5 ms·

A perfectionist is someone with more exigence than talent. By deeming yourself a perfectionist, you openly state that you do not meet you own standards. Resol

by pygy_ 8y ago

A perfectionist is someone with more exigence than talent. By deeming yourself a perfectionist, you openly state that you do not meet you own standards. Resolution lies on either end, depending on how possible/practical it is to improve a given skill.

JadeNB 8y ago
> A perfectionist is someone with more exigence than talent. My dictionary defines 'exigence' (which I had not encountered before) as "an urgent need or demand", and I find that hard to parse. Is either of the parses "… who is more demanding than talented" or (like "grasp exceeds reach") "… whose demands exceed his or her talent" correct? If not, would you mind clarifying?
- noisem4ker 8y ago
  I think you got it. A perfectionist's demands to self (as in standards they think should be reached) exceed what their talent can actually deliver.
- pygy_ 8y ago
  My bad, "exigence" is a French word whose meaning isn't exactly identical in English. To be exigent means to have a high standard. The verb "exiger" means "to require". English adds an urgency dimension that doesn't exist in French. Many French words built on that template (direct latin root + -ent/-ence suffix) can be used as is in English, but it is not always the case.
  - stochastic_monk 8y ago
    To make this point relevant, are you more familiar with French and thereby translating an idea of yours in French to English with a not-quite-perfect cognate? Without such a connection, the reasoning for stating this is unclear to me. Could you clarify?
    - pygy_ 8y ago
      I'm a native French speaker, fluently thinking in English. There's a vast pool of vocabulary that is common to both languages, from which I draw words indiscriminately (Latin roots and the same formula to derive verbs/nouns/adjectives, with minor variations for each langage (e.g. add "-ate" for verbs in Englsih and "-er" in French)). Some of these are so-called "false friends", with different meanings in both languages. I have a spidey sense that works most of the time in the English => French direction (e.g. "consistent"), less so in the other.
      - stochastic_monk 8y ago
        Thank you, I wasn’t quite sure. As a native English speaker who has learned French, I’ve often run into “faux amis”. Perhaps the most embarrassing was “préservatifs”, which I expected to mean preservatives but actually meant condoms.
        pygy_ 8y ago
        Ooh, yes, that one must have been embarrassing indeed :-) "Préservatif" is such a weird euphemism.
        stochastic_monk 8y ago
        “Prophylactic” is no less bizarre.
        pygy_ 8y ago
        Wow TIL. I have a medical background, so I'm familiar with the "preventive" meaning, but I wasn't aware of the "contraceptive" one.
        JadeNB 8y ago
        > “Prophylactic” is no less bizarre. Isn't it (less bizarre)? My dictionary gives the medical meaning of prophylactic as "intended to prevent disease"; using it to refer to contraception just requires a more generous conception of 'disease'. By contrast, if 'préservatif' in French were translated to 'preservative' in English, it would mean, again according to my dictionary, "a substance used to preserve … against decay." I find it a bit more of a stretch to generalise this to pregnancy. On the other hand, maybe it is just my English-speaker-ness showing through that I can think of pregnancy much more easily as a disease (it literally causes dis-ease …) than as decay.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    I figured out what you meant. I suspect a lot of other Romance language students did too. Exiger seems like a 4th year sort of word though, and a lot of us unfortunately are only required to take 2 or 3 years, and German or Japanese are not uncommon.
- implements 8y ago
  > (which I had not encountered before) Me neither, in this context - though there's the US legal concept of "exigent circumstances" which allows police officers to enter property without a warrant if they believe a crime is in progress.
  - JadeNB 8y ago
    > Me neither, in this context - though there's the US legal concept of "exigent circumstances" which allows police officers to enter property without a warrant if they believe a crime is in progress. Indeed, I had encountered 'exigency' and so had some idea of the general idea—just never 'exigence'.
tjoff 8y ago
I don't think I've met too many untalented perfectionist, I'm sure they exist though (feels like an unfortunate combo). I just feel talent is orthogonal to perfectionism.
- pygy_ 8y ago
  Not necessarily untalented, but not as talented as they wish they were. Edit: In other words, it's easier to have good taste than it is to be good at designing/producing something.
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    You sound like you are projecting, honestly. Maybe you've been around perfectionists that worked against you rather than with you. The point of perfectionism is to be more talented. If you read too deeply into that and don't look at the whole picture, of course it's going to be annoying. But the root starts with a desire to be better because the feeling of stagnation is intolerable.
