Perfection Sucks!
Posted by Gail | Filed under Goals, Life Lessons
We can be very hard on ourselves. We take a tumble from our well-laid budget plans and we’re all over ourselves for blowing it. Or we think that because we can’t have our debt paid off lickety-split, we’re just not good enough. But we’re even harder on the people we supposedly love. Let them blow the budget or not jump on our debt repayment bandwagon with all the gusto we expect and we’re ready to bite their heads off.
Look at the way some parents react when their kids bring home a pretty decent mark on a test or assignment. A kid walks in with an 83% on a test and some parents response: “So, where did you go wrong?” In other words, “why didn’t you get 100%” Ouch! And we’re like that with lots of other things: how well you made your bed, how good a job you did when you mowed the lawn, how meticulous you were when you cleaned up the kitchen, swept the hall or dusted the family room. It’s like we’re looking for a reason to criticize, instead of looking for a reason to praise.
Perfectionism – the desire for it all to be done perfectly – is the enemy of productivity. If we don’t get any satisfaction out of the small accomplishments we make losing weight, cleaning up the house, or digging ourselves out of debt, we give up. And so striving to get it all perfectly right is like walking up a hill with an elephant on your back. There’s no joy in it. You’re exhausted before you even start. And you’ll never make it, so you might as well not bother!
How about if you give up on getting it “perfect” and aim instead to do the very best job you can to achieve personal excellence. Yup, you define what is an acceptable outcome and you are happy when you achieve that end. That doesn’t mean settling. And it doesn’t mean setting the bar so low that achieving the end is a no-brainer. Achieving personal excellence is all about eschewing mediocrity and putting your best foot forward.
Now you may be tempted to come up with very good reasons why you can’t achieve personal excellence. “I don’t have time,” is probably the most over-used of excuses. This is followed closely by, “It’s just too much trouble.” Hey, if you want to come up with an excuse you will. But it you want to raise your standards – your standards, not some ideal or perfect outcome – then you’ll find huge satisfaction in being able to say, “This is the best job I could have done.”
I have a couple of writer-friends who have a big problem with perfection. They spend hours, days, weeks creating a piece of writing because it has to be perfect. They sweat every word, and they are never happy with their final piece. They just have to stop because they’ve run out of time. Left to their own devices, they’d never finish tweaking their stories.
The same is true for people who are budgeting. In their desire to create the perfect spending plan, they leave no room for the fact that budgets, like life itself, can be messy. They’re meant as maps, not as concrete shoes. And if you’re so busy seeking the perfectly balanced budget that you miss the whole point of a budget – to keep you thinking about where you’re money is going and help you decide if you’re satisfied with what you’re doing with it – then you’re never going to be happy with what you create.
Looking for ways to improve is good. Figuring out what personal excellence means to you is good. Creating a vision and identifying the steps you will start to take to make your vision a reality are both good. Beating yourself – or your mate – up because you don’t hit the mark perfectly every time is a horrible way to live.
Y’know, in baseball, if you’re batting 500 you’re doing a great job. Hey, that means missing the ball 50% of the time. But that’s baseball’s standard. What’s your standard, and how are you going to move from critiquing your short-comings (and those of your pals) to praising when you do make contact with the ball?
April 26, 2010 at 7:15 am
When we budget we never aim for perfection. Just close enough. We ussually go over in a category or two and we move money around to make up the shortfalls. Our budget is messy. A budget is just a plan and sometimes that plan doesn’t work out. It is like having a road map that doesn’t show you all the construction on the route you are about to take.
regards,
Jason
April 26, 2010 at 7:33 am
Thanks Gail, that’s the affirmation I needed to remind myself I’m doing a better job than I ever have, even if there are some months that things come up that weren’t planned for. At least I’m hitting the mark most of the time, and soon the emergency fund will be properly funded to take care of the emergencies (ie. pop-ups) while I still pay down the debt. As frustrated as I get with the extra money that seems to be necessary 5 days ago, I am sticking relatively well to my budget, so that deserves a pat on the back. “I think I can, I think I can…”
April 26, 2010 at 7:35 am
Being a perfectionist is a tough job! I’m trying really hard to learn to accept myself more and to acknowledge that I don’t have to do everything at one time or be great at all that I do. I’m focusing on what makes me happy and learning to roll with that.
