This piece was authored by Sandra Yonter, SVP Europe, New Markets & Artist Community.
According to Dictionary.com, perfectionism is a personal standard, attitude, or philosophy that demands perfection and rejects anything less.
I am a high achiever and used to be a perfectionist. I have always set unreasonably high expectations for myself. I wanted things to be perfect, all the time. To the point that I pressured myself and it drove me nuts when I was not meeting the expectations (that I had set myself) or thought my performance would never be high enough for my environment, at work but also in private life. That caused me to take courses outside of school time when I was a student (because my grades had to be the highest), work outside of official working hours or skip weekends and holidays to get more work done.
While analysing why I kept on being promoted, I thought it was the result of working hard and the management being grateful for my efforts. My tendency for perfectionism might actually have been reinforced by the culture of the companies I was working for, always asking for more to be achieved: more projects to be handled, high sales growth, increased productivity (like that email from Elon Musk to his employees), more working hours, etc.
And then I had the chance to join Redbubble, a company with caring leaders, who value work-life balance and wanted to make sure I was investing the right amount of time and energy in my work. I also had the chance to have a coach guiding me in my working style, and I managed to change.
There are different reasons for being a perfectionist. Mine was a “Self-oriented Perfectionism”, linked to education and social environment. My parents are disabled and come from a low social class. They were not given the chance to live a normal social life and they transferred all their dreams to me. I took on the responsibility to succeed where they did not have the chance to even try out. I wanted them to be proud and compensate for their disadvantage. I thought I did not have the right to fail in front of them.
On top of that, we live in an hyper competitive environment and social media conveys an image of perfection, pushing for overachievement to be the norm. Gender affects living ethics and working life (“Socially prescribed Perfectionism”). Women are not given equal chances to professionally succeed. The CEOs of the companies I had been working for were all men. When I started working in 1996, the rate of women CEOs in Fortune 500 was 0,2%! Luckily this has evolved with the time to reach 4,8% in 2018. But that shows how moving up and through organisations is more difficult for women and requires more efforts and visible results.
But perfectionism generates ongoing stress, trying to cope with the high level of expectations for all what needs to be accomplished. It generates frustration because eventually we are never satisfied for what we have (“it could be even better, can’t it?”). And what is a perfect delivery in the first place? It can generate inefficiency, putting so many extra hours to “get things perfect” instead of being simply productive and potentially having extra time to do other types of activities or recover and relax. And I’m not talking about the risk to delay a task or even not starting a task at all, being afraid of not delivering to perfection (or even completely failing). It also has a negative impact on the environment, professional or personal, as it is exhausting/demotivating to be partnering with a perfectionist ; it can affect the relationship. And I received a surprising comment from my manager, that I could be demotivating my team members by setting — unexpressed — unrealistic standards.
All in all, that helped me discover for the first time that perfectionism was counterproductive. And it became obvious that I needed to let go of the need to be perfect. But how?
Some recommend to make baby steps. In my case I needed to make this a BIG change. First of all, I had to learn to know and respect myself and recognise my core value.
Carrying something with you all the time is a powerful reminder of your willingness to change (and this is applicable to all types of changes); it can be a bracelet, a post it note in your wallet or your wall. In my case, I choose to get a tattoo! I know this can sound a bit extreme but “desperate times call for desperate measures“.
And I applied this new principle to everything in my life. I had to think about it at the beginning of each task, every day. Being fine with potential imperfections and prioritizing what seems more important and worth extra efforts.
At home, it implied not systematically checking if the kids’ room was clean when leaving home (and tidying up on their behalf), saying no when the kids wanted me to give them a ride to meet friends (yes, I don’t need that to be a good mother). At work, it meant not reading an email more than twice, checking the expectations prior to starting working on a project (instead of assuming what’s expected), not spending more than a pre-defined amount of time on a specific task (inspired by the Pomodoro Technique from Francesco Cirillo).
Then I could see that those didn’t have much consequence, nor did it affect the relationship or the satisfaction level of the work delivered. More importantly, I enjoyed every action because I believed in its purpose and did not worry about how it was expected, about what I should be doing instead or feeling under unnecessary pressure.
