Like a few others, I disagree with his point about perfectionism being a bad quality. I suppose this may just come down to semantics (the definition of perfecti

Like a few others, I disagree with his point about perfectionism being a bad quality. I suppose this may just come down to semantics (the definition of perfectionism), but I don't think being a perfectionist necessarily means that one is incapable of deciding when to release and move on. I've been a perfectionist my entire life. In elementary school, I used to do all my work in pen. It felt neater and more permanent. When I was forced to use pencil, I would throw away entire sheets of paper rather than erase and leave a smudge. In high school, my latin teacher called me "Mr. P", short for "Mr. Perfection." He'd hold up my quizzes for the class to see, and laugh at how I used a ruler to perfectly frame the declension tables I'd drawn, and how I'd used my pencil to lightly shade the background of the title row. Excessive? Yes. But I've learned to reign it in and use it to my advantage. A huge percentage of the success of any creative endeavor (whether it's painting, programming, song-writing, whatever) boils down to how much effort its creator put into it. Often, the only difference between a good creator and a great one is the amount of time they spend striving for perfection. If your goal is greatness, a tendency to say "good enough" prematurely can be disastrous. No, give me a pupil with an eye for perfection and the perseverance to achieve it, prioritization skills be damned. I can teach him to prioritize. A pragmatic perfectionist is a force to be reckoned with.