7 ms·

Taming Perfectionism

170 points by apgwoz 18y ago

critic 18y ago
Speaking of perfectionism, look at my karma! (but don't upmod or downmod me, or you'll ruin it)
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- maneesh 18y ago
  what was it?
  - critic 18y ago
    111
kirse 18y ago
Inability to achieve any lasting perfection is not fought, but embraced via lack of symmetry, respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity. Imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness is incorporated directly into the design No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack of internal self-acceptance. For us who build and produce, it can be a vicious cycle of obsessing over the details, succeeding, and then reaping external validation from others for that success. However, I would question this approach that says "these external things I make will always be imperfect" instead of simply saying "I internally accept myself, in entirety, for who I am." The first case only solves issues of perfectionism, while the second - self-acceptance - goes much farther than just addressing perfectionist tendencies.
- ruby_roo 18y ago
  How does one accept themselves for what they are? How does that work exactly? And what does it mean to have accepted yourself for who you are? Serious question. I just get the impression that we have different ideas of what this means, and if we could be more definitive, the 'how to' should become obvious. This is something I struggle with personally, so I'm very interested to see what others say.
  - kirse 18y ago
    -- This is something I struggle with personally Don't worry, you're not alone, every single person does. -- How does one accept themselves for what they are? This is such a deep question that I honestly can't provide an easy answer, and it would be foolish of me to claim that I knew an easy answer. When I say self-acceptance, I'm talking about being entirely at peace with one's self and being completely content in life (true happiness). Self-acceptance is something that is unique to everyone's own personal situation. Your troubles are different than mine, and my experiences are different than yours. So what you might have to overcome was easy for me, and what I have to overcome may be easy for you. Nevertheless, since you asked, I personally find I am most at peace with myself through Christianity. I believe that I'm placed here on Earth with a purpose and a plan, and can completely accept myself (faults and all) because I have a God that accepts and loves me unconditionally for who I am, imperfections and all. It really is that simple, and it becomes more self-evident every day that it just plain works. While religion hardly goes well over the net, I think this board is intelligent enough to understand this one thing: It is often said that religion is a crutch, but everyone needs a crutch to get through life. For me, the thing that delivers an unshakeable self-acceptance and true happiness is following Christianity. Good luck on your search, many others are on your path, including myself. =)
    - coffeemug 18y ago
      Actually, if you're sufficiently intelligent and open-minded, you're bound to eventually run into religion. Not necessarily in a sense that you'll accept that an Abrahamic God (or some other gods) created the universe, but in a sense that you'll wonder about what it must be like to view the world from that point of view. The real religious thinkers were philosophers a world apart from how many on the internet perceive the religious right.
      - SapphireSun 18y ago
        That's a great lead in to something I really wanted to discuss on HN. I was in my ethics class today and my professor started talking about plato's cave allegory, how one can only know good by doing, not talking (he did note the irony of teaching a class about this), and other such topics. Eventually he told a story that struck me as very similar to what you describe. He said he met a bunch of Cistercian monks and talked with them a while and that the most interesting thing about them was that they seemed to hold no views about the world. They were supposed to be catholic, but they didn't pray anymore, they didn't seem to care about abortion (as an issue, not that they took a side), they didn't make any assumptions about god's shape. It was radically different from the popular conception of monks. The professor said that the only thing that they believed in was that god was present, and that the universe was a wondrous thing to behold. They just basked in the glory of existence. This surprised me, because I thought that the thinking of the most religious people would be radically different from the perspective of science. Both ask why, and have intellectual integrity about it. The major difference between the two is that science constantly asks "how?". My professor said that the monks acted kind of like they were stoned. Perhaps the true difference between the two prespectives is that the monks are on downers and the scientists are on uppers :-).
- bpyne 18y ago
  Your observation about perfectionism's root is astute. However, ego is a pale imitation of internal self-acceptance but is often mistaken for it. We still need to have enough wisdom to know that v1.0 is probably not as good as it can be while v10.0 is probably as good as it will be.
- Eliezer 18y ago
  No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack of internal self-acceptance. Not everything that sounds Deeply Wise is actually true. Try doing math with imperfect proofs and see how long it takes to arrive at a contradiction. Ariane 5 blew up thanks to a floating-point error. Some things in life require perfection. The error lies in applying the same standard to things that don't.
  - kirse 18y ago
    I can't tell if this is a joke or serious. Either way, what you're saying here is that someone who does a math problem the right way is a perfectionist. That's correct in one sense of the word, however, under this specific context where we are discussing "perfectionism", doing a math problem the right way does not make one a "perfectionist".
