Ep.54 Perfectionism Is Holding You Back: How To Achieve AND Be Highly Productive [SOLO EP]

0:08For context, I'm waiting for some big news and I don't do well with limbo. In fact, I'm now unhinged. I wish I didn't even know the big news was coming. I can't take anticipation and limbo. It gives me extreme anxiety. So that's fun. I like how you've written well, well, well in the way that I'll say it. Well, well, well, looks at paper. Today we're talking about perfectionism. It's a hot topic. I mean, there's really no wonder why we're all kind of expecting perfection and expecting to kind of like reach for perfection in everything we do especially I feel in a social media world I also feel like I blame everything on social media like every single episode we do I'm like in a social media world this is fucked up whilst also my entire career uh is there so take from that what you will she's a hater but she will take the fruits but I wanted to talk about perfectionism because I feel like it's really really really really really really really important and often misconstrued as a good thing that classic like interview answer like what are your weaknesses well I'm a perfectionist I don't like that I wouldn't like that in like an interview I like high standards and I think it's important to have high standards for ourselves when it comes to the types of standards we like to maintain and the type of work we want to put out and the type of life we want to lead but I think that high standards are actually often compromised by perfectionism I really really really really really believe that I think the majority of jobs you could not even come close to doing all that you need to do to a high standard if you are working on being perfect in one area of it like we have this conversation the whole time don't we you can't see off camera I am actually talking to people that do exist but we have this conversation about being like realistically if you were to do your whole workload to a perfect level you'd spend a day a week doing something that you have like 70 of which obviously just means like it can't be done in that time and I think being able to get to a point where you're able to have high standards and maintain high standards and maintain good quality work or standards in like the rest of your life while still getting them done is so so so valuable you need to be able to be efficient you need to be able to drop the idea of perfectionism because otherwise you will never get anything done it's such an interesting misconception because you'll hold yourself back from getting closer to your idea of like perfect whether that's your a kind of career role or a piece of work like an application whatever it might be by striving for perfection you could strive for high standards you can strive for the best you can do but if you're always striving for perfectionism you will never finish and you are actually you think you're doing a good thing you're not doing a good thing you're selling yourself short and you're probably being extremely inefficient the problem also with being a perfectionist is not only that you're going to be far less efficient and you're actually ending up being less perfect because you're doing less that gets you in the direction of what you perceive to be perfect is the fact that it so easily leads to burnout.

3:10There is a huge link between trying to be perfect and trying to maintain these like really high standards and also making yourself burnt out because the lengths that you have to go to to get something perfect, I promise you, you could have done 95 % of that work and that last 5 % that you're really going for for perfection will probably take a hundred times the amount of time that the rest of it does. But by the very definition of perfectionism, which is refusal to accept anything below perfect, you are going to burn yourself out. And if you burn yourself out, you can't be perfect. And then look what you've done.

3:42Hopefully by the end of this episode, we'll be able to kind of collectively unpack why we all feel the need to keep up with the idea of perfection and also come up with some practical ways that we can avoid and say no to those feelings that make us think that not being perfect is a flaw rather than actually a strength because if you can allow yourself not to be perfect and still be able to do things to a high standard but know when it's time to move on and know when it's time that done is better than perfect then you're just going to lead yourself into burnout, you're going to lead yourself into disappointment and you are setting standards for yourself that literally do not exist and aren't completely impossible.

4:17So if you are a self-proclaimed perfectionist this episode is going to be a little bit of tough love on why you're fighting that battle in vain you are striving for something but you're actually moving yourself backwards by not just being able to accept things that are slightly lower standard and by lower standard I do not mean lower your standards I do not mean don't have high standards for yourself or don't produce high quality work I absolutely feel that you should be doing that but I think that you actually end up producing lower quality work if you're spending a week on it and burning yourself out and not doing 90 % of the things you actually need to do I also think that it's important to say that there are of times in life where it is more important to spend that extra few hours getting that final few percent of getting it to a standard you're really happy with it might be the application for your dream job it might be kind of starting a business and finishing off your website in a way that you think will really resonate with your customers or you would be really proud of there are opportunities for that but I think that the difference between that is high standards versus perfectionism and I think that realistically no one would ever ever ever start their business for example if they were striving for perfection because once you put it out there I promise you it's no longer going to be perfect because you're going to need to change all of these things so want to talk a little bit about how it's actually counterproductive to be aiming for perfection you're sliding back down that slope in the other direction so first dilemma this is from someone called Billy hey Grace I took a leap of faith last year and finally started the company I've been dreaming about it's done really well so far but I've been doing it all by myself since setting it up.

