Perfectionism kills productivity, but how to get the most out of it

What are the lessons I have learned that you could also learn too?

Relationship between the time you spent and the quality of work is nonlinear. The longer time you are trying to polish and make things perfect, the less productivity you gain from it. Thus, the optimum point is “great”, not “perfect”.

I am a perfectionist.

I finished my first book in 2017 and still remember the feeling when I submitted it to an editor of one publisher in Bangkok.

I convinced her (and her assistants) to think that this book has been published before. I didn’t say any word. Actually, I hadn’t even met them when they thought about this. The reason was very simple. The draft was so perfect.

Formatting was so nice, and they couldn’t find any typos in the draft at all. I am now thinking that you are also admiring my work, aren’t you? The work is good, very good, I agree, but I have to live with just one problem.

The draft took me half a year to make it perfect. Was it impressive? Yes. Was it necessary? I am not sure.

Was it productive? Now the answer is clear. Not at all.

Using the same period of time, maybe another two more books can be written. It was the time when I realized that perfectionism can be a problem.

It took me years to overcome this problem and I am about to share it with you.

Understand the problem: time is a limited resource

Perfection is great if someone can really reach it.

The fact is: perfection is hardly possible with our limitations of time and experience.

Spending time for perfection is like playing games which you can never win. You can produce good work, very good work, excellent work. However, there are always ways to improve it to even better work.

And at higher quality level, you gain less but invest more time.

Let me give you some examples. If I am writing a blog post like this, it might take half an hour for a shitty draft. Maybe, if I spend one hour, I will get a normal quality one. Two hours, maybe it’s very good already.

But believe me, I can keep improving this for days and gaining a slightly better quality.

Higher quality is always good, but time is limited and never be enough. That means one needs to choose.

And this is how I play this game.

Get more room by killing all unnecessary tasks

Prioritize is the most powerful tool for perfectionists.

As we can spend a significant amount of time perfecting each individual task, we need to make sure it is really important.

Prioritize is the key.

You are not only gain more time by getting rid of those unnecessary tasks, but you can also define how much effort you should put in each important one.

There is one principle I like a lot in defining important and unimportant works. It’s called the Pareto principle.

You may have never heard about it in this name. If I say that it is 80/20 rule, however, you may feel more familiar.

The rule is simple. Most of the tasks are unnecessary and will not affect our long term goals or main targets at all.

Our duty is to get rid of all of them and spare time to make the remaining ones, which are your important tasks, perfect.

Sorry, I said perfect again. It was the wrong word. Actually, I should say great, which now sounds better when the time you spent is getting involved.

Make just “great” work by limit the amount of time

Making high-quality work is good, but don’t trap yourself into the perfection loop.

A good way to deal with “trying to perfect in everything” problem is to limit the amount of time for every single task.

Instead of doing things continuously, you can consider your work plan as time slots.

Start by thinking about the required amount of time you need to finish the task. This can be hours, days or weeks.

Unfortunately, a human brain is not so good for a long term plan. If the time for a single task is longer than a day, you might need to split it into smaller and manageable subtasks. Each of them should take just up to hours to finish. This is a prerequisite as it will not only make your time plan more accurate but also make you feel less overwhelmed by the huge task and project.

Then, try to finish each subtask within the amount of time you planned. If there’s still some time left (it means you’ve finished it before the time slot ended), use the remaining time to polish the task and make it better.

If the time ran out and you’re still in the middle of nowhere, feel free to add another time slot.

The only thing is, this time slot has to be finite.

For example, you planned to finish one task within three hours. After three hours, unfortunately, it has still not been finished. Feel free to add another slot of two hours.

The only thing is “you should evaluate your work every time when each time slot has been ended”. In this way, you will not work for days trying to perfect things and do unimportant stuffs.

The danger for perfectionists is when they don’t have any time plan, because a single tasks can run for days in attempt of “perfection” without gaining anything useful.

If the quality is good, then let them go. If not, one more time slot to polish might be okay.

An additional benefit of the limited time slot is the fact that it will force you to focus more on the most efficient way to finish the task on time and let unnecessaries go away.

Have a realistic expectation, otherwise, a perfectionist can become a procrastinator

One big mistake of most perfectionists is: they aim for a perfect goal.

• Some is waiting as they are thinking they are not ready yet. The reasons can be lacking all the information, lacking all the tools, abilities, or knowledge, etc. The fact is: the perfect time might never happen, and keep postponing leads you to nowhere.
• Even when they have started working on something, the expectation of their work is too high that they might be very stressful and discouraged. Then, they left the work unfinished and gave up in the middle.
• And because they don’t want to do their own formidable tasks, they just ended up doing unnecessary and unimportant things. This is just for covering up their guiltiness of doing nothing.

You need a realistic expectation to finish a good work. Expecting every task to be perfect is overwhelming and discouraging. It increases the stress level and might potentially make people procrastinate. The better way is to expect nothing out of it, but try to make it the best to the limit of your ability.

In summary

People still value high-quality works, which are very rare in the modern, multitasking-like world. Perfectionists have great potential to fulfill this requirement and can be professionals in any career. However, they have to also learn how to be efficient and productive. Success is not just trying to perfect everything without considering priorities as the time is never be enough.

Originally published at https://kannasoot.me on March 28, 2020.