    - yters 18y ago
      Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof is perfectionism. That can be quite hard. There are a large number of things in our modern world where not shooting for perfection can be disastrous. Space flight is one area, finances is another, weapons targeting a third, etc. Great art is also known by its perfection.
      - jfarmer 18y ago
        "Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof is perfectionism." Oh, I don't know about that. Mathematicians obsess over the "beauty" of a proof as much as hackers/programmers obsess over the "beauty" of their code. For some proving it the ugly way is insufficient.
      - gravitycop 18y ago
        Space flight is one area [where not shooting for perfection can be disastrous]. No. Perfectionism has been the single leading cause of every spaceflight "disaster". http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf A final area needing cultural change to achieve lower launch costs is one that cuts across virtually every part of government and the aerospace industry that is involved in space system development and operations. [...] Fear of failure, and the consequent lack of tolerance for it, dominates the thinking of many engineers and aerospace managers to the point of having major effect on the design and operation of space systems. [...] Today’s space leaders in this country need to recapture the spirit and vision of bold adventurism and risk acceptance to open avenues for reductions in space system costs and new space program starts. This will require strong courage by space managers as well as politicians to weather the storms of inevitable failures and continue to press forward. To help ameliorate the emotional, political, and financial impact of failures, the launching of cargo and the launching of people should be forever separated as soon as possible. As the cost of space launch comes down, launches (at least those that are unmanned) will become more routine and more plentiful. This frequent and common unmanned launch activity will allow any occasional accident that does occur to be treated with no more significance than any other accident that does not involve a loss of life or injury to people, or damage to the environment.
dustmop 18y ago
defmacro doesn't post very often, but I always enjoy when he does.
- waldrews 18y ago
  perhaps he's a perfectionist about his writing?
jsmcgd 18y ago
When did you make this realisation?
prakash 18y ago
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm
- chris11 18y ago
  It's also available from Gutenburg. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/769 http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/769
jcromartie 18y ago
"Real artists ship" may very well be an acceptable western analog to Wabi Sabi.
raju 18y ago
"I've heard that "perfect is the enemy of good enough" many times, but the repressed artist in me refused to accept this as truth" - Thank you! I still have this issue about perfectionism. I am constantly reading, trying to perfect my knowledge of the framework I am using, CSS guidelines to ensure that the UI is perfect, patterns book and software development books to make sure I know a code smell, always trying to write the perfect code or pick the perfect color that I have NEVER seen a side project to fruition. This might have to do with what kirse said - it may have to do with the way I look at myself internally. But it certainly proves to be an impediment. The "fail fast, fail early fail often" matra does not work so well for me, especially when I have complete control over the final outcome. I will certainly find that book and see if it helps me. But its nice to know someone else was in my shoes, and found a way to work with it, rather than fighting it.
- jonny_noog 18y ago
  I still have this issue about perfectionism. I am constantly reading, trying to perfect my knowledge of the framework I am using, CSS guidelines to ensure that the UI is perfect, patterns book and software development books to make sure I know a code smell, always trying to write the perfect code or pick the perfect color ... I think there are a lot more people struggling with this problem that any of us realise. Particularly, it would seem, in areas where technical knowledge intersects with endevours that would traditionally be classed at "art". Personally, I think this has got to be one of the most useful articles I've read in months. This kind of stuff is why I keep coming here.
jayair 18y ago
Lets ignore the term perfectionism and its meaning for a second. We are people who build and produce (as someone in the comments so eloquently put it) and let say we set out to build X. X happens to takes a set of inputs and produces a set of outputs. It can be built in many different ways, each of which can be affected by a set of external factors. The effects of many of these factors are under our control, other however are not. We have a vision for X and a vision for how people will use it to accomplish a certain task. Given all these factors (and many others) we build v1 and end up with X'. We look at X' and realize its not the same as X. The difference is caused (lets assume) due to the set of external factors we ignored, set of inputs that we didn't consider and the resulting set of outputs that we couldn't have expected. Now it should be clear that X != X' is because we didn't consider all the cases along the way. But as human beings we learn from our mistakes and we iterate and X' grows closer to X over time. The important part here is that we iterate and iterations take time. The author of the article states that "I knew that real artists ship, but I refused to ship mediocre work, which meant I could never ship anything.". Now does he mean he couldn't ship v1 or that he was awe struck by the discrepancies between X and X' that he couldn't iterate. I also don't understand this part about "...but embraced via lack of symmetry, respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity.". Does he mean we need to accept that we will never be able to perfect what we do? If so then I think he is wrong. We might not get it right on the first try and depending on the complexity of the task we might not get it right on the 100th try but as human beings you can bet that we wont rest till we get it right. Perfectionism to me is a result of the process of iteration that is carved into our very being. Being human is not the achievement of perfection or in his case the acceptance of our lack of, it is the pursuit of perfection. And the day I forget that fact is the day I would stagnate and perish.
