4 ms·
Everyone's experience is different, so it is unsurprising that are parts of this article that resonate very strongly and other parts not at all — overall, very
by svat 5y ago
Everyone's experience is different, so it is unsurprising that are parts of this article that resonate very strongly and other parts not at all — overall, very valuable to have read this.
The philosopher John Perry has a humorous essay called "Procrastination and Perfectionism" that gets to the heart of the matter in a different way:
> Many procrastinators do not realize that they are perfectionists, for the simple reason that they have never done anything perfectly, or even nearly so. […] Perfectionism is a matter of fantasy, not reality.
(More at https://web.archive.org/web/20111120152858/http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/light/perfectionism.php https://web.archive.org/web/20111120152858/http://www.struct...)
Minor pedantic point about the aticle: IIRC, the quote about Gauss from E. T. Bell was more about Gauss "hiding his tracks" like a fox with its tail ("Had he divulged what he knew"…) rather than taking too long because of perfectonism.
(This comment was typed with a 5-minute timer! It feels very uncomfortable to just hit submit without cleaning it up, but I've come to realize that that discomfort is part of growth.)
- svat 5y agoTangent: I was wrong about E. T. Bell's quote about Gauss: the page (229–230) discusses both: https://archive.org/details/menofmathematics0000bell/page/229/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/menofmathematics0000bell/page/22... The quote about the fox does not seem to be in Bell's book, but some stuff about it here: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/3610/what-is-the-original-source-for-abels-quote-about-gausshe-is-like-the-fox-wh https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/3610/what-is-the-ori...
- dimal 5y agoInteresting that the behavior Perry describes is now being called “maladaptive daydreaming”. It’s not in the DSM yet, but it probably should be. It’s highly comorbid with obsessive compulsive disorders, which is also associated with perfectionism.
- kettleballroll 5y ago"Comorbid" implies that it's lethal, doesn't it? Wouldn't "correlated" be better here?
- cloudier 5y agoNo, it’s a medical term that just means one condition often appears with another condition (e.g. maladaptive daydreaming often occurs with OCD).
- jack_pp 5y agoThat and the previous Structured Procrastination essay which I have read but forgotten about are great complementary essays to the posted article. Thank you for sharing them. I am in a deep hole due to these problems and serendipity has it that I came upon these resources at the best of times. Thank you again