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".
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.
> 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 is doing things the right way and make the best out of the limits you encounter.
My dictionary defines perfectionist as “a person who refuses to accept any standard short of perfection”. That is the standard definition you will find most people understand as the meaning of the word. For more precise use in a technical context, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionism_(psychology)
>> Perfectionists strain compulsively and unceasingly toward unattainable goals, and measure their self-worth by productivity and accomplishment. Pressuring oneself to achieve unrealistic goals inevitably sets the person up for disappointment. Perfectionists tend to be harsh critics of themselves when they fail to meet their expectations. [...]
>> Perfectionism can be damaging. It can take the form of procrastination when used to postpone tasks and self-deprecation when used to excuse poor performance or to seek sympathy and affirmation from other people. These, together or separate, are self-handicapping strategies perfectionists may use to protect their sense of self-competence. In general, perfectionists feel constant pressure to meet their high expectations, which creates cognitive dissonance when expectations cannot be met. Perfectionism has been associated with numerous other psychological and physiological complications. Moreover, perfectionism may result in alienation and social disconnection via certain rigid interpersonal patterns common to perfectionistic individuals.
“Doing things the right way” is an idiosyncratic personal definition. You should find a different word for this if you want people to understand you. Or perhaps you could use “competence”, “proficiency”, “fastidiousness”, “judiciousness”, “practicality”, “adaptability”, “success”, or some other existing word, depending on the context.
"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".
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.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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Yeah, exactly, I think this article or the general consensus in this thread relates to the fact that high achievers' (or other positive-on-the-surface kinds of people) mental health is often overlooked due to the fact that they "don't have any real issues".
Sad to say, it's still a somewhat uphill battle to get diagnosed with something, if you've been able to graduate, can hold a job, and have an otherwise "normal" life.
The first time I went to a psychologist, they couldn't rule out things like ADD/ADHD, but simply ended the examination (after 3 interviews), and concluded with "could be due to traumatic childhood" - which I did not have. In the journal, they noted that I had graduated from University, had a steady white-collar job, no crime record, in a relationship, and other things which ADHD patients would apparently struggle with.
Went for a second opinion, and got diagnosed with non-hyperactive ADHD (previously called ADD).
I believe, in every system, that includes humans, the ability to pause is key.
If you can't stop whatever is fueling negative habits / emotions, even if it looks noble or whatever (learning, art, sport, perf, love) .. it's probably not good.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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
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.
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.
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.
I understand your methodology but struggle to understand how you draw the line for the different levels? Is there a measure to realize that what you have got at the moment is just good and not very good?
In my case, it's very much a "gut feeling," but I work on my own stuff.
I like to stay at a 1-digit bug count, with that digit being "0," if at all possible.
I have a development technique that is afforded by the tools I use, and the platform. I call it "Constant Beta." I also do what I call "Evolutionary Design," where I refine the actual project plan and design, as I proceed.
Basically, I keep the app at ship quality, from the very beginning. If I encounter bugs -any bugs- at any time during development, I stop all forward development, until the bug has been fixed.
I test a lot. I tend to use test harnesses, or the integrated app, as opposed to unit tests. Unit tests are applied, once functionality has been established; and only for those parts of the system that makes sense. I like to break projects out, into standalone packages, with discrete lifecycles. I often publish these, as open source.
I like to do full integration testing, as soon as possible. Almost all of my testing is done on the whole system (which might be incomplete, with stubs and mocks).
"Constant Beta" means that I start releasing TestFlight beta to my team, as soon as possible. As an example, I have been working on the project that is my current obsession, since September 5th, of 2020 (first commit). I have been making TestFlight releases, since October 6th, 2020. I've made well over 500 TestFlight releases, in that time. I'll have to count the tags, but it may be over 600, by now.
If you know anything about TestFlight, you know that Apple vets the releases (but not as stringently as for release into the App Store). They won't approve a TestFlight release, unless the app is already quite substantial, and doesn't crash. In fact, in one release, Apple helped me to spot a bug, because they made it crash in a way that had escaped my testing, and rejected the build.
