Are You Confusing Perfection with Excellence?

by Joan Friedlander

The Pursuit of Excellence: doing the research necessary for a term paper, working hard at it, turning it in on time, and feeling good about it.

Perfectionism: doing three drafts, staying up two nights in a row, and handing your paper in late because you had to do it right - and still feeling bad about it.

The book from which the above distinctions were taken is called "Perfectionism: What's Bad about Being Good?" by Miriam Adderholdt and Jan Goldberg. You can substitute research paper with any business project and get the same result.

I often talk to people who tell me that they are perfectionists, and how this has made it difficult to allow others to help them run their business. I can also imagine it takes them much longer to get things to the point where they're willing "to show" their work, thus expanding the length of time required to complete projects.

Perhaps you've heard of the law of diminishing returns. It's an economic term which states that "beyond some point, each additional unit of variable input yields less and less additional output." (Source: Wikipedi) If you think about your projects, or the hours you put in at work each day, you will notice that they are subject to this law. Is there not a point beyond which you are less productive, where mistakes are more likely? Can you identify the time of day - for you - when one more hour of work will not equal one more hour of equivalent output?

You may have perfectionist tendencies if:

• You won't talk to people about your services because your web site is out of date (substitute web site for business cards, brochure, newsletter, etc.)
• You finish a project and then hesitate - for more than a day - to send it off.
• You're sure that if you allow others to help you get things done they'll mess it up and you'll just have to do it any way.
• You get angry when some 'stupid' person makes a mistake that causes a delay, or worse yet, embarrassment.
• You delegate things to others, only to find they're back in your lap again.
• You make a mistake - in public - and are mortified for hours afterwards.
• You become completely frustrated when things don't go the way you planned them.
  

What's a perfectionist to do? How can you start to diminish the impact of perfectionism, and be, instead, satisfied with your work each and every day?

• Practice being flexible with the small stuff, the stuff that doesn't matter quite as much.
• Before you start a project, take some time to make note of the purpose of the project. Decide - ahead of time - what "good enough to fulfill its purpose" looks like. Review your criteria frequently.
• Decide how much time you'll give yourself to finish something, or how many re-writes you're allowed, and follow your guidelines.
• Give yourself a happy face sticker (do they still make those?) every time you make a mistake.
• Keep a "blossoming imperfection" journal.
• Take the actions below.

 

 

by Joan Friedlander, © 2009. All rights reserved.