[HN Gopher] Unlearning perfectionism ___________________________________________________________________ Unlearning perfectionism Author : akprasad Score : 284 points Date : 2022-02-05 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arunkprasad.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arunkprasad.com) | witweb wrote: | Great article, in which I find myself partially. I have tried for | many years to be quite perfectionistic but mostly because of the | feeling of not being good enough. It's a pretty destructive | behavior as you're always anxious and imagining the worst. At | some point at university, I was able to slowly discard this | behavior, although this development is certainly not over yet. | What helped me most were good friends and a part-time job in a | consulting firm, which I absolutely hated btw. But overall I | learned to focus more on the important things and generally to | care less. I'm generally happier with my work and don't let | setbacks get to me as quickly. Rather, I take them as a challenge | to become even better. (Starting my first job as an engineer | after university soon btw! :)) | waingake wrote: | If you enjoyed this I'd recommend Simone De Beauvoir's book; The | ethics of ambiguity. It's short and accessible and describes a | number of character traits, which hinder personal and collective | freedom, focusing on the outcome of projects rather than the | ongoing process is discussed, but additionally she wraps an | ethical framework around these discussions so that it becomes | more about how to live in general. | soheil wrote: | Arun is describing almost every flaw a human being can have and | wrapping it all in what he calls perfectionism. A good way to see | if the scenarios he paints qualify you can just ask the question, | if I did those things differently would I then be less of a | perfectionist? I'm not sure the answer is an emphatic yes. | akprasad wrote: | I use the term "perfectionism" to describe the space of | behaviors around the traditional description. Like any | generalization it can be expanded so much that it includes | everything. But what separates perfectionism from normal | fallibility, to me, is the degree of identity investment in the | outcome. Disappointment _per se_ is not perfectionism. What | makes it a tendency worth naming is the intensity of mental | stress and self-recrimination that follows. | billti wrote: | Great article. I saw myself a lot in it. I find myself on this | orange site multiple times a day largely for some of the reasons | outlined. | | > She dwells in puddles for fear of the ocean | | woah. Beautiful line. Great writing can really make the content | more impactful. I find myself regularly absorbed in the minutia | of a technology used in a project. I tell myself it's because I | find the subject fascinating and knowing it deeply will make the | solution (and me) better (which is partly true), but I often have | that thought niggling in the back of my mind, "Am I spending too | long on this detail because I'm avoiding tackling the bigger | problem because I'm worried I might fail?". This punchy quote | sums that up nicely. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | The article is correct, in that attaching our identity to an | outcome is a problem. | | It doesn't just have to be perfect results. It can also be | emotional relationships with other people, getting a job or a | promotion, winning a contest/game, an imagined endgame, etc. | | I don't think there's a damn thing wrong with setting a high bar; | possibly unreasonably high, as long as I have a healthy reaction | to that bar not being met. | | I remember reading about "fuzzy logic," way back, when that was | still a thing. One description had "levels," where you had things | like "On, almost on, not on, cat in a box, not off, almost off, | off," etc. Basically, a continuum, with "detents." | | That's sort of how I work. I set a bar for "perfect," but will | settle for "almost perfect," or maybe even "very good." I will | _not_ settle for "good," or lower. | | My identity is not tied into my work, but I am constantly | striving for approaching perfection in my work. | | If I don't at least get "very good," I don't beat myself up, but | the job's not done. | cardosof wrote: | My wife is a perfectionist, she spends unreasonable amounts of | time even in little tasks (like making the bed) to make sure it's | "perfect". We all talk about perfectionism in the workplace or | job-related activities but in reality it's a PITA in every aspect | of life. | jollygoodshow wrote: | Does the state of being someone who strives for excellence | instead of perfection not carry with it it's own downsides? I | know the article is more about unlearning perfectionism, but I'd | also want to know what I was getting myself into if I did decide | to change and if I would prefer it: e.g better the devil you | know, though this is probably tinged by my resistance to | change... | akadeb wrote: | Great article. Incidentally, CBT, ERP and mindfulness with self | compassion are also the same therapies prescribed for people | suffering from various forms of OCD | agumonkey wrote: | Superb article. One thing though, it's difficult to reconciliate | job markets / interview tests with not being a perfectionnist to | an extent. Hopefully not a crippling but a mature for of | skillfulness. | vmoore wrote: | "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, | but when there is nothing left to take away." | | -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery | moffkalast wrote: | When there is nothing more to take away you're left with | nothing. As they say, "Nothing is perfect." | gridspy wrote: | Even this quote implies that reaching perfection is a process. | One in which you create a rough solution and remove | imperfections and extra parts until the minimal and perfect | solution remains. | shitpost wrote: | onion_knight wrote: | Mental health issues too often remain untreated among high- | achievers who are able to maintain a surface appearance of | holding it together. It's a good trend that nowadays we feel able | to talk more openly about struggles like this. | | I see myself in this article but for me, the word that was the | key to find resources to get better was the broader acronym RNT, | "Repetitive negative thoughts". Perfectionism themes are one | common type of thought for me, but I also have several other | categories that don't fit in that frame. Two resources I found | particularly useful: | | * https://www.amazon.com/Negative-Thoughts-Workbook-Repetitive... | "The Negative Thoughts Workbook" A practical self-help book with | chapters to work through each common category of negative thought | | * https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672052/ | "Constructive and Unconstructive Repetitive Thought" A survey in | the clinical literature which I found particularly helpful for | identifying the subset of negative thoughts which has been | actually helping me. This helped me ease up on the majority of | unhelpful thoughts with greater confidence that I'm still | preserving the small subset of my thought pattern which has | helped me succeed. | etherio wrote: | I agree. I think there are several reasons high achievers' | mental health issues go untreated: | | - like you say they maintain a healthy surface because part of | their perfectionism is no one knowing about their anxiety / | having a good image | | - if they do share, often their goals / expectations will be | inflated compared to that of their peers such that for others | it feels like they're bragging or being ridiculous, instead of | taking their pain seriously. I notice this especially with when | I share dissatisfaction about my school results - disparate | expectations create a true divide. | RobRivera wrote: | >what are you complaing for, you're doing great. | | dismissive comments at a young age evolve to be tactful but | still echo deafeningly from adolescence, in my exp. | wilkommen wrote: | I think mostly everyone's mental health issues go untreated. | High achievers and otherwise, maybe for different reasons in | different cases. Even people whose mental health issues cause | them obvious distress often don't get treatment. | the_arun wrote: | Regarding negative thoughts - I escape them thinking we all are | temporary. People around us forget/forgive the unconscious | mistakes we do. So we too need to ignore them for greater good | of tomorrow. | stopnamingnuts wrote: | I concur. And I'm saving these links. | | As a tangent I would add that the damage isn't limited to the | perfectionist. At some point one has to consider how the | rigidity of perfectionism affects their relationships. It can | be a self-indulgence in which one engages at the expense family | or friends. | zwkrt wrote: | > It can be a self-indulgence in which one engages at the | expense family or friends. | | It's even worse if the perfectionism is applied to those | around you directly. The thought process is something like | "well I hold myself to a high (but maybe poorly defined and | changing) standard, so why not hold those in my life to that | same standard!?" | | Of course it is impossible for anyone to live up to your | nebulous and nonverbal "standard", so you see your close | relations primarily in terms of how they are deficient. And | because what comes around goes around, you assume others are | perceiving you in the same way. | | You may actually find yourself surrounded by people with | obvious issues like addiction and depression so it easy for | you to perceive exactly how much more perfect you are than | they are, and of course you remind them of this frequently | through backhanded comments that let them know that they are | _almost_ good enough to be your equal. It takes a certain | kind of person to regularly take that abuse, so your warped | reality self-selects for friends that are obsequious puddles | or anxious wrecks. Thus begins a feedback loop that | reinforces everyones mental health issues, with you being the | pump that brings water from the well. | | It's a bucket of fun for everyone! | jancsika wrote: | > The thought process is something like "well I hold myself | to a high (but maybe poorly defined and changing) standard, | so why not hold those in my life to that same standard!?" | | Seems like a lot hinges on your parenthetical. | | If Bob has a well-defined and consistent standard that | works for him, what's wrong with filtering Eve out of his | life with it? | zwkrt wrote: | Oh no of course we should all be discerning. But TFA | talks about pinning self-esteem to the outcomes of | projects in the world. I was describing a situation i saw | where an individual's "projects" were their close | relationships. People are not projects to be worked on. | Mazgas wrote: | I kind of wish I could train myself to be a bit more towards | perfectionism than I am. I know it is a different problem than | y'all are having, but sometimes it feels that when everyone is | stressed about a project I am the only one laid back like "it | will work, even