The Problem of Perfection

Practice makes perfect! Who hasn’t heard those words from their parents, their teachers, their employers, or just their well-meaning friends? It’s outwardly quite a positive statement - just keep trying, keep putting in the work, and eventually you’ll attain that flawless performance you’ve been craving for so long. But, as with any thoughts that influence our behaviour, we do have to ask the question - are they useful?

Ceaselessly striving for that perfect result certainly seems like useful behaviour. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t view persistence, hard-work, and a desire for self-improvement as positive qualities. However, we start to run into trouble when that want for improvement turns into a need, and when our needs turn from good results to perfect ones. When that happens, we can start to fall into the trap of perfectionism - and contrary to popular belief, perfectionism may be more likely to impair performance rather than improve it.

Perfectionism is a the tendency to demand and expect extremely high standards of performance, from oneself, others, or both. When we’re talking about clinical perfectionism, however, the standards are far in excess of what is actually required by the situation. Some situations, after all, demand extremely high standards - checking the safety equipment on a space shuttle, calculating the dosage of medication prescribed, or other scenarios in which people may live or die based on minor mistakes. The vast majority, however, are not so inflexible. A score of 95 on an exam may functionally be almost identical to a score of 100, but for those of us living with clinical perfectionism, the perceived difference between the two may be night and day. A fairly well-written email and a very well-written email might perform the same function to an almost identical degree, but someone with clinical perfectionism could spend 30 minutes reading and re-reading what they’ve written in a bid to find the perfect message. Eating a generally healthy, balanced diet is considered sufficient for many of us, but clinical perfectionism demands adherence to rigid, demanding standards of food intake, behaviour, and appearance.

Clinical perfectionism is based upon a foundation of black-and-white thinking. Generally, our assessments of any given situation, task, or person may fall upon a wide spectrum from terrible to perfect, with room in between for ratings of bad, average, excellent, and any number of other qualifiers. When we think in black and white, however, things tend to be judged as falling on the extreme ends of the spectrum -  they’re perfect, or they’re terrible, and there’s no room for anything in between. A performance that’s average, good, or even great can still be labelled as imperfect, and when perfectionism is in effect, imperfect might as well as be terrible.

When we combine that black-and-white style of thinking with the rigid, high standards of performance which characterise perfectionism, we’re left with a recipe for disaster. After all, in perfectionism it’s not just that the expectations are inflexible, but that the standards are virtually impossible to obtain, and even more difficult to maintain. Clinical perfectionism, therefore, often leads us to have standards for our performance that are rigid, inflexible, and unrelenting. Because they’re so demanding, we often fall short, and because of the black-and-white thinking which underlies them, we feel terrible when we do.

Here’s where perfectionism really starts to impair performance, because if we consistently fall short of our standards, and we consistently feel like a failure as a result, our motivation will be steadily drained. What’s the point of trying if we so rarely succeed? And even if we do succeed, it typically doesn’t feel so good. If you get an A+ on an assignment, but an A+ is what you demanded, then you’ve just achieved the minimal possible acceptable result. It’s fine. It’s what you were supposed to get. And feeling like you did just “fine” doesn’t feel great when you consider the amount of effort you put into the task. Over time, perfectionism creates an environment for us that drains us of rewards and amplifies our failures, leaving us with little motivation to even try.

That’s a very doom-and-gloom picture of perfectionism, and it often surprises people to hear it spoken of so negatively. Many of you have probably been described as perfectionists by your friends or family on occasion, and may not have noticed any significant struggles as a result. Part of this might be influenced by the way in which psychological terms often get diluted over time. Just like someone might describe themselves as “OCD” when they actually mean “organised”, we might be called a perfectionist when really, we just have high standards. But make no mistake, clinical perfectionism, perfectionism to the degree that it has a real and consistent negative impact on performance and happiness, does exist, and can be the basis for a number of mental health conditions. Anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and eating disorders can all have their origins in or be maintained by clinical perfectionism. If you constantly find yourself setting impossible standards for yourself, beating yourself up when you don’t achieve them, or procrastinating task after task because you’re never quite sure it’ll be good enough, it’s a good idea to speak to a mental health professional. Perfectionism is exhausting, and getting some relief from our own standards is a goal worth striving for.