    - pygy_ 8y ago
      > You sound like you are projecting, honestly. Spot on. > Maybe you've been around perfectionists that worked against you rather than with you. That would have been me :-) > The point of perfectionism is to be more talented. That's part of what I meant when I said "Resolution lies on either end, depending on how possible/practical it is to improve a given skill." Another way to resolve the tension is to accept to have lower standards and go on with your life. Both options can be valid, depending on the circumstances. Edit: Also sometimes, no one can humanly become as talented as one would like, yet going at it over and over until you're satisfied is the right thing to do.
      - s-shellfish 8y ago
        > Another way to resolve the tension is to accept to have lower standards and go on with your life. For myself, long run, that is going to increase tension for me internally. I can't force myself to be satisfied with myself if I am not. I'd rather believe in a world that lacks absolute standards in perpetuity and have to consider myself perpetually adaptive than believe I've either succumbed to some group think ideology of 'relaxing' because it's comfortable for people who are fine with me being substandard (and then I get stuck with the problem of - is this because they are using me for their own comparison?), or been indoctrinated into stupid thinking that is fine with lowering my standards because it judges me based on a particular context that may not be indicative of an overall trend of my life absolutely. > "Resolution lies on either end, depending on how possible/practical it is to improve a given skill." At the end of the day pragmatism must be valued. Competition between people is useful but if it turns into a downward spiral of stepping on one another arbitrarily without reason, logic, without any ends tied to the means - then there is no united sense of progress from which every person inside a group can orient direction in thinking, and unifying action into something beautiful. I'm a software developer and computer scientist, so, all the spaces between coding (thinking, interacting) need to be filled in and can't always be explicitly stated. People have to make assumptions, it's easier to just decide - do you like where you are? Do you like the people around you? Can you see value in all of this? If you can't do that, that is when competition becomes destructive rather than productive. Being able to identify these things in real time, continual process of living life. I wish I could be weak sometimes just because it's easier, but my life hasn't allowed me to be. I make mistakes continuously and sometimes they are plain to see, not only to myself, but to everybody. The awareness of this - in perpetuity. This connects people to systems that are always attempting to correct behavior. So people who go over and over and over at it - it's the same thing. No judgment, being totally neutral is most simple. Functioning like a machine. It's easier to just call it aspergers or neurologically distinct. Can't know people's intentions and inferring them to be intentionally malicious can lead to disaster. The problem of wanting to avoid the truly worst things that could happen in life. Not just because bad things have happened, but because, hyper-awareness. We are always connected to things that say 'bad things happen to people' and not everything can be explained away. Talent, necessity, etc. Survival instinct. Calling it talent seems to be a diminutive, it directs the focus towards something narcissistic, vain - easy to prejudice against. Some things are born from necessity. Process of continual refinement, it's a compulsion because it says "I need to survive".
foldr 8y ago
I don't think that's true in general, because you can be a perfectionist about things that don't require any special talent to get right (just lots of time and effort). To take a trivial example, someone might be a perfectionist about ensuring that their shirts are perfectly ironed, but that has nothing (necessarily) to do with a lack of talent for ironing.
unknowns 8y ago
It’s amazing to me how you pass off your opinions as fact. X Is Y. No hint of “I believe” or “my opinion is...” Let me tell you first hand. You have no clue what you are talking about and should spend an hour or so reading up on the topic. The most talented writers the world has ever seen have been crippled by perfectionism. Often going months without a Single word written. As you state the resolution is scientifically proven. Become more talented. I would love to see you say this to Harper lee or Truman capotes face.
holografix 8y ago
This ^

by pygy_ 8y ago

JadeNB 8y ago

> A perfectionist is someone with more exigence than talent. My dictionary defines 'exigence' (which I had not encountered before) as "an urgent need or demand", and I find that hard to parse. Is either of the parses "… who is more demanding than talented" or (like "grasp exceeds reach") "… whose demands exceed his or her talent" correct? If not, would you mind clarifying?