I can scare up a full-fledged, "shippable" app, in a few days. All the time since, has been spent adding functionality to the app, testing, refining, testing, pivoting, testing, refactoring, testing, removing functionality, testing, going back to the drawing board, testing, etc.
All the while, keeping a cadence of multiple releases per day (once the first release has been made of a version, builds are approved almost immediately).
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.
The current scientific literature of procrastination supports your idea.
Procrastination appears to be determined by interactions between the cognitive-related (prefrontal cortex) and affective-related (limbic system, default mode network) functions. There is a trade-off between the top-down cognitive and bottom-up affective systems.
It appears that affective processing can override top-down control signals for short-term satisfaction, or worst since the hyperactivity of the default mode network was observed in mental disorders.
Perfectionism could be how the mind copes with the failures of top-down control.
Makes sense, I had an unfortunate childhood, and it took a long time to gain control over my hyperactive affective functions, and I'm a recovering perfectionist. Self-compassion works.
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.
I know that you didn't exactly invent the term unresolved trauma, BUT...
As a person with a lot of unresolved trauma (and perfectionism issues), I hate the term "unresolved trauma". I've been working hard with a therapist and a psychologist for years, and I've made a ton of progress, but my trauma will never be truly resolved. Every few years some new facet of damage will pop up that I won't expect and will have to work through.
It's a never ending process, and (imo) the term unresolved trauma implies that there should be a point where it becomes resolved. That's just not realistic or true for a lot of people.
I've even seen therapists who claimed that I could completely 'heal'. But that's a perfectionist attitude itself, which had me banging my head against the wall for too long.
I think the truth is far closer to 'able to live a satisfying life in spite of'
"Resolution" of trauma is generally nothing but an imaginary "perfect" state. It doesn't exist and usually chasing that is another form of the same dynamic rather a departure from it.
Kudos to you for identifying that for yourself and trying to distance from it!
One could argue that there will never be an accurate term, and thus hating the term for not being completely accurate is perfectionism.
But I could be wrong.... (Says the perfectionist, letting himself off the hook if he is wrong, which he may very well be because he's talking out his ass)
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)
> 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.
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)
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.
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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".
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.
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
My dictionary defines perfectionist as “a person who refuses to accept any standard short of perfection”. That is the standard definition you will find most people understand as the meaning of the word. For more precise use in a technical context, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionism_(psychology)
>> Perfectionists strain compulsively and unceasingly toward unattainable goals, and measure their self-worth by productivity and accomplishment. Pressuring oneself to achieve unrealistic goals inevitably sets the person up for disappointment. Perfectionists tend to be harsh critics of themselves when they fail to meet their expectations. [...]
>> Perfectionism can be damaging. It can take the form of procrastination when used to postpone tasks and self-deprecation when used to excuse poor performance or to seek sympathy and affirmation from other people. These, together or separate, are self-handicapping strategies perfectionists may use to protect their sense of self-competence. In general, perfectionists feel constant pressure to meet their high expectations, which creates cognitive dissonance when expectations cannot be met. Perfectionism has been associated with numerous other psychological and physiological complications. Moreover, perfectionism may result in alienation and social disconnection via certain rigid interpersonal patterns common to perfectionistic individuals.
“Doing things the right way” is an idiosyncratic personal definition. You should find a different word for this if you want people to understand you. Or perhaps you could use “competence”, “proficiency”, “fastidiousness”, “judiciousness”, “practicality”, “adaptability”, “success”, or some other existing word, depending on the context.
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".
This is 'being a reasonable homo sapiens'. Perfectionism is having absurd expectations and refusing to do anything unless they're met.
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.
- 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.
dismissive comments at a young age evolve to be tactful but still echo deafeningly from adolescence, in my exp.
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.
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!
