Perfectionism Lesson 5:

It's Never Too Early to Take a Good Look at One's Perfectionistic Tendencies

BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

— Mary Tyler Moore

An E-mail Inquiry from an Intelligent (and Perfectionistic) Young Woman

Dear Mrs. Harder,

Hello! My name is Judith Cousins, and I myself, like you, am a perfectionist. Except I haven’t recovered yet.

I am a ninth grader at the American School in Japan. Recently, in English 9 we were assigned to do something called an I-Search paper- which turned out to be a research paper on a topic of our desire, as long as the things we learned would somehow change our life. It was very difficult for me to choose my topic- but, while I was looking into one of my options which was introverted ness, I came across your website, Learning Place Online, which had the article “Caring for Your Introvert”. I decided to explore a little and clicked on links which lead me to your other website, Support 4 Change. I soon found the article “Lessons of a Recovering Perfectionist”. I can’t tell you how shocked I was as I read “Lesson 1: Perfectionism is a Pain in the Butt”. The third and fourth paragraphs especially reflected the exact feelings I have, but have never been able to put into words. “The problem is that what I think of as being my "best" isn’t doing 80% or 90% of what the most superior individual could do with a given job, but doing it at 110% capacity. 110% of the time.”

I was practically jumping up and down inside thinking, “YES! EXACTLY!!” as I read this. Also when you talked about how perfectionists never feel like they’re trying “too hard”, and how the problem is that other lucky people can stop at “good enough”. I also have an extremely hard time knowing what “good enough” means. When you talked about how you painted the garage wall well despite the fact that no one was going to look at it, I was knowingly grinning inside- I would have done the exact same thing!

Until I read your article, I didn’t know that other people struggled with perfectionism as well. Frankly, I didn’t even know it had a name. I just thought it was a part of my personality that appeared perfect and too hard working to others. But after reading your article, I typed in “perfectionism” in the Google search box and countless sites were returned. I realized that clearly I’m not alone in this world- and decided to take on perfectionism as the topic of my I-Search paper. One section of the paper requires an interview with a professional in the field of the selected topic; I could relate to your article the most after reading through many sites on perfectionism so decided to try and email you.

Let me tell you a little bit about my perfectionistic qualities. First of all, I am known as a perfectionist by basically everyone in my grade- even those who don’t know me have gone ahead and labeled me as a perfectionist based on what they hear. Math homework takes me longer than anyone else, because it has to be neat in my notebook. (I have even erased and rewritten things because they didn’t look good.) Creative writing assignments (mostly for English) result in me sitting at the computer for hours, procrastinating with writer’s block half the time. My books and folders go in organized positions in my backpack- my daily planner is also known for its colorfulness and organization. Projects that I do turn out to be slightly more embellished than the average students.

I am the kind of person who will spend hours on decorating a project in which “artistic presentation” is worth about 5 points out of 60. To me, it doesn’t matter how many points are at stake or what grade I end up getting. I simply have to do the best I possibly can with a given project and feel satisfied with it, no matter how long it takes. This attitude has positive effects and negative effects. I always end up feeling proud of my hard work and I feel it was worth the time, but in order to be able to complete the work of my level, I end up having to timidly approach the teacher and ask for a slight extension in the deadline. Once they see my work, they always tend to forget about the missed deadline and give me the grade they believe I deserve. Because I get away with it, my friends often express surprise and slight exasperation.

I'm always envious of people who can knock off assignments and projects efficiently. I want to be able to stop at “good enough”- but the thing is, I know that I wouldn’t feel satisfied looking back on my work if I always stopped at “good enough”. Instead, all I would think is that I could have done better. So my question is- do you think it would be wise if I tried to overcome perfectionism? It seems as if my perfectionism always leads to the completion of an extremely well done project despite the extended amount of time taken on it. People know me for this, and for the most part, the image the have of me is positive rather than negative. I’m not a neurotic perfectionist- I simply enjoy striving and working hard to produce work I can take pride in. But maybe it would be a healthier choice to try and overcome this perfectionism- would it be better for my future?

Also, do you ever find yourself procrastinating? All this time I thought that procrastination must have nothing to do with perfectionism, but after reading a few other websites I found that the two actually are connected. When I am working on creative writing, I always manage to find the most random ways to procrastinate. Also, I often find it hard to get to work especially at home. This often results in me feeling guilty for wasting precious time. Do you have any advice as to how to avoid this?