April 26, 2010 at 7:39 am
Gail, thanks for writing this, we got back on the jar wagon a few months ago and I have been very critical of my wife at times when money has been spent that wasn’t budgeted. But I am learning that the budget needs to be a little more fluid, especially when you have young kids and every week you get thrown a new curve or another bout of the common cold that requires more cough medicine, apple juice, popsicles or a funeral out of town that is going to mean gas and food costs. Its especially tough in the early going on the budget when the ‘account jars’ that are meant to accumulate havent grown all that much. I am very much a perfectionist with this budget, yet I should know better from being accountable to a business budget (P&L) that even those are never perfect and my boss didn’t fire me for it.
April 26, 2010 at 8:02 am
Wow, this one hits home. I am a recovering perfectionist and have over the years beat myself up senseless over not being accurate enough in everything.
The good side is that I have acheived good “success” in my career but my definition of success has also changed.
Success now, needs to incorporate balance, happiness, fun and joy, not just money in the bank. Stuff that makes like worth living.
Great post.
April 26, 2010 at 8:35 am
Perfectionism is something that I will never strive for, but I will always strive for happiness and doing things that count (like spending time with my kids). My family and I are heading into a large time of flux as we prepare for a move to another city, which means that everything is going to be tossed around, and I know that there will be days when I want to pull my hair out, but as long as my kids are happy and my husband and I still cuddle at night, everything else doesn’t matter. And my budget certainly isn’t perfect, since I’m not even sure what I should be expecting over the next few months, so I’m trying to plan for the worst even when I don’t know what that is.
April 26, 2010 at 8:55 am
This hits close to home. I am a perfectionist and often feel like I fail. I have been trying really hard to step back and not let it get to me as much. I am trying much harder to be a happier person, I need it and so does my family.
April 26, 2010 at 9:15 am
Struck very close to home…. as a child, I remember scoring 98% on a test, and my mom asking me where the other 2% was. I didn’t try to hard with school after that. Years later I asked, and she said that she didn’t want me to get a “swelled head”. Anyhooooooooo
I do strive for perfection in anything I do, but I have enough perspective to adjust my goals as I am performing the task, to be what would be perfect under these circumstances, and should I not meet the revised goal, I figure out where I went wrong and how I could improve upon it.
In this way, if I didn’t meet my goal, and there was nothing I could change to make it, then it wasn’t realistic to begin with — and what I did achieve was perfect.
So in these mental gymnastics, I am revising perfection to perfect for me. Which works 99.9% of the time.
I spent $1600 that is not in the budget this month. But in checking back, there is nothing I would do differently – that amount, this month, was necessary. So I’m adjusting a couple of other items in the budget, and revising the next few months budget to accomodate this additional expense. My revised goal of perfection, is that when I take a look back at the 6 months Jan-June — this money has been taken care of. I was underbudget in Jan/Feb/March in many categories, so I think it’s doable.
April 26, 2010 at 9:36 am
I try to remember that most of the time, hitting a double or even as single will win the game just as much as hitting a home run.. that usually keeps my priorities in check.
April 26, 2010 at 9:50 am
This is way off topic, but if so many people are baseball ‘hater’s’ and find it so boring, then why are so many references used to describe things in other sport and life. You’ll be watching a hockey or football game and usually on a stretch pass they’ll call it ‘hitting a home run’. Why is a hockey cap, called a baseball hat?
April 26, 2010 at 10:07 am
I’ve learned this lesson the hard way this year, as I embark on my own “get outta debt” journey. For January and February I was super disciplined.