- arakyd 18y ago
  Sounds like your attitude is pretty healthy. As a perfectionist myself, let me say that the key is being able to continue working on v1 even when you anticipate the potential for a problem with the finished v1. The perfectionist failure mode is to restart the iteration every single time a potential problem is perceived. The perfectionist cannot stand the idea that anything, even v1, might fail in a way that was remotely preventable. The perfectionist iterates, but the iteration is a very tight loop that is not large enough to collect good feedback. In pathological cases the iteration never leaves the mind. The obvious problem is that these "mistakes" are far too small to learn anything useful from. It does no good to tell the perfectionist that they have to iterate and learn from failure, because that is exactly what the perfectionist is doing. The problem is that it is more complicated than that - one also has to have the right kind of failures. A person with a healthy attitude towards failure won't even think about it and will naturally tend to let the problem dictate the optimal size of the iteration loop, but the perfectionist will usually always keep their loop too tight to be efficient, or to get anything useful done at all. Being able to let go of that requires the ability to ignore or accept a certain kind of imperfection. Perfection in the limit requires the acceptance and embrace of permanent lack of perfection everywhere else, but especially in the builder. That is what is so hard for the perfectionist to do.
vlad 18y ago
There's a good point to this I want to mention. THere is a good way to tell when you're a prefectionist. (Evefybody goes through this, some more than others.) I am righjt now in the I-dont-careab-out-perfection mode, which actually feels nice. This is so because I had a boring winter break without much contact with people, so when college started up again, I didn't care ab out being obsessed over stupid things, I'm just happy to be taking a lot of classes, where the fine details are just so minute to me right now. So I can tell you right now that yes, acceptance of yourself (e.g. confidence) is true. Another is trusting your intuition 100%. Inotherwords, I had decided to let my left-brain just take care of things without worrying about the beautiy, structure, form, etc that the right-brain always doubts us to. The more we learn about what it takes to be a professional in something, the more our right-brain tries to stop us. So I thought I should just trust my left-brain to just do whatever tasks my eyes and brain remind me to do, and it's been working great. Feels liberating. But here's the point of what I wanted to say. HEre's how you can tell when you're in the perfectionism zone. It's when you constantly notice people nitpicking you, and you actually realize that it is happening, and you point it out. All three things happen. Lets go over them each one. First, I said nitpcking, not just someone actually giving true, very useful differences. For example, I wrote spring semester instead of winter semester in the top half of this comment. Since I'm ignoring stupid spelling and minor grammar errors for now (Something I never do, if you read my other posts) to prove a point, I still changed spring to winter because that was a genuine thing that was a problem or a bug with the comment. I also just now rearranged some wording a few sentences prior, where i moved the parenthesis--because it was confusing. I didn't care that thew ord Something was capitalized for on reason. But a big grammar mistake, sure that's importnat to fix because it means hte reader has to read over three times to understand, but itf its just a spelling mistake, then its okay. So what I notice happening is that people are constantly nitpicking by saying things that were clearly not thought out, either jokes or trying to show how smart they are by saying do x , y or z. In all those cases, they were not actual useful feedback, but just a way for a person to feel like they're contributing or smart. So that stuff you can ignore. The point is that when ur not a perfectionist, as I am not right now, then you notice this. Number two, you point it out, like I said. You feel comfortable expressing confusion (what an idiot the person is for suggesting somethign that is the same thing but said off the cuff, what a waste of my time, if it's insulting), or SUnday and today, there was a girl who just would not stop nitpicking or be quiet. SO I would tell her she was controlling and annoying and I Just said it straight up. She literally would not stop 4 or 5 times in both cases to keep making some nitpicking in something, giving wilder and crazier things. ANd the last thing would be of course to realize it's happening, which most people don't. THere's notnhing more freeing than to know that what you juts did is of value and easy to understand, and if there's one or 400 spelling errosr its okay. Of course in this case im overdoingit. And the flow of text is easy to follow, as I fixed any big mistakes. But I am not modifying things because of being insecure or worried, any changes I made were because something I wrote, if I left it like that, would be tought to parse. So I hope this helps and of course I"m not going to sepnd 1 hour (seriously, thats what I do sometimes) fixing a post.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

