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Being a perfectionist is an obstacle and how to beat it

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Re: Being a perfectionist is an obstacle and how to beat it

#81
post #5
post #3

I have realized that my perfectionism is a mask for a fragile ego.

ha, that's not exactly what I mean in this post, I hope that's not what you would take away. (although you might just be sarcastic) What leads us to perfect our work (and prevents us from shipping) is hopefully not an ego problem. It's just that we might be too eager to keep improving it, instead of enjoying the current state. It's just like the belief that adding yet another feature to an app will solve everything.

I believe that behavior is in the minority of people. Perfectionism is much more complex affliction than simply striving for perfection.

Re: Being a perfectionist is an obstacle and how to beat it

#82

Lately I've been doing tasks from easiest to hardest. I no longer seem like a perfectionist. Let me explain... I used to do whatever I felt like, and typically, I was doing the hardest tasks first. I would leave the little stuff. "Oh that's easy, I can just do that at the end". Creating social media accounts was the last thing on my TODO list. One day, I thought I'd apply Dave Ramseys "Pay off your debts smallest to…

If I remember correctly, David Allen, of 'Getting Things Done' fame, makes a similar argument: if it can be done in 5 mins or less do it now rather than defer. I've definitely noticed the benefit of this. On the other hand, small things add up and occasionally I've just got to tackle that 5 hour task.

Two minutes or less, but that's the basic idea.

GTD also recommends sorting next actions into contexts where, for example, you don't even think about computer tasks when a computer is not around. By the time an action hits a list, it should be reasonably small yet well defined, similar to Scrum backlog refinement.

Perhaps playing to the crowd, he also wrote[0]

The biggest procrastinators are usually the most sophisticated, sensitive, creative, and intelligent people.

Nailed you, did I? Well, I assume you’re in the sophisticated, creative, and intelligent category. That probably means you have large numbers of things stuck in your mind, in your briefcase, and on your desk about which things are not moving forward quite as consistently as they could be.

Major reason: the precise next physical visible activity (next action) has probably not been decided on the to-do’s. The bright people usually have some sort of reminders about their projects and things to do on lists, in piles, or lying around, so they won’t forget to think about their commitments. Bully. But every time they catch the briefest glimpse of any of them, they instantly race forward in their mind, rapidly and intelligently creating images of all the possible pieces that have to fit together and all the things that might have to be involved in getting them to happen and all the possible negative consequences if any one of them slips (and all the things that they might be forgetting in all this). Whew! Freaked themselves right out. I’d quit, too.

[0]: https://gettingthingsdone.com/2016/06/who-are-the-biggest-pr...

Re: Being a perfectionist is an obstacle and how to beat it

#83
post #41

The book "The Now Habit" offers the perspective that many people who procrastinate suffer from perfectionism. That is, they are so concerned with achieving an idealized result that they are unable to even begin, lest they fail.

"Who are the Biggest Procrastinators?"[0] by David Allen

[0]: https://gettingthingsdone.com/2016/06/who-are-the-biggest-pr...

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