Should we be proud of perfectionism?

Surprisingly, for some reason, many people pride themselves on being perfectionists. Probably because they like the “perfect” in this word. And, most likely, they do not fully understand the essence of perfectionism and its consequences. And they are such that a person simply spends more time on work, thinking that he is improving it, although, in fact, this improvement is in quotation marks, and time is spent on this real one. Thus, a person simply “kills” time, works less productively and, in addition to this, often feels anxious and tired.

There is only one solution here, the golden rule is to do the work so that it is good enough to pass. The secret is that by improving your work beyond measure, you will still end up doing it the same way you would if you worked as usual. Yes, maybe you will make some point improvements, but more often it happens that you just ruin everything, because every business has its own “cooking” time. For example, if you heat toast for one minute, you will have crispy buns, and if you keep them in the toaster for five or ten minutes, then you are unlikely to eat them. It’s the same with everything else. Doing something longer doesn’t always mean better, even if it seems the opposite at first.

But what then to be if you are new to some business, for example, in writing articles? Shouldn’t you write a text for an hour, two, three, four or more if you can’t get a good text in 30 minutes? No, it’s not worth it. And that’s why. The fact is that now, at the very time when you will be doing this, you will write an article in an hour as you can write it at this moment in your life. And no matter how much you sit on it, at least until the night, you will not write it better, with the exception of imperceptible changes, in fact, having no meaning for the overall picture. Because at this point in your life, you just can’t write better. In a week, a month, a year, you will write a text in the same time, first a little better, then better, and then much better. And, you guessed it, it’s not about sitting on something for a long time, but that quality comes with experience. This is why perfectionism is useless and harmful. This is always worth remembering.

But this does not mean that you can relax and do the work carelessly. No. You still have to work and work, do the maximum of what you can do at the moment. This is what distinguishes good work from ordinary work and perfectionism. Here is your golden mean, which is always worth striving for if you care about the quality of your work.