Then some “stuff” happened. Not lack of discipline, but legitimate stuff.
Anyway, I really had to GET that a budget is a guideline and it HAS to be fluid in order to work.
My frame of reference is more battle language. I may lose a battle (meaning I can’t balance the budget for April), but I’m winning the war against debt and I’ve changed my habits and the project for the end of the year still looks very, very good. You can’t be disappointed that the journey has bumps and potholes – that’s just life. Now that I’ve relaxed about it a bit, while still maintaining discipline, I have a lot less anxiety.
Thanks for the message Gail. Although if I had of read this message ten times, I’m not sure that it would have sunk in as well as it has living through the lesson personally.
April 26, 2010 at 11:15 am
@ John C I have watched a *lot* of football, and I have never heard anyone call a football move “hitting a home run”.
Usually they say “huge — H-U-G-E Play”
Baseball terminology sticks around because I think it is a very common frame of reference, almost 100% of the people I know have played it at some point.
But it is boring to watch — fun to play! boring to watch….
April 26, 2010 at 11:34 am
Ha, ha… well, I WAS a perfectionist… until I became a mother! Now a lot of the stuff I do is “good enough” instead of “perfect”, and I’m *trying* to let my kids practice life skills like cleaning bathrooms, folding laundry and making beds without going behind and “fixing” it into the perfect vision in my head. It’s really tough – for a perfectionist!
Often I feel like I’m failing because I can only give small bits of my time and attention to the various areas of my life that need my TLC, but I’m okay with that for now. I do look forward to a time when I have fewer obligations so the ones I’m left with can be tended to more tenaciously.
I’ve been called a “paperclip” because my life and home are (were!) organized to a “T”, but today I must accept that right now my paperclip is used, bent and loose and isn’t capable of holding it all together all the time.
April 26, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Kat, I can relate to the high mark, low praise issue – and I was in my late 40’s!! I returned to school to get a Bus. Admin. diploma and excelled in Accounting (as I had done in high school) After the first mid-terms, a councilor approached me and asked if I had time for tutoring. In my mind I thought my marks weren’t THAT bad, but in truth she was asking me to tutor others!! While my parents (in their 70’s) were visiting, I brought home a 99% quiz and got asked if I spelled my name wrong!!! (I forgot a $ and the teacher maybe didn’t want me to get a swelled head!) No one was harder on me than I was on myself, but I came to recognize and appreciate myself for being a single parent to teenage sons, going to school full time and baking for Farmer’s Markets to supplement Student loan income, all while maintaining a high 80’s overall average, with health issues and weekly trips to another city for physiotherapy!! On other fronts, my house is clean enough to be healthy, but I would rather spend my free time sewing! Budgets are like babies, they constantly need to be changed, especially as they grow. I think the point is to not give up, but expect that the ‘unexpected’ will always show up on our door steps, and maybe we should plan for that visit in the budgeting process. I think Gail calls it an “Emergency Fund”.
April 26, 2010 at 12:25 pm
To quote Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Housekeep Book: “A fast swipe at the kitchen sink is better than no swipe at all.” This is motto on which I base my housekeeping, and it definitely helps keep perfectionism at bay.
April 26, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I got a lesson on the politics of perfection years ago during one of the Olympics (when, where and who has disappeared in the mists of time). We placed third and some sports caster said “well that is just terrible. Only the Bronze”. Wa? Huh? ONLY THE BRONZE!!! What an ass. I guess third in the world just isn’t perfect enough.
I honestly don’t achieve a lot of gold and silver in my life but boy do I give myself a lot of bronzes for the accomplishments in my life.
April 26, 2010 at 1:30 pm
@Kat Im pretty sure John Madden used the phrase on occasion if he wasnt using penetration to describe bull rushing the line
April 26, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Thanks, Gail! I think I need to call my husband and tell him that he’s more important than the budget … again. I needed this!
