{"id":15,"date":"2023-10-02T17:56:14","date_gmt":"2023-10-02T16:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/?p=15"},"modified":"2023-10-02T17:56:14","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T16:56:14","slug":"perfectionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/02\/perfectionism\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfectionism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here\u2019s a quick test. Imagine you\u2019ve taken a class, and you’ve received the grades below. You need 80% overall to pass. What catches your attention?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re sensible, the answer is that percentage at the bottom. Well done, you passed by a mile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it happens, those are my grades. What\u2019s the thing that catches my<\/em> attention? The sixth project down, Heroes & Villains, where I only got 96%. That feels like a bit of a failure to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve known for a while that looking at the world that way isn\u2019t helpful, but until the last few weeks, I didn\u2019t realize it was actively unhelpful. In that time, I read the three books I\u2019ll talk about here, and started listening to Ross Lepalla\u2019s Project UnchainED<\/a> podcast. They\u2019ve helped me realize how much needless anxiety I\u2019ve been causing myself, and though it\u2019s early days in dealing with it, even just recognizing that has helped immensely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Perfection Trap<\/a> – Jerry Marsh<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have mixed feelings about this book. It certainly has some good sections; sections that helped me recognize perfectionism was a problem for me. It also has some blatant failings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quote that hit most directly for me was \u201cRather than embracing mistakes as opportunities for growth, perfectionism casts them as evidence of inadequacy. Consider a student striving for perfect grades. In the realm of perfectionism, any grade less than flawless is seen as a personal failure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is 100% true. I finished my neuroscience degree last year, and I ended up with a 3.94. I had absolutely zero reason, none at all, to aim for a 4.0. I\u2019m not even planning on using the degree for anything job-related; I was just curious, and I was lucky enough to be in the position where the government would pay me to go to college (again), so I indulged myself. But the amount of needless stress I held myself under in order to maintain perfect grades was immense, until my then-girlfriend\/now-wife could convince me it was okay to let it go. That was an exceptionally hard thing to do, despite acknowledging the logic of it. I had other areas that would benefit more from my attention, but that attention was wrapped up in a pointless goal I’d set myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It did have sections like that: that\u2019s the good part. The bad part is, I suspect the book was just churned out in order to capitalize on less than careful people\u2019s mistakes (more on that in a second), rather than to actually provide value. The most egregious example, and the one that makes me think it was given some basic prompts and then written mostly or entirely by AI, comes near the end. \u201cIn the upcoming chapters, we dive even deeper into the realms of navigating social media and confronting societal pressures.\u201d That\u2019s on the last page, before a short conclusion. There are no upcoming chapters after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, 2\/5. Solid insight at some points, but it was extremely repetitious, saying the same things over and over in slightly changed wording, and it did not deliver on its promises. Everything good in this book is better found in the next book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Perfection Trap<\/a> – Thomas Curran<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may notice a similarity here, and this is what I meant above about not being careful. This is the book I meant<\/strong><\/em> to read, after listening to an interview with the author on the Freakonomics podcast<\/a>. This was released on 8 August 23, and in what I\u2019m sure is a complete coincidence, a much sloppier book with the same main title was released two days later, on 10 August 23. But enough sarcasm, on with the review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main thrust of the book, and of the podcast episode, is that perfectionism isn\u2019t about having high standards, but about nothing being enough. Someone with high standards receives a 108% in a course and realizes they did a good job. A perfectionist looks at it, looks past the assignments that got 144%, and sees the one that got 96%, the one that could\u2019ve been better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProcrastination is often portrayed as a time-management problem, but in actual fact, it’s an anxiety-management problem.\u201d This nailed it. I’ve known for years that I\u2019ve got a procrastination problem, and I\u2019ve tried all sorts of systems to address it. Almost all of them have had some value, but none of them really fixed much. For the most part, they just let me see all the tasks I wasn\u2019t doing in fancy new ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I listened to this section, however, it was a lightbulb moment. I love coding, but when I started doing it for this course, I found myself avoiding it until it became critical. At that point, I would manage to put out an objectively excellent product, but with far more stress in the process than was needed. Looking at it through the lens of anxiety, however, it\u2019s obvious<\/em> that I wasn\u2019t going to want to do it if I felt like a 96% was failure. Facing inevitable failure is daunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s often argued that perfectionism has its costs, but also its benefits, and that the main benefit is higher quality work and more productivity. However, a study<\/a> by Brian Swider et al. found that this is not the case. \u201cWe did find consistent, modestly-sized relationships between perfectionism and variables widely considered to be beneficial for employees and organizations (i.e., motivation and conscientiousness). Yet