5:48I think I would like to look at hiring someone to help me but I know I like it a particular way. How do you deal with delegating? I want some of my weekends back but I still want to keep the standards high. I will say that hiring your first few people in a business is always going to be so difficult in terms of letting go of control and you are undoubtedly going to have times where you let go of control too much and it compromises something for your business and you learn not to do that again but there are also going to be ones the other way. If you burn yourself out so much that you can't work on your business or you hate your business or you want to quit or whatever that's not perfection because that cannot be maintained the best form of working is the one that you can actually maintain and the one that you can actually kind of continue running your business and if you are getting yourself to a point where you're so burnt out because you're working through the weekends because you refuse to delegate not only is that really bad for yourself but it's also inherently unscalable you cannot get to I mean to be fair I don't know where you want to get to with your business but assuming that by when you're talking about like hiring more people assuming you want your business to grow you have to put parameters in place to mean that your business can grow and your business cannot grow by you doing everything so I think rather than thinking that perfection is you doing everything right think of perfection as being able to get your weekends back because by being able to get your weekends back you're getting closer to that like quote-unquote perfectional high standards in your everyday life which I think is so incredibly important and don't get me wrong I have made so many hiring mistakes I have made so many decisions that I've then been like oh fuck like now I've compromised this and I stepped away too quickly but do you know what usually that happens when I'm so burnt out that I'll take someone on at the point that I literally feel like I can't even do it anymore and then undoubtedly they're going to be less good at the job because I'm able to spend less time actually teaching them or helping them or mentoring them into doing the job the way I would want them to do it.

7:43So I feel like that is really, really, really important. And it's almost a method by which to stop yourself getting to that point of burnout. And if you're starting to feel that way in your business, if you're starting to feel like, do you know what? I really can't do this all the time. I need help. I need support. Just like dipping your toe in it, getting a little bit of help. It might be like a mini me, like assistant based help, just doing a little bit of everything. It might be outsourcing marketing materials it might be outsourcing sourcing it might be you know whatever it might be I think it is incredibly important to start that you don't need to throw yourself in at the deep end it's this completely false narrative that you're getting closer and to higher standards by doing everything yourself because sure those high standards can exist but they are completely unscalable so I think that's very important in being able to like give yourself the reassurance that that's okay but just know as well that it will be trial and error you're not going to always hire right straight away you're not going to be able to hire your ultimate end goal person straight away because you're unlikely to be able to afford them and it's going to be a learning process I think one of the hardest things as a founder is realizing that only you are going to know the business vision that you could have the most creative person in the world and you're not even the most creative person in the world and still you'll be able to be like no do you know what that's not right because you are the founder no one else is going to care about it as much as you are so it is going to be a trial and learn process but the sooner you start it the less likely you are to become burnt out before that point and therefore the more likely you are to be able to teach someone comprehensively and get them to be better at their job and therefore get the business to be better overall.

9:13Second dilemma from Rachel. Hi Grace, I'm currently a lawyer working in London. I know I tend to be a bit highly strung and I think I am definitely a perfectionist. I finally got to a good place in my career but it's meant I put insane hours in and I'm finding it hard to keep up. How do you deal with not actually having the time to do everything? How should I know when to stop. I think this is a lot of like what we've already been talking about in the way of essentially if you're setting standards for yourself that are actually impossible to keep up you're really setting yourself up for failure and don't get me wrong there are certain things like there might be a certain report that you need to put absolutely everything into and everything else needs to take a back seat but you cannot have that approach to every single piece of work you'll be doing because otherwise you will get to a point that you cannot do it anymore and that is not good for your career.