April 26, 2010 at 1:56 pm
My mom does this all the time. She’s gone back to school, and she gets really high marks on tests (like 98%), but she spends her energy kicking herself for that one question she missed! It drives me crazy. I keep telling her to focus on the 98% of the glass that’s full instead of the 2% that’s empty, but it hasn’t sunk in.
April 26, 2010 at 2:10 pm
@ John C – because it’s a unversal way of conveying information in a quick fashion. For instance, I never played baseball in school but definitely got to 3rd base….
April 26, 2010 at 2:11 pm
When I was young I dealt with critical parents too. The trouble with striving for perfection is that when I knew (or thought) I wouldn’t acheive it – I didn’t even bother trying. I wouldn’t compete for anything, wouldn’t try anything new.
When I finally grew up and broke free of this way of thinking – I think I became I pretty good engineer. It didn’t have to be perfect – just safe, designed to code and functional. I used to be able to come up with solutions to get our plants running pretty fast because I didn’t care whether it was pretty and I didn’t run a lot of simulations. Trying to be perfect can close you off to the ideas of others. I can’t even count the number of times in my work life that I’ve come up with a good plan and had it evolve into something completely different after the input of others.
Imperfection translates into flexibility in my opinion. My wish for my neice and nephew is that they seek perfection and be content if they never reach it. I want them to always to have something to strive for.
April 26, 2010 at 2:13 pm
A budget should be a guideline, not somethng you have to stick to exactly each month. As long as you don’t don’t spend money you don’t have, don’t buy on credit, and you pay all bills in full every month, it’s not necessary to follow a budget perfectly.
April 26, 2010 at 3:00 pm
A sales motivation book told me something that has always intrigued me. He was talking about perfectionists in our society and how it translated to sales. In school anything less that 50% is failure, but in sales, one “yes” out of 10 sales calls is concidered successful! Even after 9 “no”s, that one sale makes it worthwhile!
Now for the rest of us, our job being only 10% productive may not me good enough, but it is an interesting perspective.
I imagine perfectionists can not be salespeople?
April 26, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Geoff, did you steal third or hit a triple?
April 26, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Good message today. we’re having one of those fluid months and unfortunately we are in those early stages so unexpected but not hugely expensive items had to go on credit…working extra to pay off more than we normally could so we’re still ahead…those unexpecteds popped up after the extra cash went to credit payments. Oh well…we’re close to a new month!
April 26, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Thanks you for this!!
April 26, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Ha, meant ‘THANK’ you. Too busy typing… to edit. Which I have to do, because clearly, I am still trying to be perfect! (Oh how quickly we forget!
)
April 26, 2010 at 6:02 pm
I wish I just had someone to care when I came home from school with my marks.
I’ve seen the ugly side of debt through my parents eyes and I knew I would never be going down that road.
Received my degrees and have a happy life.
I fumbled the football once or twice but have truly made more touch downs!
April 26, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I will agree that perfection is not possible in most of life, but I think people should come closer to it than many of them do when it comes to chores around the house. I find a pot that still has food stuck to it AFTER it has been “washed” and when I point out the dirt I’m told to do them myself if I don’t like the way they were done. I HATE THAT LINE!!! It’s not an option to do a crappy job when it comes to dishes!
April 26, 2010 at 11:12 pm
@ kat- One time I came home with 100% but my dad found out someone else got the highest with 102% (everything plus the bonus). He gave me a hard time because I didn’t get the best mark in the class!?! This was the same father who still jokes that I must not have been that smart in University because I managed to get pregnant! Can you tell we don’t get along very well?
I love not being perfect!
April 27, 2010 at 12:02 am
… and then there are the parents who say not to bother with this and that activity because you are not that good at it! But I was having fun doing it!
April 27, 2010 at 8:11 am
As a parent who is likely to make mistakes… I have to say that parent’s make mistakes too. It’s not easy. You want to encourage your kids to do better next time without making them feel bad. In other words, there is a cut-off point. It’s finding that cut-off that’s hard.
April 27, 2010 at 3:06 pm
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