critically, we found no link between perfectionism and performance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has certainly been the case for me. It\u2019s only been about a week since I realized I can just drop those expectations, but I\u2019ve been getting a lot more done (writing my first article since July, for instance) and my stress levels have plummeted. The negative feelings from measuring myself against impossible standards were not driving me to do my best, they were driving me to avoid doing anything. I wasn\u2019t chasing excellence, I was just avoiding failure, and those are two very different things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I give this book 5\/5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gifts of Imperfection<\/a> – Bren\u00e9 Brown<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from the first book, which\u2026 lacked rigor, almost everything else I\u2019ve read or listened to on the topic of perfectionism has referenced Dr. Brown\u2019s work. She focuses a lot on self-talk, which is an area where I\u2019ve recently realized I have a lot of room for improvement. I am an exceptionally verbal thinker, and have an internal dialogue going in my head almost all the time. As such, self-talk is something I need to spend more time researching, and this was an excellent place to start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow many of us are quick to think, \u2018God, I\u2019m so stupid\u2019 and \u2018Man, I\u2019m such an idiot?\u2019 Just like calling someone we love stupid or an idiot would be incongruent with practicing love, talking like that to ourselves takes a serious toll on our self-love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk to yourself the way you\u2019d Talk to a Friend<\/a> is great advice. In particular, it\u2019s great advice I\u2019ve heard many times and implemented zero times until recently. Between The Perfection Trap and this book, I finally realized that I don\u2019t need to have the harsh self-judgements to motivate me.  \u201cWow, you sucked at that\u201d may work as motivation occasionally, but far more often, it\u2019s just motivation to avoid trying and failing again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did disagree with her on one point though. Well, not so much disagree as find inapplicable in my particular circumstance. \u201cWhere perfectionism exists, shame is always lurking. In fact, shame is the birthplace of perfectionism.\u201d This doesn\u2019t land for me. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I do have things I\u2019m ashamed of, but they\u2019re generally unrelated to perfectionism. I\u2019m ashamed of the times I\u2019ve needlessly hurt people. I\u2019m ashamed of the times I didn\u2019t live up to my values. But I\u2019m not ashamed of getting 96% on that assignment. It just bugs me. I\u2019m under no impression that 96% is an objectively bad grade; I\u2019m simply neurotic (and almost certainly autistic, which is another thing that I didn\u2019t realize until the last year or two, but is incredibly<\/strong><\/em> obvious once I started looking). That’s something I can and will work on, but so far as I can tell, it’s unrelated to shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All around, great book. I give it 4.5\/5. It falls short of 5\/5 not due to any failing in the book itself, but because it didn\u2019t quite line up with me personally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project UnchainED<\/a> – Ross Lepalla<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I started listening to this podcast when it was initially released at the end of 2020, but it wasn\u2019t for me at the time. I was a bit put off by some of the woo-ier language, and it wasn\u2019t landing in a useful place. Last week, I gave it another try, and I\u2019m currently on episode 42 of 74.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve changed since then, and I\u2019m more able to look past surface disagreements to the core of the message. I can see now that despite using words like \u201csynchronicity\u201d, which is usually a red flag for magical thinking, Ross isn\u2019t counting on anything supernatural happening. So far as I can see, it\u2019s just his way of saying that, when you\u2019re clear about your goals, suddenly opportunities you didn\u2019t see before start appearing. Not because you\u2019ve connected with the universe and it\u2019s mystically providing you what you believe in, but because your clarity of mind opens you up to see things you wouldn\u2019t otherwise notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, episode 18<\/a>, with his own life coach, Mim Chapman<\/a>, has been my favorite episode. (I just started the episode with Mike Tuchscherer<\/a>, though, so that may change later today.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve interacted with Ross at all, you probably know he\u2019s a genuinely good guy. He\u2019s insightful, and this isn\u2019t by chance, but due to a lot of purposeful self-work and healing. He\u2019s exceptionally open about his journey from being a suicidal teenager to being in the good place he currently inhabits, where he can embrace life whole-heartedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can’t rate this like the books, because it’s too different of a medium, but I can and do recommend giving it a listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takeaway<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Perfectionism isn\u2019t costless, and the benefits are smaller than advertised. Judging from my own example, not all perfectionists know they\u2019re perfectionists, even when it\u2019s blatantly obvious to the people around them. I\u2019d suggest looking at your own relationship with high standards, really thinking through why you have them, and asking yourself whether they\u2019re serving you or holding you back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a quick test. Imagine you\u2019ve taken a class, and you’ve received the grades below. You need 80% overall to pass. What catches your attention? If you\u2019re sensible, the answer is that percentage at the bottom. Well done, you passed by a mile. As it happens, those are my grades. What\u2019s the thing that catches […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanherbison.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}