03/06/2020

Daily Buzz: Don’t Be a Perfectionist

Letting go of perfectionism can improve productivity

At work, you may feel as though you need to do everything—and flawlessly. But productivity isn’t about getting more done, it’s about what you get done, argues former clinical psychologist Alice Boyes in Harvard Business Review.

Several aspects of perfectionism interfere with your ability to prioritize the most important tasks. For one, perfectionists are reluctant to designate decisions as unimportant, Boyes says. Since they’re accustomed to micromanaging, they classify everything as worthy of 100 percent effort. The solution? Train your mind to be decisive when it comes to smaller tasks.

“A perfectionist can learn to love giving up control over some choices if they pay attention to how good it feels to be relieved of the decision-making burden,” Boyes says. “Try using heuristics to quickly decide or delegate with the expectation that you will get much faster and pretty good decisions overall but not perfect ones.”

Perfectionists also feel a moral obligation to over-deliver at every opportunity. For example, if someone offers a perfectionist $1,000 for a service, they’ll feel the need to provide $1,500 of value, Boyes explains. If you feel this way, take time to assess the cost of extending yourself so much.

“What else don’t you have time, energy, attention, and willpower for? Perhaps your own health, your big goals, or your family. If you assess that the costs are significant, try having a rule of thumb for when you’ll over-deliver,” she says.

Please select this link to read the original article from Associations Now.