Does Perfectionism Kill Productivity?
Do you take pride in being a perfectionist? There is no doubt that your exceptionally high-standards are valued by your employer, but are all your perfectionistic habits serving you?
Sometimes, perfectionism tendencies can be counter-productive and decrease your work performance.
Of course, there is the indirect effect by which the pursuit of excellence could lead to overwork. That’s no surprise, if you burnout you’ll be no use! While it’s clear that the desire of being flawless bears its cost on your wellbeing, this is not the topic of this blog.
In this blog, I will solely focus on the direct effects of perfectionism on work performance. That is, the instances when being a perfectionist means being less productive. Maybe you’re spending way too much time designing the perfect slides and meanwhile you’re not progressing on important project. Or perhaps you procrastinate out of fear of making mistakes and so you’re not getting the feedback that will lead you to success.
Let’s take a deep look at the relationship between perfectionism and productivity so you can decide whether it is time for you to soften some of your rules.
Don’t Lower your Standards, Lower the Self-Criticism!
According to the American Psychological Association, perfectionism can be defined as followed: “The tendency to demand of others or of oneself an extremely high or even flawless level of performance, in excess of what is required by the situation” (APA Dictionary).
There are several aspects to perfectionism:
The propensity to set exceedingly high standard for performance
The desire of being absolutely flawless
An overall harsh and critical evaluation
In fact, researchers have distinguished between 2 types of perfectionism (Stoeber & Damian, 2015):
Perfectionistic Striving (or Personal Standards Perfectionism) can be helpful. This is when you have high personal standards. This type of perfectionism pushes you to set ambitious goals. Even when those goals are slightly unrealistic, aiming high is the road to success (provided that you don’t beat yourself up for not achieving the unachievable). This aspect of perfectionism could be summarised by Norman Vincent Peale’s quote: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars”.
Perfectionistic Concern is what you want to avoid! This is when you’re highly critical of yourself, you’re constantly preoccupied with others’ evaluations and expectations and you rarely gain satisfaction from your achievements. This is the type of perfectionism that is associated with avoidance and procrastination, as well as anxiety and burnout.
To put it simply, keep your high standards but be willing to make mistakes, be compassionate with yourself and make sure that you celebrate your wins.
When Perfectionism is Slowing you Down
Could you think of something that you’ve been postponing or that you don’t even wanna try because you’re uncertain about the outcome? It could be sending your CV out, requesting a meeting with a potential collaborator, or writing your own book…
This profound desire to avoid mistakes at all costs gets into your way to success. There is a lot of research linking perfectionism and procrastination. At the core of this relationship lies the fear of failure (Yosopov et al. 2024). If you can’t do it well, why bother doing it? Right?!!
Of course, it doesn’t work this way. You know that you learn by making mistakes. So why do you invest so much energy in avoiding those mistakes? One possibility is that you get caught in what is called “overgeneralisation of failure” (Carver & Ganellen, 1983). Basically, this is when you think that you are a complete failure simply because you’ve fallen short on a specific task. It is really important that you detach your worth from your achievements: you are inherently worthy as a person, whether you succeed or not!
Even if you’re not a chronic procrastinator, chances are that your perfectionistic concerns are slowing down your progression. Let’s take the example of applying for promotion. If you’re waiting until you tick all the boxes, making sure that there is not a single aspect where you’re falling short, it might take you 5 years to get to this level. Now, let’s imagine that you’ve applied the first year. You might have been promoted from this first go, who knows? But even if you’re not, you will have gotten feedback that would allow you to be successful the next year. So by taking the leap even when you’re not 100% ready and failing at your first attempt, you would have reached your goal in 2 years instead of 5!
This is just an example. I invite you to have a look at my Imperfect Bingo Game to identify situations where you could let go of your perfectionistic tendencies.
When Perfectionism Prevents You From Using Your Time Wisely
Often, perfectionism clashes with time optimisation. Attention to detail is great… but only when those details matters. If we spend 5hrs on something that could have taken us 30min, this is probably not the best use of our time. When “good enough” does the job, there is no point in aiming for perfect.
Have you ever heard of the Parkinson law? This law stipulates that a task will expand to fill up the time allocated for its completion. Do you remember your high school years, when you had one hour to write an essay during an exam and you somehow did a good job in that limited time? Now imagine that you would have been given the same essay as a homework, would you have spent only one hour on it? or a whole day? or a whole week? This illustrates the principle of the Parkinson law: if you have clear boundaries around the time you wish to dedicate to a project, you will manage to get it done within that time.
Perfectionism also interferes with time management when it comes to delegate. How often do you end up doing something yourself because nobody could do it to your standards? Perfectionism pushes leaders to micromanage. Those leaders waste their precious time in tasks that could have been tackled by staff members.
To identify where perfectionism might be counterproductive for you, check out my Imperfect Bingo Game.
A few Final Tips
Overcoming perfectionism is a life-long battle. And let’s be honest, perfectionism is not all bad! Some works do require extremely high standards. I bet that you’d rather undergo surgery with a perfectionist surgeon… The trick is to be selective: you cannot aim for excellence in everything, you need to prioritise.
Here are a few recommendations to overcome the self-sabotaging aspects of perfectionism:
Cultivate a positive self-talk. Practice swapping self-critical thoughts for compassionate and encouraging ones.
Celebrate your wins. All your wins. Even if you only did half of what you were aiming for… even if this is just one step and there are still many things that could go wrong… even if you’re already setting up the next goals… Take the time to truly enjoy your achievements.
Be clear on your priorities. Identify when outstanding quality is needed and when “good enough” will do the job. Limit the time you allocate to tasks and refrain from overdelivering on projects that don’t really matter.
Practice imperfection. Send a draft half-done, delegate without overseeing every detail, wait one week before replying to an email… you’ll realise that it’s okay to be imperfect!
Grab my free resource: Imperfect Bingo Game
References
Stoeber, J., & Damian, L. E. (2016). Perfectionism in employees: Work engagement, workaholism, and burnout. In F. M. Sirois & D. S. Molnar (Eds.), Perfectionism, health, and well-being (pp. 265–283). Springer International Publishing/Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18582-8_12
Yosopov, L., Saklofske, D. H., Smith, M. M., Flett, G. L., & Hewitt, P. L. (2024). Failure sensitivity in perfectionism and procrastination: Fear of failure and overgeneralization of failure as mediators of traits and cognitions. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 07342829241249784.
Carver, C. S., & Ganellen, R. J. (1983). Depression and components of self-punitiveness: High standards, self-criticism, and overgeneralization. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 92(3), 330–337. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.92.3.330