noisem4ker 8y ago
I think you got it. A perfectionist's demands to self (as in standards they think should be reached) exceed what their talent can actually deliver.
pygy_ 8y ago
My bad, "exigence" is a French word whose meaning isn't exactly identical in English. To be exigent means to have a high standard. The verb "exiger" means "to require". English adds an urgency dimension that doesn't exist in French. Many French words built on that template (direct latin root + -ent/-ence suffix) can be used as is in English, but it is not always the case.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  To make this point relevant, are you more familiar with French and thereby translating an idea of yours in French to English with a not-quite-perfect cognate? Without such a connection, the reasoning for stating this is unclear to me. Could you clarify?
  - pygy_ 8y ago
    I'm a native French speaker, fluently thinking in English. There's a vast pool of vocabulary that is common to both languages, from which I draw words indiscriminately (Latin roots and the same formula to derive verbs/nouns/adjectives, with minor variations for each langage (e.g. add "-ate" for verbs in Englsih and "-er" in French)). Some of these are so-called "false friends", with different meanings in both languages. I have a spidey sense that works most of the time in the English => French direction (e.g. "consistent"), less so in the other.
    - stochastic_monk 8y ago
      Thank you, I wasn’t quite sure. As a native English speaker who has learned French, I’ve often run into “faux amis”. Perhaps the most embarrassing was “préservatifs”, which I expected to mean preservatives but actually meant condoms.
      - pygy_ 8y ago
        Ooh, yes, that one must have been embarrassing indeed :-) "Préservatif" is such a weird euphemism.
        stochastic_monk 8y ago
        “Prophylactic” is no less bizarre.
        pygy_ 8y ago
        Wow TIL. I have a medical background, so I'm familiar with the "preventive" meaning, but I wasn't aware of the "contraceptive" one.
        JadeNB 8y ago
        > “Prophylactic” is no less bizarre. Isn't it (less bizarre)? My dictionary gives the medical meaning of prophylactic as "intended to prevent disease"; using it to refer to contraception just requires a more generous conception of 'disease'. By contrast, if 'préservatif' in French were translated to 'preservative' in English, it would mean, again according to my dictionary, "a substance used to preserve … against decay." I find it a bit more of a stretch to generalise this to pregnancy. On the other hand, maybe it is just my English-speaker-ness showing through that I can think of pregnancy much more easily as a disease (it literally causes dis-ease …) than as decay.
- hinkley 8y ago
  I figured out what you meant. I suspect a lot of other Romance language students did too. Exiger seems like a 4th year sort of word though, and a lot of us unfortunately are only required to take 2 or 3 years, and German or Japanese are not uncommon.
implements 8y ago
> (which I had not encountered before) Me neither, in this context - though there's the US legal concept of "exigent circumstances" which allows police officers to enter property without a warrant if they believe a crime is in progress.
- JadeNB 8y ago
  > Me neither, in this context - though there's the US legal concept of "exigent circumstances" which allows police officers to enter property without a warrant if they believe a crime is in progress. Indeed, I had encountered 'exigency' and so had some idea of the general idea—just never 'exigence'.

tjoff 8y ago

I don't think I've met too many untalented perfectionist, I'm sure they exist though (feels like an unfortunate combo). I just feel talent is orthogonal to perfectionism.

pygy_ 8y ago
Not necessarily untalented, but not as talented as they wish they were. Edit: In other words, it's easier to have good taste than it is to be good at designing/producing something.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  You sound like you are projecting, honestly. Maybe you've been around perfectionists that worked against you rather than with you. The point of perfectionism is to be more talented. If you read too deeply into that and don't look at the whole picture, of course it's going to be annoying. But the root starts with a desire to be better because the feeling of stagnation is intolerable.
  - pygy_ 8y ago
    > You sound like you are projecting, honestly. Spot on. > Maybe you've been around perfectionists that worked against you rather than with you. That would have been me :-) > The point of perfectionism is to be more talented. That's part of what I meant when I said "Resolution lies on either end, depending on how possible/practical it is to improve a given skill." Another way to resolve the tension is to accept to have lower standards and go on with your life. Both options can be valid, depending on the circumstances. Edit: Also sometimes, no one can humanly become as talented as one would like, yet going at it over and over until you're satisfied is the right thing to do.
    - s-shellfish 8y ago
      > Another way to resolve the tension is to accept to have lower standards and go on with your life. For myself, long run, that is going to increase tension for me internally. I can't force myself to be satisfied with myself if I am not. I'd rather believe in a world that lacks absolute standards in perpetuity and have to consider myself perpetually adaptive than believe I've either succumbed to some group think ideology of 'relaxing' because it's comfortable for people who are fine with me being substandard (and then I get stuck with the problem of - is this because they are using me for their own comparison?), or been indoctrinated into stupid thinking that is fine with lowering my standards because it judges me based on a particular context that may not be indicative of an overall trend of my life absolutely. > "Resolution lies on either end, depending on how possible/practical it is to improve a given skill." At the end of the day pragmatism must be valued. Competition between people is useful but if it turns into a downward spiral of stepping on one another arbitrarily without reason, logic, without any ends tied to the means - then there is no united sense of progress from which every person inside a group can orient direction in thinking, and unifying action into something beautiful. I'm a software developer and computer scientist, so, all the spaces between coding (thinking, interacting) need to be filled in and can't always be explicitly stated. People have to make assumptions, it's easier to just decide - do you like where you are? Do you like the people around you? Can you see value in all of this? If you can't do that, that is when competition becomes destructive rather than productive. Being able to identify these things in real time, continual process of living life. I wish I could be weak sometimes just because it's easier, but my life hasn't allowed me to be. I make mistakes continuously and sometimes they are plain to see, not only to myself, but to everybody. The awareness of this - in perpetuity. This connects people to systems that are always attempting to correct behavior. So people who go over and over and over at it - it's the same thing. No judgment, being totally neutral is most simple. Functioning like a machine. It's easier to just call it aspergers or neurologically distinct. Can't know people's intentions and inferring them to be intentionally malicious can lead to disaster. The problem of wanting to avoid the truly worst things that could happen in life. Not just because bad things have happened, but because, hyper-awareness. We are always connected to things that say 'bad things happen to people' and not everything can be explained away. Talent, necessity, etc. Survival instinct. Calling it talent seems to be a diminutive, it directs the focus towards something narcissistic, vain - easy to prejudice against. Some things are born from necessity. Process of continual refinement, it's a compulsion because it says "I need to survive".

foldr 8y ago

I don't think that's true in general, because you can be a perfectionist about things that don't require any special talent to get right (just lots of time and effort). To take a trivial example, someone might be a perfectionist about ensuring that their shirts are perfectly ironed, but that has nothing (necessarily) to do with a lack of talent for ironing.

unknowns 8y ago

It’s amazing to me how you pass off your opinions as fact. X Is Y. No hint of “I believe” or “my opinion is...” Let me tell you first hand. You have no clue what you are talking about and should spend an hour or so reading up on the topic. The most talented writers the world has ever seen have been crippled by perfectionism. Often going months without a Single word written. As you state the resolution is scientifically proven. Become more talented. I would love to see you say this to Harper lee or Truman capotes face.

holografix 8y ago

This ^