Perfectionism: Why and How to Beat It

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I’m not a perfectionist, I’m too enlightened for that. But I am concerned with making things turn out great. Both performance-wise, and morally. I know you can’t achieve perfection, but you can asymptotically approach it. And that’s really all I’m after.

When the graph of my performance approaches the asymptote it’s like no other kind of high. When I’m pounding out words and they’re coming out right, or I’m making decisions and moving the pieces around on the chess board at Every and watching the numbers go up, or someone tells me I’m a good person or I did a good job. Ahhh, the best.

When that’s happening it’s like there’s an invisible string pulling me up by my heels, straightening my back, and puffing out my chest, so I’m gliding on tiptoes down the street. I’m proud, I’m special, I’m happy, I’m motivated. In short: I’m the shit.

My co-founder Nathan, though. He’s a perfectionist. You should see that man design a logo, or write a sentence. Agonizing over every little detail. Crushed when it doesn’t go right. I’ve been trying to help him with it. (May I remind you that I’m a Very Good Person—not yet Jesus, but approaching the asymptote!)

The thing is I haven’t been able to fix Nathan yet. Perfectionism is a tough nut to crack.

That’s why I got so excited when Dr. Clarissa Ong and Dr. Michael Twohig, the authors of The Anxious Perfectionist, reached out to me about their book. It’s about science-based tools for overcoming perfectionism, and so I suddenly had a perfect plan: Nathan could read the book, and then I could have him chat with the perfectionism people, and maybe he’d figure out how to chill out. I set up a call with all of us, but Nathan didn’t show up. (Classic perfectionistic avoidance.)

But I was on the call, so I started talking to them about perfectionism—you know, for the science of it all. And a lot of what they said sounded um familiar. I took one of the classic tests, the Frost Brief Perfectionism Scale, and scored a 32 out of a possible 40. And something began to dawn on me:

When it’s something I’m doing, perfectionism is just what’s called “doing a great job.” When someone else is doing it, it’s called perfectionism.