170 points by apgwoz 18y ago

critic 18y ago

Speaking of perfectionism, look at my karma! (but don't upmod or downmod me, or you'll ruin it)

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
maneesh 18y ago
what was it?
- critic 18y ago
  111

kirse 18y ago

Inability to achieve any lasting perfection is not fought, but embraced via lack of symmetry, respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity. Imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness is incorporated directly into the design No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack of internal self-acceptance. For us who build and produce, it can be a vicious cycle of obsessing over the details, succeeding, and then reaping external validation from others for that success. However, I would question this approach that says "these external things I make will always be imperfect" instead of simply saying "I internally accept myself, in entirety, for who I am." The first case only solves issues of perfectionism, while the second - self-acceptance - goes much farther than just addressing perfectionist tendencies.

ruby_roo 18y ago
How does one accept themselves for what they are? How does that work exactly? And what does it mean to have accepted yourself for who you are? Serious question. I just get the impression that we have different ideas of what this means, and if we could be more definitive, the 'how to' should become obvious. This is something I struggle with personally, so I'm very interested to see what others say.
- kirse 18y ago
  -- This is something I struggle with personally Don't worry, you're not alone, every single person does. -- How does one accept themselves for what they are? This is such a deep question that I honestly can't provide an easy answer, and it would be foolish of me to claim that I knew an easy answer. When I say self-acceptance, I'm talking about being entirely at peace with one's self and being completely content in life (true happiness). Self-acceptance is something that is unique to everyone's own personal situation. Your troubles are different than mine, and my experiences are different than yours. So what you might have to overcome was easy for me, and what I have to overcome may be easy for you. Nevertheless, since you asked, I personally find I am most at peace with myself through Christianity. I believe that I'm placed here on Earth with a purpose and a plan, and can completely accept myself (faults and all) because I have a God that accepts and loves me unconditionally for who I am, imperfections and all. It really is that simple, and it becomes more self-evident every day that it just plain works. While religion hardly goes well over the net, I think this board is intelligent enough to understand this one thing: It is often said that religion is a crutch, but everyone needs a crutch to get through life. For me, the thing that delivers an unshakeable self-acceptance and true happiness is following Christianity. Good luck on your search, many others are on your path, including myself. =)
  - coffeemug 18y ago
    Actually, if you're sufficiently intelligent and open-minded, you're bound to eventually run into religion. Not necessarily in a sense that you'll accept that an Abrahamic God (or some other gods) created the universe, but in a sense that you'll wonder about what it must be like to view the world from that point of view. The real religious thinkers were philosophers a world apart from how many on the internet perceive the religious right.
    - SapphireSun 18y ago
