The word perfect has taken over our lives and we have become obsessed with everything being perfect. From a selfie to the WhatsApp status, clothing or even career, we want each and everything in our lives to be perfect. Well, wanting things to be perfect isn’t a bad thing. You get the motivation to improve by trying to be perfect but, yes there is a ‘but’, being an obsessed perfectionist isn’t something you should become.
On one hand, perfectionism is good whereas, on the other hand, it might become the reason for preventing you from giving your best.
Wondering how is it so? Here are some of the examples:
- It makes us less efficient
Has it ever happened that you completed the task well and good but couldn’t give it a closure because you wanted to add on some things to improve it and make it ‘perfect’? If yes, you must have wasted a lot of time perfecting it and spending way more time than required; thus, reducing your work efficiency.
- It makes us less effective
Continuing the above example, trying to achieve perfection might not result well and there are chances you might ruin your original work. For example, you make an assignment but in order to make it best, you add designs or arts that are unnecessary which ultimately ends up deducting your marks on a presentation basis.
- It makes us procrastinate
Being obsessed with perfection makes us procrastinate things. We wait for the ‘perfect’ moment to even initiate the task that we miss the deadline and still wait for that very moment when we can start working on it. Ironical, isn’t it?
However, the trouble is not you being a perfectionist. Well, not the sane form of it. As I said before, it is a good thing and helps you to improve and become better.
It becomes a problem when you get obsessed with it and gets frustrated a lot even by a minor mistake. This could result in you missing out on the major things while you focus on the minor details that might not even matter at the end.
Here are some useful tips to control perfection:
- Remove ‘should’ and update your dictionary
The perfectionists have this another obsession of using should in their sentences instead of other determiners like can, will, may, could, would, etc. They are always like: “I should get a full score in the test.” Instead, go for “I will do my best in the test.” Just try like this and see how easygoing you become!
- Stop using the black-&-white language
Everything can’t be perfect; so, start appreciating the imperfect things too. Have a middle ground and use the words like well, good, acceptable; avoiding the extremes: ‘perfection’ and ‘failure’.
- Set a time limit
Set a deadline for your task and complete it within the time limit. If you don’t, you will consume a lot of time than required as you will find millions of things to improve in your little task. For example, you make a presentation well and good but you will find a lot of things that you think might improve your presentation like animation, re-thinking about the background or introducing the background, adding more pictures/content or removing some, and the list goes endless.
- Do intentional mistakes in minor day to day tasks
Allowing the mistakes and being okay with it or introducing the mistakes intentionally can help you get over your obsession. Here are a few examples where you can introduce minor mistakes: Have a birthday party and forget the cake; have a sleep-over and don’t clean your room.
So, make your life easy and a bit imperfect as nothing is perfect in this world and according to me imperfection is a charm!
