PERFECTIONISM

 

PERFECTIONISM

When you are a perfectionist, you have to be fastidious about getting every point right. If not, your decision could end up flawed. Yet, to be uncompromising, you have to make compromises. Here, prioritization of objectives comes into sharp focus. You learn, you have to tolerate flaws. It’s part of becoming an expert in your venture. You gradually gain mastery in the job on hand. As you grow, you understand which flaws are acceptable over your own urge to attain perfectionism.

Perfectionism is the desire to be impeccable. The goal is zero defects, no flaws, no failures.

In an increasingly competitive world, kids face growing pressure from parents to be perfect and harsh criticism when they fall short. They learn to judge their worth by the absence of inadequacies. Every flaw is a blow to their self esteem.

Perfectionists excel at solving problems that are straightforward and familiar. They are happy to regurgitate facts they have committed to memory, though they may have no idea about what they actually mean.

When it comes to mastering their tasks, perfectionists are no better than their peers. The average correlation between perfectionism and performance at work had been found to be zero on an analysis and at times the former had been worse off.

It is observed:

1.       The skills and inclinations that drive people to the top of their high school or college class may not serve them so well after their graduation.

2.       The people who go on to become masters in their own fields often start out with imperfect transcripts in school.

However, perfectionists generally tend to get three things wrong in their quest for flawless results:

1.       They obsess about details, that don’t really matter. They are so busy finding the right solution to tiny problems whereas they lack the discipline to find the right problems to solve.

2.       They avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure. It leaves them refining a narrow set of existing skills rather than working to develop new ones.

3.       They berate themselves for making mistakes, which makes it harder for them to learn from the mistakes. They fail to realize that the purpose of reviewing your mistakes isn’t to shame your past self. It’s to educate your future self.

Perfectionism traps us in a spiral of tunnel vision and error avoidance. It prevents us from seeing larger problems as they are. Further, it restricts us from developing our own skills.

 If perfectionism were a medication,   the label that would alert us to common side effects could be stated as, “Warning –may cause stunted growth.”

A perfectionist, on matters or projects important to him may keep revisiting and refining until it’s exactly right. But he can succeed only when he recognizes that perfection is a mirage and that in order to go farther, he has to learn to tolerate the right imperfections. You win when you strive not for perfection but for what could be the perfectly acceptable.

You become a master, when you find beauty in imperfection.

Adam Grant
Hidden Potential