Perfectionism. How to Get Rid of It

Clients who discover this characteristic in themselves often ask about methods and ways to work on it, to soften their rigid desire to make everything perfect. After all, perfectionism can lead to neurosis. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is not uncommon in this context. It's a very unpleasant thing...
I suggest considering and trying the following methods:

Prioritize tasks

Make a list of things that need to be done and think about which tasks you can do at a level of "four" or even "three" instead of always aiming for a "five." Maybe it's not necessary to thoroughly clean your apartment from top to bottom this week; a quick tidying up would be enough. You can use the freed-up time to take care of yourself, like going to the pool, a beauty salon, or meeting friends. Instead of preparing a royal dinner for your family every evening, sometimes you can simply order pizza. Perhaps there's no need to turn every work report into a masterpiece by playing with fonts and shadows. Just input the correct and accurate data into the table, and that's it. Try not to turn every task into a masterpiece and survive the experience without being too hard on yourself.

Plan tasks properly

Instead of making a simple to-do list, allocate specific time for each task. For example, if you plan to do cleaning on Saturday, think about how much time you need and are willing to allocate for it, let's say 4 hours. In your daily planner, encircle the time from 9:00 to 10:00 for breakfast, then from 10:00 to 14:00 for cleaning, and from 14:00 to 15:00 for lunch. When you input tasks into your planner this way, you won't have any illusions. You'll see that you can't fit anything else into the first half of your Saturday until 3:00 pm, and there's no room for exercise, English language tasks, or spending time with your child. Try this method for at least a month, and you'll get used to not trying to cram the impossible into your day and become less demanding of yourself.

Stick to the plan

If you allocated 4 hours for cleaning, then spend exactly 4 hours on it, no more. Less is also acceptable. Perfectionists, in their pursuit of perfection, often spend a lot of time on unimportant tasks, putting off the necessary and essential ones. If you didn't manage to clean all the mirrors, light fixtures, and gather every speck of dust in every corner after 4 hours of cleaning, it's not a big deal. The ideal cleanliness won't last long anyway. Even if you manage to remove every speck of dust in your home, new ones will settle on the shelves and floor within half an hour. A perfectionist should remember that any task requires more time to complete than we have. Therefore, you might have to sacrifice some perfection in certain results... I know it's tough to accept at first, realizing that "the windows are not spotless! The cleanliness is not perfect!" But with time, you'll notice that this feeling of frustration diminishes, and you'll have more time for important tasks and relaxation, leading to an improved quality of life! And no, you won't turn into a slob! Stop it! Just learn to loosen the reins a bit, and you'll find breathing becomes easier. It benefits both you and your loved ones!

Image Credit: Freepik

Delegate

When adding tasks to your daily planner, consider whether you can delegate them to someone else. For example, I no longer go to the grocery store to buy groceries. I used to spend at least three hours there (the journey and wandering around the store with a cart). But when most stores introduced a new service – home delivery of groceries – I stopped visiting stores (except for the one next door when I urgently need to buy two tomatoes or sour cream).

Now all the bags are delivered to my home, and placing an order online takes me a maximum of 30 minutes (or even less). In conversations with clients and acquaintances, I often hear:

"No, I need to choose cucumbers and parsley myself. They will surely give me the most wilted and crushed vegetables and fruits." 
But on the other hand, are a couple of wilted tomatoes worth several hours of your life? And think about what else you can delegate? Maybe even the cleaning? How much is your working hour worth? Perhaps it's cheaper for you to hire someone who can come once a week for half a day to clean up?

"No, can some stranger clean as well as I do?"  
Believe me – they often do it even better! I checked it myself and was pleasantly surprised.👌

On the other hand, sometimes a task done by others at a "three" is much better than doing everything yourself at a "five." This is especially important for leaders! A perfectionist leader is a disaster for any enterprise... It's better to have five subordinates complete five tasks at a "three" than you completing one of them at a "five," while the rest remain undone. Understand?

Scary? Refer back to point 1 – prioritizing tasks. Think about which tasks can be done less than perfectly and delegate them.

Learn to praise

Yourself and other people in general, especially for small successes! Perfectionists are not inclined to celebrate their successes until they create a MASTERPIECE! And masterpieces take a long time and are complex to create. Therefore, there are not many reasons for joy for such a person... And they have to "work like a horse" to allow themselves a little bit of pleasure...

Pay attention to what you could praise yourself for. Didn't clean perfectly, but managed to finish in 4 hours as planned? Well done! That's progress! The grocery delivery brought wilted tomatoes? But you saved a couple of hours of your life, which you can now spend with your kids! Contacted customer support and got a discount on the next order because of the wilted tomatoes? Well done – you know how to defend your boundaries!

Finding it hard to praise yourself? Start with others – compliment your spouse, children, parents, friends, subordinates. Did your subordinates complete tasks at a "three"? Great job, guys, for getting all the tasks done on time! However, pay attention that here and there they could do better. Next time, I expect new results from you. But this mistake is critical – it needs to be corrected right now.

Besides, by training yourself to notice small successes in yourself and others, as well as getting used to praising them and yourself, giving compliments, you will soon discover how much more pleasant and positive life becomes!

So, I've given you a few tasks that, when you complete them, will help you soften your perfectionism over time. The main thing to remember is not to fight it. In a battle with ourselves, we always lose! Besides, any useful skill was acquired with such difficulty... Why give it up? But softening your inner perfectionist, loosening the reins a bit – that's a good task, a beneficial one! Breathing will become easier for you, and people around you will smile at you more often!