PERFECTIONISM AS A CONTRIBUTOR TO POOR WORK/LIFE BALANCE

It’s the classic interview question response…

“What’s your biggest weakness?”

“I’m a perfectionist.”

Sounds like a clever answer doesn’t it? We think it suggests that we’ll be excellent employees always striving to deliver perfection. But perfectionism can be a crippling affliction that leads to a toxic inner dialogue and poor work/life balance.

Perfectionism can sometimes seem like a positive attribute, desirable within the workforce. A perfectionist tends to seem good at everything; they’re attention to detail is usually extremely high; and they’ll do everything they can to make sure everyone involved is happy and satisfied with the work they have produced. However, the voice that lives in a perfectionists head is not a positive one.

The voice inside a perfectionists head is never satisfied, it is hyper critical (often sounding like the voice of a hyper critical or perfectionist parent), and it’ll tell you that your peers/colleagues/manager will agree that what you’ve produced is not good enough.

The perfectionist is an expert in keeping themselves safe against this voice and the anticipated disappointment. They’re coping strategies include (but are not limited to) criticising their output before anyone else does; they will invite criticism to prove themselves right; they will procrastinate… if I never start there’ll be nothing to criticise. And the zinger that creates poor work/life balance… they will overwork.

Perfectionists have a tendency to overwork for multiple reasons:

• They won’t stop until a piece of work is ‘perfect’. As you can imagine that takes an exceptionally long time. Particularly for a person who’s idea of perfect is way higher than most.

• The overthinking and over critical voice in a perfectionists head often means they are slow to act, so every piece of work takes longer to do. They will doubt themselves so much that actually taking action is near impossible (without the afore mentioned set up to protect their themselves).

• Opportunities are often missed as time is spent striving for perfection. That time and energy could have been put into action. Instead, the necessary action will sit on the to do list.

Perfectionism is often the habit of a life time so isn’t easy to break down. However, it’s not impossible. To start, as perfectionist needs to learn that their 80% is often other peoples 200%. Try 20% less and see what happens. Realising that there is no danger and no one will think less you will be the first step in letting go of this tendency. This is key… learning that nothing bad will happen. A perfectionist often doesn’t register the praise they receive after declaring… “this isn’t very good but here you” as the critical voice in their head is too loud. Again putting that piece of work out their without a protective precursor and realising people will most likely be happy and impressed will also support in breaking down perfectionism. Also, learning that everyone is not their critical parent. That was one person who was putting their stuff on you, there are so many other people out there who see what you’re doing, are there to help, and are routing for you.

I’ll leave you with this question: If it were your friend sweating over whether their output is good enough… what would you say?