The first time I went to a psychologist, they couldn't rule out things like ADD/ADHD, but simply ended the examination (after 3 interviews), and concluded with "could be due to traumatic childhood" - which I did not have. In the journal, they noted that I had graduated from University, had a steady white-collar job, no crime record, in a relationship, and other things which ADHD patients would apparently struggle with.
Went for a second opinion, and got diagnosed with non-hyperactive ADHD (previously called ADD).
Deleted Comment
If you can't stop whatever is fueling negative habits / emotions, even if it looks noble or whatever (learning, art, sport, perf, love) .. it's probably not good.
> 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.
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.)
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...
The notion that perfectionism can be harmful reminds me of that.
.. Paul Morphy
Deleted Comment
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.
I like to stay at a 1-digit bug count, with that digit being "0," if at all possible.
I have a development technique that is afforded by the tools I use, and the platform. I call it "Constant Beta." I also do what I call "Evolutionary Design," where I refine the actual project plan and design, as I proceed.
Basically, I keep the app at ship quality, from the very beginning. If I encounter bugs -any bugs- at any time during development, I stop all forward development, until the bug has been fixed.
I test a lot. I tend to use test harnesses, or the integrated app, as opposed to unit tests. Unit tests are applied, once functionality has been established; and only for those parts of the system that makes sense. I like to break projects out, into standalone packages, with discrete lifecycles. I often publish these, as open source.
I like to do full integration testing, as soon as possible. Almost all of my testing is done on the whole system (which might be incomplete, with stubs and mocks).
"Constant Beta" means that I start releasing TestFlight beta to my team, as soon as possible. As an example, I have been working on the project that is my current obsession, since September 5th, of 2020 (first commit). I have been making TestFlight releases, since October 6th, 2020. I've made well over 500 TestFlight releases, in that time. I'll have to count the tags, but it may be over 600, by now.
If you know anything about TestFlight, you know that Apple vets the releases (but not as stringently as for release into the App Store). They won't approve a TestFlight release, unless the app is already quite substantial, and doesn't crash. In fact, in one release, Apple helped me to spot a bug, because they made it crash in a way that had escaped my testing, and rejected the build.
I can scare up a full-fledged, "shippable" app, in a few days. All the time since, has been spent adding functionality to the app, testing, refining, testing, pivoting, testing, refactoring, testing, removing functionality, testing, going back to the drawing board, testing, etc.
All the while, keeping a cadence of multiple releases per day (once the first release has been made of a version, builds are approved almost immediately).
Tends to keep the quality high.
Procrastination appears to be determined by interactions between the cognitive-related (prefrontal cortex) and affective-related (limbic system, default mode network) functions. There is a trade-off between the top-down cognitive and bottom-up affective systems.
It appears that affective processing can override top-down control signals for short-term satisfaction, or worst since the hyperactivity of the default mode network was observed in mental disorders.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308046561_Identifyi...
Perfectionism could be how the mind copes with the failures of top-down control.
Makes sense, I had an unfortunate childhood, and it took a long time to gain control over my hyperactive affective functions, and I'm a recovering perfectionist. Self-compassion works.
As a person with a lot of unresolved trauma (and perfectionism issues), I hate the term "unresolved trauma". I've been working hard with a therapist and a psychologist for years, and I've made a ton of progress, but my trauma will never be truly resolved. Every few years some new facet of damage will pop up that I won't expect and will have to work through.
It's a never ending process, and (imo) the term unresolved trauma implies that there should be a point where it becomes resolved. That's just not realistic or true for a lot of people.
I've even seen therapists who claimed that I could completely 'heal'. But that's a perfectionist attitude itself, which had me banging my head against the wall for too long.
I think the truth is far closer to 'able to live a satisfying life in spite of'
Kudos to you for identifying that for yourself and trying to distance from it!
But I could be wrong.... (Says the perfectionist, letting himself off the hook if he is wrong, which he may very well be because he's talking out his ass)
I also think the forces you mention are at play across all society.
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.
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.
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.