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Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

solvingprocrastination.com

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Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#191

Post by jopsen »

gloryjulio wrote: post #106
kthejoker2 wrote: post #100

I probably have a whole personal blog of my own on the topic, dear as it is to my soul. My two main pieces of advice: The bar is very very low, and share your burden quickly. 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly. I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a "this…

> 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly. Agree with this. Shipping is the most important quality. The faster you ship the faster you would be enjoying anything

> Shipping is the most important quality.

There is something to be said for the good old days when we modified PHP files in an editor over FTP :)

Never done it professionally. But developing in production would make me ship faster, and using php would probably limit my tendency to make gold plated solutions.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#192

Post by majormajor »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #143
Aurornis wrote: post #88

I developed a bad case of perfectionism-procrastination after working for a toxic boss. It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack, dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app took 3 secon…

You put into words something I've had a hard time understanding for a long time. Some people really do have a clear preference for people who don't ship. Out of curiosity, what kind of background did your toxic boss have? Is it technical or business side? I have a couple hunches for why this happens: 1. These people are dreamers and dislike people who bring them back down to reality, even if they need those people to…

> 1. These people are dreamers and dislike people who bring them back down to reality, even if they need those people to actually build things.

I worked for a non-toxic-personality friendly boss of this type. Took me a long time to figure out how to manage upward in that case. Everything that had worked with previous "builder"-type bosses seemed to backfire and I wasn't sure why.

Because the personality was good it was especially frustrating. Deliver stuff on time without bugs or surprises, but still fail to change his mind about ambitious-yet-unrealistic goals, or put a dent in his confidence in (and preference for) the "idea people" feeding him similar goals in hypothetical-land. "But really, if you'd just build [vague idea], we'd be golden!"

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#194

Post by cf1241290841 »

Apparently there was a job interview "trick" a while back that said that perfectionism was a great option to answer a question for your weakness with a strength.

I never understood who would think this. A core problem of real world economy is that you never have enough time and need to manage it accordingly. The sad truth is, if you dont compensate you will never finish your task as a perfectionist. You will always get half backed solutions that your boss needs to tear away from your very protesting hands. It requires working on yourself to not do that.

A lack of problem appropriate resource management is very much a weakness you need to overcome.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#195

Post by HarryHirsch »

metabagel wrote: post #129
Aurornis wrote: post #88

I developed a bad case of perfectionism-procrastination after working for a toxic boss. It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack, dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app took 3 secon…

Be proud of yourself for surviving that toxic environment and eventually recognizing and overcoming the negative effects it had on your own performance and behavior. You’re a survivor!

The introduction of Tacitus' Agricola is about survivorship, and it is not positive. "Few of us are left, survivors even of ourselves, with so many years of our lives gone missing." (translation from memory)

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#196

Post by whstl »

jopsen wrote: post #191
gloryjulio wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly. Agree with this. Shipping is the most important quality. The faster you ship the faster you would be enjoying anything

> Shipping is the most important quality. There is something to be said for the good old days when we modified PHP files in an editor over FTP :) Never done it professionally. But developing in production would make me ship faster, and using php would probably limit my tendency to make gold plated solutions.

In my C# days, before CI/CD was fashionable, the pinnacle for me was using the "Deploy" button that would compile, run some tests and then deploy. Got a bug? Fix in 5 minutes. Got a typo? Seconds.

Code and software quality was surprisingly better than it is today.

Today? In a process heavy company with Jira, PMs and QA it can become a week-long affair, unless I (the lead developer) bypass parts of the process.

The perfectionism is in the process, but the outcome is not quality. Come to think of it, perfectionism never really leads to anything of quality.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#197

Post by teunispeters »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #94
renegade-otter wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Procrastination is not a new thing. And ADHD is a pretty rare condition - just look at the diagnosis rate from country to country. The US has the highest one because doctors here are basically legal Speed drug dealers - for children. The author of the Search Engine pod just had a two-parter about his "ADHD": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whyd-i-take-speed-for-... (The history of regulating Speed in the US is…

The speed for children scare mongering is pathetic and ignorant and betrays your lack of experience with children with this and related condition. Lots of kids have behavioral and impulse control problems. If you give them amphetamines you see exactly the same problems, but with the boundless energy amphetamines give you. When you give amphetamines to ADHD children they visibly and noticeably become calmer, quieter,…

I have a suspicion the high rate of ADHD may be related to the low rate of employment in kinaesthetic jobs (eg construction, farming, even to a great degree historical militaries) and high rates of high-attention-demand work - which yes, I'll include most fast food industry.

That said ADHD runs through my family like a (mad) bull in a china shop, and yes, hence very much voting this comment up. Lots of individual things can help - getting enough sleep for one, enough exercise ... but at the end of the day, one has to be reasonable and accept that medicines help.

An aside : children under a certain age, one can't (safely) detect ADHD because the symptoms are "ordinary behaviour". This is why I suspect there are lifestyle components too...

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#199

Post by lukas099 »

One thing that made this worse for me is that it actually worked for the first 18 years or so of my life. School work was easy enough that I could be a perfectionist and actually get rewarded for it. But now that the work piles up it's a recipe for anxiety and failure.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#200

Post by Apocryphon »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #100

I probably have a whole personal blog of my own on the topic, dear as it is to my soul. My two main pieces of advice: The bar is very very low, and share your burden quickly. 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly. I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a "this…

It's funny how software interviews run so opposite to this work reality.
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