Your Takeaways From This Read

Perfectionism, like any other characteristic, is desirable in controlled conditions. It kills productivity and can be self-sabotaging if you continue habits beyond their usefulness, overdeliver when you don’t have to, or overthink every decision you make.

Productivity determines our growth, and our success hence, if you are a perfectionist, you must learn to align your drive for perfection with your routines since you can perform most tasks better only by achieving this balance.

In a time when working from home is the new norm, productivity is pivotal to keeping the work-life balance in check while progressing efficiently. This means prioritizing, working in fixed timeframes, setting short-term goals, and taking bite-sized work at a time. But what happens when you are always aiming for perfection, then does perfectionism kill your productivity?

Before Getting To That, Let Us Understand the Meanings of the Terms ‘Productivity’ and ‘Perfectionism’:

Productivity is a measure of what you get done, whereas perfectionism is a measure of how that is done. Productivity means the ability to be creative, but not at the cost of speed and quality; giving results either at a low pace or with lower quality are signs of unproductivity. Whereas, perfectionism doesn’t account for speed but only quality since its held to high standards and is never satisfied whilst seeking the “perfect version”.

Perfectionism is a strength that many believe to have, even show off in their resumes, until it molds into an obsession, with getting things right, come whatever may. Good is never good enough and good enough is rarely PERFECT. Having high standards for your work is great but it shouldn’t inhibit your growth, incapacitate you and leave you constantly unhappy and disappointed. Author Stephen Guise in ‘How to be an im-perfectionist’ says, “If you don’t manage to reframe perfectionism as a damaging and inferior mindset, the illusion of its superiority will thwart your desired changes.”

By the Pareto Principle 80% of the value comes from 20% of the work, a productive person will understand this. While a perfectionist focuses too much on perfecting the other 80% of the work too much, they only bring 20% of the value.

Perfectionism can not be balanced with productivity if a perfectionist continues to be bound to the following traits:

• Highly critical of your work
• Holding yourself to unrealistically high standards
• Focused on results
• Easily depressed by unmet goals
• Fear of failure or fear of not matching the set parameters
• Defensiveness towards their work
• All or no thinking

This makes a perfectionist unable to be content with their work and continues to make their ceiling unachievable, even when the work is excellent, it will not be for them.

And this makes perfectionism extremely difficult to balance on the scale of productivity.

So yes, perfectionism is a productivity killer when out of balance, not just that it’s self-sabotaging as well and is a contentment killer, preventing you from celebrating your wins. As Leo Tolstoy in AnnaKarenina says “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.”

But if the balance is maintained and perfectionism doesn’t lead to sub-optimal behaviors or patterns of rigidness, it doesn’t kill your productivity.