      That's a great lead in to something I really wanted to discuss on HN. I was in my ethics class today and my professor started talking about plato's cave allegory, how one can only know good by doing, not talking (he did note the irony of teaching a class about this), and other such topics. Eventually he told a story that struck me as very similar to what you describe. He said he met a bunch of Cistercian monks and talked with them a while and that the most interesting thing about them was that they seemed to hold no views about the world. They were supposed to be catholic, but they didn't pray anymore, they didn't seem to care about abortion (as an issue, not that they took a side), they didn't make any assumptions about god's shape. It was radically different from the popular conception of monks. The professor said that the only thing that they believed in was that god was present, and that the universe was a wondrous thing to behold. They just basked in the glory of existence. This surprised me, because I thought that the thinking of the most religious people would be radically different from the perspective of science. Both ask why, and have intellectual integrity about it. The major difference between the two is that science constantly asks "how?". My professor said that the monks acted kind of like they were stoned. Perhaps the true difference between the two prespectives is that the monks are on downers and the scientists are on uppers :-).
bpyne 18y ago
Your observation about perfectionism's root is astute. However, ego is a pale imitation of internal self-acceptance but is often mistaken for it. We still need to have enough wisdom to know that v1.0 is probably not as good as it can be while v10.0 is probably as good as it will be.
Eliezer 18y ago
No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack of internal self-acceptance. Not everything that sounds Deeply Wise is actually true. Try doing math with imperfect proofs and see how long it takes to arrive at a contradiction. Ariane 5 blew up thanks to a floating-point error. Some things in life require perfection. The error lies in applying the same standard to things that don't.
- kirse 18y ago
  I can't tell if this is a joke or serious. Either way, what you're saying here is that someone who does a math problem the right way is a perfectionist. That's correct in one sense of the word, however, under this specific context where we are discussing "perfectionism", doing a math problem the right way does not make one a "perfectionist".
  - yters 18y ago
    Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof is perfectionism. That can be quite hard. There are a large number of things in our modern world where not shooting for perfection can be disastrous. Space flight is one area, finances is another, weapons targeting a third, etc. Great art is also known by its perfection.
    - jfarmer 18y ago
      "Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof is perfectionism." Oh, I don't know about that. Mathematicians obsess over the "beauty" of a proof as much as hackers/programmers obsess over the "beauty" of their code. For some proving it the ugly way is insufficient.
    - gravitycop 18y ago
      Space flight is one area [where not shooting for perfection can be disastrous]. No. Perfectionism has been the single leading cause of every spaceflight "disaster". http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf A final area needing cultural change to achieve lower launch costs is one that cuts across virtually every part of government and the aerospace industry that is involved in space system development and operations. [...] Fear of failure, and the consequent lack of tolerance for it, dominates the thinking of many engineers and aerospace managers to the point of having major effect on the design and operation of space systems. [...] Today’s space leaders in this country need to recapture the spirit and vision of bold adventurism and risk acceptance to open avenues for reductions in space system costs and new space program starts. This will require strong courage by space managers as well as politicians to weather the storms of inevitable failures and continue to press forward. To help ameliorate the emotional, political, and financial impact of failures, the launching of cargo and the launching of people should be forever separated as soon as possible. As the cost of space launch comes down, launches (at least those that are unmanned) will become more routine and more plentiful. This frequent and common unmanned launch activity will allow any occasional accident that does occur to be treated with no more significance than any other accident that does not involve a loss of life or injury to people, or damage to the environment.