if we're a little late" or, which is worse, | "readers will point out a mistake if we missed it on the | overview". I call it "community feedback", but others see it more | accurately as "forgiving errors before tgey are even made". | bee_rider wrote: | > "forgiving errors before tgey are even made" | | this is brilliant if it was intentional. | gridspy wrote: | Real perfectionism doesn't mean you do perfect work. It means | you never (or rarely) ship, or perhaps never start. You don't | ask for help, you feel anxious about perceptions. You reduce | the scope until a task is trivial, or increase it until it is | impossible. In both cases you give the job up as worthless or | unreachable. | | You don't want perfectionism. | | > "It will work, even if we're a little late" | | We should all aspire to reach this attitude in development | teams. As long as you keep putting the work in until the | product is polished we're fine. | peoplefromibiza wrote: | there is no such a thing as "real perfectionism" | | perfectionism, like many other behavioral styles, is a | spectrum | | Most of the "perfectionists" are people that simply care a | lot more than the average about details, not sociopaths. | | Katsuhiro Otomo is a perfectionist, but he also enjoys his | life and creating his art. | | p.s. perfectionists most of the time acknowledge that thinks | will work anyway, they simply also believe (and rightly so) | that things could be better than they currently are. Most of | the times they also know that perfection (or an incarnation | of it) takes a lot of time. | | We only talk about the extreme cases because of survival | bias: they are the ones who will make extreme sacrifices, | while the others will give up on perfection sooner or later, | because they are not actually obsessed with it. | thenerdhead wrote: | I'm a recovering perfectionist who has read their fair share of | Brene Brown, Steven Pressfield, Seth Godin, Tony Robbins, Anne | Lamott, and many more. | | The best metaphors I've read is in Bird by Bird. The author | describes two different scenarios. | | The first is that perfection & progress is much like driving late | at night with headlights. You will only be able to see as far as | your headlights allow. You might be going through a canyon, on a | straight and narrow highway, or going the wrong way. But all you | know for certain is what is in front of you. | | The second is that you have to frame your perfectionism around | something. That could be your loved ones, your dreams in life, | whatever. If it's always framed around your past achievements, | you're comparing to the past and not to the future version of | what could be. Getting clear on why you're doing it is very | important. | | I truly believe you can devoid yourself of perfectionism. I've | gone from being afraid to publish work to the public, to only | publishing in the public and shaping my work based on the | imperfections being pointed out in my shitty first attempts. | | Your first attempt will be shitty. Your second attempt will be | less shitty. Do this for long enough and you'll start to get a | feel for proficiency and what others see as "perfection". | peoplefromibiza wrote: | > The first is that perfection & progress is much like driving | late at night with headlights. You will only be able to see as | far as your headlights allow. | | that's all you need to drive ar night though (and driving in | general) | | if you drive looking around you, you can become a danger for | yourself and others. | | What I mean is that perfectionism is doing things the right way | and make the best out of the limits you encounter. | | I feel like many confuse perfectionism with obsession. | | Perfectionism = not bad | | Obsession = bad | hutzlibu wrote: | "I feel like many confuse perfectionism with obsession. | | Perfectionism = not bad | | Obsession = bad " | | It just depends how you define terms. What most people here | mean with perfectionism, would be probably a obsession with | perfectionism under your terms. | | I am also fine with my perfectionism, after I learned the | concept of "good enough". | peoplefromibiza wrote: | > It just depends how you define terms | | It only depends on where you are in the spectrum | | Everyone is a perfectionist in something, but only someone | is obsessed with perfectionism to the point it becomes bad | for you. | | That's what usually people think about when they talk about | perfectionism, but that's the worst case scenario. | syntheweave wrote: | The most important aspect for me is in setting reasonable, | concrete benchmarks that you can self-assess. Although good | teaching and mentoring can be helpful, external opinion is also | the source of many bad benchmarks - all too often nobody will | be there to give advice more specific than "this is good, that | is bad". | | To get better benchmarks, you have to do some philosophy to set | up principles that you can judge yourself with. This can be | daunting but is much more effective than trying things at | random. Once you have them, though, your self-assessments | become much more reasonable and perfectionism will recede: You | know what it takes to go from 90% to 99%, and can weigh that | against developing in other respects. | rednalexa wrote: | I like the idea: do you have any examples of it in practice? | pmorici wrote: | I had a professor once that said he found his most professionally | successful students weren't the ones who got A's but the B | students and he calked it up to the notion that the B students | were better able to know where the maximum return on their | invested effort was where as the A student invested whatever it | took to get the A even if the incremental effort required wasn't | proportional to the incremental benefit of the next hire grade. | | The notion that perfectionism can be harmful reminds me of that. | hgomersall wrote: | I found imposter syndrome went away when I realised everyone else | was an imposter too. | [deleted] | amelius wrote: | I'm not. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | That's a bit suspicious. Sounds like something an imposter | would say. | Shared404 wrote: | Did anyone see amelius doing the tasks? | | --- | | Jokes aside, I think we all are and aren't imposters, in | different areas of life. | moffkalast wrote: | _Dead body reported._ | ribasushi wrote: | Where? | agumonkey wrote: | you're at least a poster ;) | boh wrote: | Perfectionist is an overindulgent term that fails to capture the | experience of its debased realities. Dealing with perfectionists | you never see an attempt at perfection as much as you see | neurosis and control issues. "Perfection" is a fake endeavor with | no contingent expression that can even verify its attainment. The | concept of perfection is dehumanizing and anyone attempting to | have it materialize keeps themselves stuck in a false reality | that plays exclusively in their own imagination. To be seduced | into the perfectionist narrative is to be subject to a fantasy | that can do as much to paralyze an endeavor as much as it | purports to cultivate it. | moffkalast wrote: | > So she feels threatened by moderate setbacks and finds any | number of excuses to procrastinate: she's not in the mood, not in | the right place, too busy, not inspired, too hungry, too full, | too alert, too tired. So she retreats into the safe and familiar. | She checks her email for the hundredth time. | | Feeling personally attacked | voisin wrote: | The most apt description I have come across of perfectionism is | that it stems from some unresolved trauma that led to a fear of | not being accepted and resulting lack of confidence. | lazide wrote: | Or being required to do something really important, but failing | and suffering/seeing bad things happen in part because they or | someone they depended on was unprepared (even if knowing how to | be prepared, or being prepared was not really realistic in the | circumstance). | | It can come from something as simple as the family losing their | income and having serious problems due to economic issues, to a | parent dying, or a major childhood illness, death of a friend, | etc. | | Over preparing/over doing it to the point where most would call | it 'perfectionism' has saved my ass many times, because it | meant when I got put in a situation that turned out to be much | harder or scarier than I had imagined or knew was possible, I | actually had the bare minimum necessary there to pull it off or | get out of the situation successfully. | | Many, many people I have known over the years have not been so | lucky. | | Pretty sure it never hit a pathological point though, which | something like OCD definitely is. | | The way to turn it into a better coping skill is to evaluate | where it is and is not helpful - it's almost certainly has not | always been wasted effort, though for folks in particularly bad | places, maybe it has. CBT has a really useful 'Worry Worksheet' | which can help walk people through and reality test things like | this, which can help tease it apart. | | Prioritizing self care is also key, as when it is a problem | it's usually because other important things aren't getting | addressed (like rest, or positive social interactions) because | someone is hyper focusing on perfecting one specific thing, and | necessarily unable to tackle the other things that are | important to be functional. This leads to a spiral of less and | less ability to be functional, which rightfully will trigger | anxiety and the maladaptive behavior even more. Hopefully the | person is able to snap out of it, or environmental/external | factors stop it, but that doesn't always happen. | | If someone was in a situation where they ended up in a | unexpectedly bad situation or emergency as a kid, this is | probably one of the better 'bad coping skill' ways of handling | it. | | Other, even less helpful but common coping skills for that kind | of trauma include: | | - pretending that the problem is not or could never actually be | a problem (delusion) | | - avoiding any reminders of the problem (avoidance) | | - attacking others as the cause of the problem, when they | aren't (deflection, finger pointing) | | - making the problem someone else's problem in a destructive | way (usually using manipulation, gaslighting, abuse) | | And many more. | jimbob45 wrote: | > Over preparing/over doing it to the point where most would | call it 'perfectionism' has saved my ass many times, because | it meant when I got put in a situation that turned out to be | much harder or scarier than I had imagined or knew was | possible, I actually had the bare minimum necessary there to | pull it off or get out of the situation successfully. | | That bit really resonated with me. Having a fixed mindset in | certain cases has allowed me to get away in some extreme | challenges where a growth mindset surely would not have. | agumonkey wrote: | I second that idea. That's why it ties to identify and deep | fears. Self image and social rejection are deep human nerves. | | I also think the forces you mention are at play across all | society. | walleeee wrote: | The unresolved trauma part seems plausible but at least from | personal anecdote the corresponding fear may not be of social | ostracism in particular but any of a larger family of undesired | social consequences (self-image could be considered "social" | insofar as it concerns one's relationship with oneself) | jimkleiber wrote: | Yea, I find when I seem to be the most plagued by it is when I | want to control how other people are feeling (and also behaving | as a result). I fear that if I publish a thing, people may feel | confused or angry or sometimes worse: indifferent. But also | that someone will feel so smitten and overjoyed that they come | to me saying that I'm a god or a superhero/savior. I can | sometimes deeply fear people feeling things that I don't want | them to feel, and more so, responding in ways I don't want them | to. | | I think a lot of it comes down to uncertainty: I don't know | what will happen and I want to know what will happen. I don't | know if people will love me, hate me, or ignore me, and if so, | how they'll do it, and so much of that uncertainty can drive me | into trying to control as much as I can (or think I can). | | For me, perfectionism seems to lie in that fear of the unknown | and trying to mitigate as much (read: squash/eliminate) of the | uncertainty instead of recognizing that we're human beings and | so many things are outside of our control. | savant_penguin wrote: | To me a good trick to avoid perfectionism is to call something a | v1 and just finally finish it | sfifs wrote: | To share a contrarian view, what I have always observed is that | if an organization has an ingrained culture of 80-20, then by the | time something percolates 3-4 hand offs, the org half-asses the | execution and more often than not fails. Organizations that can | execute even at 90-10 instead run rings around and completely | destroy the 80-20 organization and people lose their jobs. | | The secret is to figure out from an organization standpoint what | is really a "good enough to succeed" end-deliverable or end- | execution and organize to deliver that "good enough" thing | consistently with perfectionism. Paired with this , there needs | to be a process which continuously stretches what it means to be | "good enough" over time with productivity and feature enhancement | investments. | rsanek wrote: | How would 90-10 work vs. 80-20 -- _even less_ work for 10% more | gain? Perhaps you could have 90-25 or 90-30 but it seems to me | like 90-10 is impossible in comparison to 80-20 unless the 10 | is not a subset of the 20. | nickvec wrote: | As someone with diagnosed OCD, this is a great article. | | I'm glad CBT and mindfulness is coming more to light, because it | really did change my life. I no longer let my thoughts control | me, but rather, I control my thoughts. | svat wrote: | Everyone's experience is different, so it is unsurprising that | are parts of this article that resonate very strongly and other | parts not at all -- overall, very valuable to have read this. | | The philosopher John Perry has a humorous essay called | "Procrastination and Perfectionism" that gets to the heart of the | matter in a different way: | | > _Many procrastinators do not realize that they are | perfectionists, for the simple reason that they have never done | anything perfectly, or even nearly so. [...] Perfectionism is a | matter of fantasy, not reality._ | | (More at | https://web.archive.org/web/20111120152858/http://www.struct...) | | Minor pedantic point about the aticle: IIRC, the quote about | Gauss from E. T. Bell was more about Gauss "hiding his tracks" | like a fox with its tail ("Had he divulged what he knew"...) | rather than taking too long because of perfectonism. | | (This comment was typed with a 5-minute timer! It feels very | uncomfortable to just hit submit without cleaning it up, but I've | come to realize that that discomfort is part of growth.) | dimal wrote: | Interesting that the behavior Perry describes is now being | called "maladaptive daydreaming". It's not in the DSM yet, but | it probably should be. It's highly comorbid with obsessive | compulsive disorders, which is also associated with | perfectionism. | svat wrote: | Tangent: I was wrong about E. T. Bell's quote about Gauss: the | page (229-230) discusses both: | https://archive.org/details/menofmathematics0000bell/page/22... | | The quote about the fox does not seem to be in Bell's book, but | some stuff about it here: | https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/3610/what-is-the-ori... | jack_pp wrote: | That and the previous Structured Procrastination essay which I | have read but forgotten about are great complementary essays to | the posted article. Thank you for sharing them. I am in a deep | hole due to these problems and serendipity has it that I came | upon these resources at the best of times. Thank you again | [deleted] | projektfu wrote: | From my experience, I wonder how much "perfectionism" is itself | the self-deception to cope with an executive function disorder. | Most narratives of perfectionism start with the person having | unrealistic outcome and that leads to procrastination, difficulty | starting, etc. I wonder if it is likely that the problem is an | inability to get started and stay on task, and then the person | does a 180 and tells themself that they just can't get started | _the right way_ , or it wasn't _going to be perfect_ , and so | they abandoned the task. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-05 23:00 UTC)