9:57You have this false perception that you are doing something that is good for your work but realistically it's actually harming your work in the long term so I think really coming to terms with that and I think prioritizing is a huge part of that as well so looking at your week and looking at do you know what these things I need to do quickly and maybe like a little bit sloppily or maybe just not you know spending a huge amount of time on them whereas like this thing is weighted really heavily in terms of my importance and I think just realizing again you can have it all you can do it all but you can't do it all at once and I think that that's incredibly important so just being able to set up some boundaries for yourself in terms of prioritization and knowing how much you can put 90 % into at any one time because you can do that for one project but you can't probably do it every week you can't probably do it with all of your pieces of work and so really knowing which pieces of work deserve that full attention and understanding as well also communicating like I think sometimes when you're given a huge amount of work I encourage people who I work with to a lot of the time say if there's so much work that they're feeling like it's compromising the standard so that even at the very least if we have to get all of that done I can say which one is the priority I can say do you know what don't spend a lot of time on that at all I literally just need it in like it can look terrible just need the information or whatever it might be but I think you could communicate that to the people you're working with and essentially be like look I've got these things I'm thinking of spending the majority of my time on this one because I think that it's much more important that it's like really really perfect however I've got all of these different ones could you tell me what your priorities are in terms of that way I think that's really really really important especially when building up your career dilemma number three from Erica I've nearly completed my graduate scheme and I'm on the final stretch I know I'm really hard on myself and I'm really critical because I want every piece of work to be perfect I know my boss has high standards but I always think I'm not good enough how do you wrestle with feelings of self-doubt actually a lot of the time need to be perfectionist comes from feelings of self-doubt because you're feeling like you need to prove yourself in every single piece of work and just understanding that you are fighting a losing battle again if you are doing that if you're needing to prove yourself over and over and over when it comes to pieces of work then you are always going to be fighting a losing battle you cannot need to prove your self-worth every single piece of work you're doing otherwise like that doesn't need to be proved over and over again, that has to come from internal sources.

12:18So I feel like recognizing that and recognizing that your self-worth is not attached to your productivity, it's not attached to your output, etc, etc. You can know your value within a company and that doesn't need to be proved every single time you do a piece of work. I completely understand, especially with something like a grad scheme where it might be a competitive one where at the end only X amount of people are offered a job or whatever it might be. There are going to be times in your life where you're going to need to be more of a quote-unquote perfectionist or spend more time investing in doing stuff like that than other ones and that's kind of just the name of the game and that's kind of just how work works and careers work again long story short you just cannot do that all of the time so I'd say main thing with that self-doubt cannot be eradicated by you doing better work self-doubt eradication has to come from you genuinely affirming that and believing that you are worthy of that work and that you good at that work independent of the work you're actually doing.

13:12I know it sounds ridiculous but if you're proving your self-worth every single time you're doing a good piece of work you're constantly only going to feel as good as your last piece of work which sounds good in the way that you're like oh well then I'll always do good work but actually if you can't maintain it it's not good. Again the best piece of work or the best way of working is the one that you can actually maintain and if you're setting yourself standards that you cannot maintain you think you're aiming for perfection but you're actually harming the overall output and standard of your work because you're going to burn out.

13:42Hi Grace. Oh it's anonymous. I was wondering if you could help me. I think since I broke up with my boyfriend two years ago I have really high expectations in relationships. Good. I find it really difficult to accept anyone who doesn't meet everything on my tick list. Bad. However. Sorry that's so aggressive. I'm so sorry. How insensitive of me. However I am really struggling to make a good connection. How do I make sure I keep the bar high but don't disregard a good egg? I think this is really interesting and when I think of perfectionism I definitely don't think of relationships. Maybe that reflects something about me.

14:16I'm joking. I have a great relationship. But I can completely understand why that would be the case. I do think it is great in all like at all times to have high standards when it comes to relationships. I think the majority of people have the other end of the spectrum and I think that it is important to have high standards for yourself and what you want however I think that the types of things you have high standards on is also important you can have really high standards in terms of someone being kind someone being considerate someone being ambitious because it's you know something that you consider really important and fits in with your lifestyle and you need them to care about that stuff too and all of those things I think if you're having standards on maybe things that don't reflect someone as a person I'm not saying you should go for someone who isn't like physically your type I think that you know everyone has a right to have kind of quote-unquote standards in terms of the types of things they're like attracted to etc but I think that sometimes those standards are like misplaced in terms of you know if you're wiping someone off your list completely because they have like an arbitrary thing that doesn't tick a box, I feel like that's more of a problem.