dustmop 18y ago

defmacro doesn't post very often, but I always enjoy when he does.

waldrews 18y ago
perhaps he's a perfectionist about his writing?

jsmcgd 18y ago

When did you make this realisation?

prakash 18y ago

The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm

chris11 18y ago
It's also available from Gutenburg. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/769 http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/769

jcromartie 18y ago

"Real artists ship" may very well be an acceptable western analog to Wabi Sabi.

raju 18y ago

"I've heard that "perfect is the enemy of good enough" many times, but the repressed artist in me refused to accept this as truth" - Thank you! I still have this issue about perfectionism. I am constantly reading, trying to perfect my knowledge of the framework I am using, CSS guidelines to ensure that the UI is perfect, patterns book and software development books to make sure I know a code smell, always trying to write the perfect code or pick the perfect color that I have NEVER seen a side project to fruition. This might have to do with what kirse said - it may have to do with the way I look at myself internally. But it certainly proves to be an impediment. The "fail fast, fail early fail often" matra does not work so well for me, especially when I have complete control over the final outcome. I will certainly find that book and see if it helps me. But its nice to know someone else was in my shoes, and found a way to work with it, rather than fighting it.

jonny_noog 18y ago
I still have this issue about perfectionism. I am constantly reading, trying to perfect my knowledge of the framework I am using, CSS guidelines to ensure that the UI is perfect, patterns book and software development books to make sure I know a code smell, always trying to write the perfect code or pick the perfect color ... I think there are a lot more people struggling with this problem that any of us realise. Particularly, it would seem, in areas where technical knowledge intersects with endevours that would traditionally be classed at "art". Personally, I think this has got to be one of the most useful articles I've read in months. This kind of stuff is why I keep coming here.

jayair 18y ago

Lets ignore the term perfectionism and its meaning for a second. We are people who build and produce (as someone in the comments so eloquently put it) and let say we set out to build X. X happens to takes a set of inputs and produces a set of outputs. It can be built in many different ways, each of which can be affected by a set of external factors. The effects of many of these factors are under our control, other however are not. We have a vision for X and a vision for how people will use it to accomplish a certain task. Given all these factors (and many others) we build v1 and end up with X'. We look at X' and realize its not the same as X. The difference is caused (lets assume) due to the set of external factors we ignored, set of inputs that we didn't consider and the resulting set of outputs that we couldn't have expected. Now it should be clear that X != X' is because we didn't consider all the cases along the way. But as human beings we learn from our mistakes and we iterate and X' grows closer to X over time. The important part here is that we iterate and iterations take time. The author of the article states that "I knew that real artists ship, but I refused to ship mediocre work, which meant I could never ship anything.". Now does he mean he couldn't ship v1 or that he was awe struck by the discrepancies between X and X' that he couldn't iterate. I also don't understand this part about "...but embraced via lack of symmetry, respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity.". Does he mean we need to accept that we will never be able to perfect what we do? If so then I think he is wrong. We might not get it right on the first try and depending on the complexity of the task we might not get it right on the 100th try but as human beings you can bet that we wont rest till we get it right. Perfectionism to me is a result of the process of iteration that is carved into our very being. Being human is not the achievement of perfection or in his case the acceptance of our lack of, it is the pursuit of perfection. And the day I forget that fact is the day I would stagnate and perish.