This was an extremely long email and please don’t feel obligated to reply as you must be very busy. Thank you for taking your time to read this- I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer my questions! Thank you!

Sincerely,

Judith Cousins

Her Answer After She Received My Response (in the Sidebar)

Dear Mrs. Harder,

Thank you so much for your time! I never expected such a thorough reply from someone as important as you. I feel inspired to work at overcoming my perfectionism- and now I know exactly why I should do so. It's because, as you said, it's not the A+'s that make life worth living- its the connection with others and friends. I will definitely quote you in my paper — even though you didn't try to make it "quotable", it most certainly is.

Thank you again!

From,

Judith

AN ANSWER TO THE E-MAIL ON THE LEFT

Judith,

Thank you so very much for your e-mail. I enjoyed it from several perspectives.

One, you're wonderfully astute to recognize you have the symptoms of perfectionism.

Two, because you're young, you have a better chance of getting out of the cycle of perfectionism -- procrastination -- paralysis before you do too much damage to your life.

Three, because you're young, you have the opportunity to work on the problem and consequently will have fewer regrets when you get older.

My suggestion for you, Judith, is to start with one thing you recognize as going overboard and deliberately work on that thing. For example, what I see as a problem you may want to address is your taking longer to do a school project than is allowed -- so you'll be recognized as doing a "perfect" job. Actually, here I think your teachers are making a mistake. It's not that once-in-awhile it would be fine to allow a student to turn in a paper late because there was a crisis in the family or the student was sick (I myself haven't answered your e-mail because I've been in bed with a cold).

However, if you are given extra time (or experience a lot of emotional tension when you're not given extra time to put in extra effort), you can, without realizing it, develop a tendency of believing you "should" be given extra time. Oh, I know, you just want to make certain people know how really smart you are. And you are obviously smart. But being smart is not the issue. Being who you are is the issue. And who you are is someone who can't give the assignment 110% in the amount of time others have to do it. So is it really true that you deserve the grade for your 110% effort?

Let me tell you something that is a good illustration of how unimportant it is to always strive for perfection. I'm not talking of course, of doing your best (within the time allotted). That's permissible.

My oldest friend, with whom I went to college many decades ago, didn't get as good of grades as I did. She isn't a perfectionist. However, she is highly respected in her profession. For many years she was the superintendent of the large Clark County elementary school district (covering Las Vegas). After she retired she had an elementary school named after her. Not many people get that honor. She has a wide variety of friends and has mentored many teachers and administrators. She now uses her experience to teach in graduate school.

Yes, I was smart in college. Yes, I did put in extra effort. But I also (I am sorry to admit) once asked for an extension on taking a test, claiming I had a cold. Well, I had had a cold, but I was certainly over it enough that I could have taken the test. I wouldn't have done as well as I did by having extra time to study, but I'm sure you see my point.

When you work for someone, they appreciate your skills. But they can't afford to give you extra time to do a report. If a meeting is being held at 3:00 and they need your report finished at that time, no one's going to give you extra time to make it perfect.

What you need to learn to do is to discover what needs to be done most importantly. Do that. Then embellish the project, adding to it in whatever way you have time to do it (such as adding illustrations or using colorful paper), and your cleverness may shine through. But at least you will have done the essentials and all the extra will only be frosting on the cake.

I understand, of course, the psychological reasons we need to be perfect. We think we're not okay just as we are. But you are. If you pull back a little from thinking you have to do everything perfectly, you'll discover lots of people like your imperfect self even more than your perfect self. After all, if you're spending all your time trying to be perfect, you have less time for friends, and it's our connection with others that, I believe, is far, far more important in life than getting an A+ on a paper or a test.

Good luck, Judith. I hope that what I've written can help prevent you have having so much stress over perfectionism as I've had to deal with.

Incidentally, if you want to use any quotes from my letter or my website, feel free to do so. And let me tell you something. Had I thought when I started this letter that I imagined you would be using a quotation of mine, I would have tried too hard to make myself "quotable." Instead, I have expressed myself about as well as I think I want to and writing this "perfectly" has not been my goal. I simply wanted to share some things I've learned and to hope they will help.

Arlene

© Copyright 2006, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT