How to deal with crippling perfectionism.
Perfectionism is a fear of failure, not a badge of honor.
People often pride themselves on being a perfectionist. But while striving for perfection is admirable, true perfectionism is not.
Statements like “I am a perfectionist” mean that a person takes pride in doing his/her job as well as possible. But if you employ a “perfection or bust” mentality at everything you do, you will never finish anything.
The cause of perfectionism is fear of failure. And that fear results in one of two behaviors:
“If it is not perfect, it is not finished.”, so you work indefinitely on something.
“If I cannot do it perfectly, it is not worth doing it.” You stop working on something.
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
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I think my perfectionism stops me from even getting started if I’m not careful. I’ll do everything else but the one thing (which in some cases will take truly five minutes). I pretend it motivates me to do everything else. But in reality, I think what helps the most is breaking the task down into smaller steps. I’ll tell myself just do one part now, leave the rest for later. Inevitably I do it all quicker. So perhaps not quite a finishing mindset yet…just a get it started mindset. Love the post!