arakyd 18y ago
Sounds like your attitude is pretty healthy. As a perfectionist myself, let me say that the key is being able to continue working on v1 even when you anticipate the potential for a problem with the finished v1. The perfectionist failure mode is to restart the iteration every single time a potential problem is perceived. The perfectionist cannot stand the idea that anything, even v1, might fail in a way that was remotely preventable. The perfectionist iterates, but the iteration is a very tight loop that is not large enough to collect good feedback. In pathological cases the iteration never leaves the mind. The obvious problem is that these "mistakes" are far too small to learn anything useful from. It does no good to tell the perfectionist that they have to iterate and learn from failure, because that is exactly what the perfectionist is doing. The problem is that it is more complicated than that - one also has to have the right kind of failures. A person with a healthy attitude towards failure won't even think about it and will naturally tend to let the problem dictate the optimal size of the iteration loop, but the perfectionist will usually always keep their loop too tight to be efficient, or to get anything useful done at all. Being able to let go of that requires the ability to ignore or accept a certain kind of imperfection. Perfection in the limit requires the acceptance and embrace of permanent lack of perfection everywhere else, but especially in the builder. That is what is so hard for the perfectionist to do.

vlad 18y ago

There's a good point to this I want to mention. THere is a good way to tell when you're a prefectionist. (Evefybody goes through this, some more than others.) I am righjt now in the I-dont-careab-out-perfection mode, which actually feels nice. This is so because I had a boring winter break without much contact with people, so when college started up again, I didn't care ab out being obsessed over stupid things, I'm just happy to be taking a lot of classes, where the fine details are just so minute to me right now. So I can tell you right now that yes, acceptance of yourself (e.g. confidence) is true. Another is trusting your intuition 100%. Inotherwords, I had decided to let my left-brain just take care of things without worrying about the beautiy, structure, form, etc that the right-brain always doubts us to. The more we learn about what it takes to be a professional in something, the more our right-brain tries to stop us. So I thought I should just trust my left-brain to just do whatever tasks my eyes and brain remind me to do, and it's been working great. Feels liberating. But here's the point of what I wanted to say. HEre's how you can tell when you're in the perfectionism zone. It's when you constantly notice people nitpicking you, and you actually realize that it is happening, and you point it out. All three things happen. Lets go over them each one. First, I said nitpcking, not just someone actually giving true, very useful differences. For example, I wrote spring semester instead of winter semester in the top half of this comment. Since I'm ignoring stupid spelling and minor grammar errors for now (Something I never do, if you read my other posts) to prove a point, I still changed spring to winter because that was a genuine thing that was a problem or a bug with the comment. I also just now rearranged some wording a few sentences prior, where i moved the parenthesis--because it was confusing. I didn't care that thew ord Something was capitalized for on reason. But a big grammar mistake, sure that's importnat to fix because it means hte reader has to read over three times to understand, but itf its just a spelling mistake, then its okay. So what I notice happening is that people are constantly nitpicking by saying things that were clearly not thought out, either jokes or trying to show how smart they are by saying do x , y or z. In all those cases, they were not actual useful feedback, but just a way for a person to feel like they're contributing or smart. So that stuff you can ignore. The point is that when ur not a perfectionist, as I am not right now, then you notice this. Number two, you point it out, like I said. You feel comfortable expressing confusion (what an idiot the person is for suggesting somethign that is the same thing but said off the cuff, what a waste of my time, if it's insulting), or SUnday and today, there was a girl who just would not stop nitpicking or be quiet. SO I would tell her she was controlling and annoying and I Just said it straight up. She literally would not stop 4 or 5 times in both cases to keep making some nitpicking in something, giving wilder and crazier things. ANd the last thing would be of course to realize it's happening, which most people don't. THere's notnhing more freeing than to know that what you juts did is of value and easy to understand, and if there's one or 400 spelling errosr its okay. Of course in this case im overdoingit. And the flow of text is easy to follow, as I fixed any big mistakes. But I am not modifying things because of being insecure or worried, any changes I made were because something I wrote, if I left it like that, would be tought to parse. So I hope this helps and of course I"m not going to sepnd 1 hour (seriously, thats what I do sometimes) fixing a post.

deleted 18y ago

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