How I curb my perfectionism - and get more done
Perfectionism gets in the way -- at least for me.
All of us either have perfectionist impulses or know something who does. My long-time partner Max struggled with perfectionism through his whole career. It held him back for a long time.
Perfectionism didn’t just hold Max back at work, though — it kept him from succeeding in other big areas of his life, including life at home.
But Max curbed (cured is probably the wrong word) his perfectionist impulses, at least the worst of them. When he did, it transformed his approach to business — within a decade we’d sold the company for over 14x EBITDA — and made his home life clearer and simpler. I’ll tell you how he did it.
The first thing Max tried didn’t work, and I don’t know a lot about it.
As Max practiced it (an important qualifier!) the failed method involved asking whether various objects — deliverables, copy, work output — were good enough. I don’t know why that works with any perfectionists, but it didn’t work for Max, because the answer to the question: Is X good enough? Was always, always, always NO!
So that was an instant colossal failure. I think it actually made things worse.
The method that worked was really just an accident. Max and I were preparing for a meeting, and part of that preparation involved approving a poster. Max had gone back and forth on it a lot. A lot. Making larger and smaller refinements, rethinkings. The designer was getting frustrated, and I couldn’t blame her.
“It doesn’t feel right,” Max said. “I don’t know why.”
I paid attention when Max said things like this because I’d learned to trust his judgement. But he couldn’t always get his point across — something what was missing, or wrong, could be very clear yet impossible for him to articulate.
A perfectionist who can’t give good feedback? Great, right? But then I asked Max a question that reshaped everything:
“What’s the poster for? If we don’t know what it’s for, how will we know when it’s done?”
Max’s eyes lit up, the designer got some clarity, clouds parted, etc. Because that’s the key to managing perfectionism — your own or someone else’s: identify the central goal or purpose of whatever you’re doing.
When we identify the single critical purpose associated with any task it defines the finish line. It signs the check. It plans the completion parade.
At home or at work, defining the purpose of a task radically simplifies my approach to it. It also makes the end result superior. Why?
It simplifies my approach to the task because it requires me to define it before I do anything else. Here’s an example:
A client of mine is considering a new email delivery platform, and wants my opinion. He has heard from friends that they’re impressed with System E, and he thinks it sounds great. He’s leaning toward making the switch.
System E costs more than his current platform — about $1000/month more. His team has no opinion, though they are comfortable and familiar with the current platform.
“What’s the impetus to change?” I ask. “It is results, or features?”
“Results! I want better engagement — more click-throughs, more responses.”
Okay — this is something to work with, because it addresses two specific goals. Do the differences in the two platforms address either of these goals? It’s a yes or no question. If yes, how much is the difference worth in terms of the goal? If it will increase click-throughs, how much? If not — well the day just got simpler.
But without a central purpose, the basis for comparison becomes subjective. Subjective decisions are terrible for perfectionists — they’re a hamster’s wheel. This approach improves the lives of perfectionists, and frees them in a very real way from all kinds of suffering and waste.
This approach improves the lives of perfectionists and helps free them from impossible standards.
The real power of this approach in managing perfectionism is in knowing when you’re done.
The best illustration of this I know is using a piece of actual, honest-to-God, art, a poem by Frank O’Hara. I like using art to illustrate this because it’s so hard to imagine knowing a piece of art is complete.
This poem, called Why I am not a painter, is about how a painter friend of Frank O’Hara’s made a painting called Sardines, and how Frank O’Hara wrote a poem called Oranges. Frank (I feel like I know him) wrote:
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.— from Why I am not a painter, by Frank O’Hara, through poets.org
I love this poem! Here’s one thing I love about it:
“My poem / is finished and I haven’t mentioned / orange yet.”
So how did Frank know his poem was finished?
I have some ideas about that, as well as more about how to define goals, next time.
Happy 4th!