. And we can spend hours (or even days) agonising over a specific thing, and though we can try and convince ourselves that it’s due to us perfecting it, we’re actually just wasting our time.

I like how Author Steven Barnes puts it “Perfectionism is often just procrastination masquerading as quality control”.

And for the perfectionist, it’s not just a time trade-off, but an emotional trade-off too. It can be one hell of a mental burden.

Generally speaking, the more we try to perfect something, the more emotionally invested we are in said thing.

This can be good, as it shows we care. However, it can come at the serious detriment to our mental peace.

Take a social media post for example. I’m sure we’ve all been there. We spend hours agonising over the caption, and as a bi-product, attach far more value to how many likes and comments it gets. And when it bombs, so does our self-esteem.

On the flip side, if we quickly chuck an Insta story or post out there, we’re less likely to give it a second thought.

I’ve found that a similar principle applies to most areas in life where our inner perfectionists try to take control of proceedings.

So, why is it such a common trait?

Well, as with most things, I’m sure there’s a fairly complex and multi-faceted explanation. And one that’s far beyond my intellectual capacity, and able to be unpacked in a 4 minute blog post.

However, I’m very much in the School of Thought that there’s usually some sort of evolutionary explanation for most of our weird behaviours.

In the excellent book ‘The Ape that Understood the Universe’ by Steve Stewart-Williams, he proposes that as humans, we’ve evolved to pass on our genes.

And the first thing we need to do in order to try and achieve that goal is survive. Historically, the best way to do that is to try and fit in with a decent tribe. And one way to do that is to be liked (and therefore accepted) by said tribe.

Of course, this is a massively condensed and simplified summary for the sake of this post, but I do believe that this is at least one of the reasons why we’re evolutionarily hard-wired to seek approval. And we may see perfectionism as a way to get said approval.

Our brains carry out the following sort of thought process:

1. “The better this thing is, the more likely it is to be well received”

2. “The more well received it is, the more likely that that big group of tribe looking people will welcome us in”

3. “Ahhh, lovely big group to keep us safe”

4. “Safety, yay, gene propagation time!”

In short, it can help us achieve our apparent evolutionary purpose.

Perfectionism. It’s possibly one of the main driving factors behind most of the artwork, sculptures, monuments and general creations that we like to use and look at.

So naturally, the purpose of this post isn’t to shit all over high quality work.

However, working on the architectural plans for La Sagrada Familia is one thing, and pulling together a 5 minute internal work presentation that no one really wants to listen to is another.

Perfectionism can often be an obstacle to starting the thing, and an easy excuse not to do it. And although perfectionist tendencies can be good, the time and emotional attachment costs are high. We can sacrifice a lot of time and energy for making something marginally, and sometimes unrecognisably, better.

Often, it’s just one additional mental burden that we can probably do without.

I say, as I try and force myself to click ‘publish’ without re-reading this another 47 times…