Don't Let Perfectionism Get the Best of You Part 1

bychrisnatl

270 followers

Updated 8 years ago

I'm a perfectionist. And because I'm a perfectionist, I'm also a procrastinator. It takes me a lot longer to get things done than it does non-perfectionists. That’s because I want to avoid all of the obsessive work that my perfectionism demands of me. Perfectionism, of course, is about having to do things perfectly, about having to do them right. Not half-right. Not three-quarters-right. Not even 99% right. 100% right. Why do something if I’m not going to do it 100%? That’s been my motto for a long time.

There's healthy perfectionism, the kind that motivates people to showcase their talent, to achieve, to do their best. Then there's the irrational, debilitating kind that causes its practitioners to harbor unrealistic ideals, to worry incessantly about being negatively judged by others, to avoid taking action for fear of failure. When using the term "perfectionism" throughout this post, I'm referring to the unhealthy kind.

Make no mistake about it, though: Perfectionism does come with its advantages—assuming the perfectionist knows what he or she is doing. After all, some people work obsessively to produce what they think are works of art--but what are instead works of mediocrity. (This is known in psychology as illusory superiority or superiority bias. It happens when people think too highly of themselves; they overrate their positive attributes and underrate their negative ones.) When a perfectionist is assessing herself accurately, however, then such perfectionism will produce extraordinary results. Many of the most accomplished artists, musicians, athletes, and entrepreneurs are perfectionists. When it comes to my perfectionism, I haven't attained such results.

One area in which my perfectionism gets the best of me is my writing. I have to get the punctuation, grammar, spelling, sentence structure, organization, and style just right. Unless you’re writing very informally, such as when texting, these things are important to get right. But I get much too bogged down in the minutia. It takes me far too long to produce anything. So I dread having to write at all--which causes me to delay and delay...and delay. It takes me a very long time to get started; once I do start, it takes me a very long time to finish.

What makes me even more perfectionistic about my writing is that I teach it (in a perhaps indirect way). I teach college hopefuls how to improve their ACT scores. (The ACT is one of two standardized, for-the-most-part mandatory college entrance exams...The other one's the SAT.) One subsection of the ACT is the English section, which tests a student’s ability to correct error-strewn samples of college level writing. Having taught ACT English for so long, I’ve become a veritable expert in grammar, punctuation, etc. I know what the rules are; so I have even more to worry about. You’d think that teaching writing would give me an advantage when it comes to my own writing. It should. But because of my procrastination-causing perfectionism, it doesn’t.

My biggest concern lately has to do with writing the Getting Started and About Me pages of Affiliate Bootcamp’s Course 1, Lesson 3. In Kyle's video of that lesson, he warns against trying to write them perfectly. One reason is that these pages—and other types of website pages for that matter—are works in progress, something that can be edited over time. So why worry about making them perfect now? They're not set in stone.

Are you a perfectionist? Are you flailing away the hours in pursuit of your elusive masterpiece? Maybe you're avoiding the work altogether because you dread the extra work and mental strain it takes to make things perfect. If you are like me and are having trouble completing, or even starting, your website pages here at Wealthy Affiliate because of perfectionism—there are ways to get a handle on it. I know there are because I have started taking corrective action using some methods I'm currently learning about. I wrote this post didn't I? Now, it's on to writing my website pages.

In future posts I will share with you specific techniques that I have begun using to overcome my perfectionism so that you can do the same for yourself—and so that you can get on with the business of your online business. Stay tuned.