15:31It sounds like, allow me to hypothesize, that you might be comparing every single new person you meet or like a new relationship or dating or whatever to however many years in to a longer term relationship, which is never going to work. If you are constantly comparing a first date to how you felt about someone after you had three years with them again you're setting yourself up for failure though you can have high standards without doing that and I think you need to be it sounds like you might have like that might be purely your idea of a relationship and until something measures up to that exactly in terms of being like copy paste not to just being as good then you're not going to drop that and I think that kind of needs to be unpacked and I think if you expect that every dating experience you're going to have is going to be as fun as like you relaxing with them three years into a relationship where you know everything about each other I think you're probably setting yourself up for failure so I'd say that probably needs to be a little bit unpacked but I'd keep high standards like high standards are really important I don't think anyone should drop their standards I do think though that there are certain things we have high standards on that are probably more arbitrary and probably don't teach us a lot about the person and maybe are selling ourselves short and cutting things off early for maybe you're even like protecting yourself like you know you got hurt in the last situation because breakups always hurt no matter you know who does it and so you're always comparing things to that because you want to you know if something was different and it worked really well then it would potentially make you vulnerable I don't know she's no therapist but that kind of sounds like the type of thing that might be happening but I think it's really important to maintain high standards maybe not about silly things right final dilemma hi grace i go into freeze and procrastination a lot because i feel like i'm not good slash qualified slash driven enough to pursue the ideas that i have which turns out is underlying perfectionism because i'm scared of failing or being criticized how do you manage with decision making in your business or life to get shit done so i'm an impulsive and decisive person so i do not relate that much in terms of those things but I think maybe because I definitely wouldn't say I'm a perfectionist at all I'm getting strange looks from the other side I have high standards I'll be the first to say I have high standards but I will say again and again and again I think high standards are really important I think when high standards kind of cripple your decision making and progress because you're aiming for perfection I think that's when it's damaging but I think the first part of this going like freezing and having and procrastinating a lot based on the fact that you think you're not good enough I think that's again it's self-doubt and I think that it's I mean we all have a certain element of like when there's something on our to-do list that we just hate doing like I have a few of them and I'm like oh and it's like out of a point of just like I don't even want to do it and so we procrastinate and not however I think that there's also an element of self-doubt in there and again that self-doubt cannot come from doing better work that has to come from other sources a genuine self-belief.

18:39Again, being scared of like failing or being criticized, I think, can be improved purely through practice. I've talked about this before on another solo episode about imposter syndrome. And I think that we don't receive criticism in our life until we get to our careers, unless it's like, oh, they're not really understanding this well at school, or unless it's someone who hates us. And so we're kind of like, whatever. Whereas like, receiving criticism in a job is very normal over and over and over again. And so I think that actually just practice makes perfect like almost inviting criticism so that you get less scared of it so inviting feedback so being like hey I'd love you to like rip this to shreds just so that I can see the type of work you like me doing or the type of thing you think could be better you're just going to get more comfortable with that I remember I was terrified of giving criticism for a good few years of being like a manager or having a business both sides it's just practice makes perfect you get better at giving criticism and feedback you get better at receiving criticism and feedback because you just get slightly you start to lose the attachment between criticism and self-worth and I think that's incredibly important and just normalizing criticism and feedback so I think the more you can kind of invite that and put yourself in a situation and in a position where you're inviting that type of feedback I think the better and when it comes to how I manage with decision making in business and life to get shit done to be honest I think where the businesses are now it's pretty essential to constantly be making very quick decisions otherwise I would literally just burn out and maybe burst into flames.

20:09I can completely understand when decision making is harder. I think sometimes decision making is harder for good reason because if a decision is not easy to make then you probably need to spend more time on it but if you know you're the type of person to procrastinate decision making get someone to help you with it get someone to tell you what to do and then you'll know whether you like that idea or not but just start to like learn yourself in the way that you can kind of hack around it. A third of employees are considering leaving their workplace because of perfectionist expectations yeah I think that's really interesting I think I can completely understand that because also if you're not it's even more detrimental if you're a perfectionist as a manager and you don't understand truly how much goes into something in terms of like if you're imposing perfectionist views without being like look I know this is going to take you two hours more the reason I'm asking for that is because of x y and z but if you're not kind of giving it that type of expectation or if you're not able to push back and be like look I can spend that much more time on it but by the way I'm going to have to deprioritize this or whatever it might be I think that is incredibly important I think that's very interesting more fun facts 86 % of people believe perfectionist expectations impact their work I think ultimately if you're a perfectionist you care which is a good thing I think it's about channeling how much you care about things, the right time, the right place, the right things, the right amount of time you're putting into them.

21:31And so if you have that perfectionist tendency, you can use that in the right direction. But I think that knowing where you sit on that kind of perfectionist scale is so important in relationships, in work, in business, in every single thing in between. And there concludes your tough love on perfectionism and why you shouldn't be a perfectionist because it actually makes you less perfect. And so you're fighting a losing battle and you're directing your energy in the wrong place thank you for joining us please send in your dilemmas for next time