Many people think that perfectionism is good, because it is the pursuit of the ideal. Yes, a perfectionist dreams that everything is perfect, but does nothing for this if there are no ideal conditions. He avoids situations in which he can fail, which negatively affects his performance.
Why Perfectionism Is Unproductive
Often times, perfectionism is the opposite of productivity because it tends to avoid doing things that don't work out well enough. Nevertheless, it is not good enough - this is also at least some kind of result that brings performance into a plus. Perfectionists put difficult things on the back burner while making things worse for themselves. Debts pile up and overwhelm a person while he ideally does unnecessary actions. A true perfectionist will never have enough time. Every little thing is brought to perfection, absorbing a lot of time.
Perfectionism is very closely related to low self-esteem, since a person striving for excellence constantly torments himself for any mistakes, compares himself with other people not in his favor. In the meantime, one of the main conditions for productivity is to turn your mistakes into experiences, not a source of nervousness.
How to deal with perfectionism
Perfectionism is not a diagnosis and can be overcome. The first thing to do is to learn to be aware, to take control of your thoughts. The feeling of one's own inferiority and superiority of others most often does not have any objective basis under it. Each person is special, each has talents. Each is in some way worse than the others, in some way better, the main thing is to find your strengths. If you amaze everyone with your singing, why suffer from not being able to dance ballet?
You should not strive for the ideal. You need to be more flexible, set realistic plans for yourself. Perfection should be in one thing: in the correlation of time and effort spent on the case, and its results. Why would it take a long and painful time to do something that would not bring any benefit?
Allow yourself to rest. There are situations when it is useful not to complete the task and understand that it was so unimportant that there were no problems from ignoring it. Perfectionists often burden themselves with heaps of responsibilities that neither they nor anyone else needs. Try to separate and ignore such cases. Focus on what really matters.
