[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)