In an earlier blog, I talked about a corporate client who realized that by spending so much time on drafting the “perfect” email, she was giving up time to spend on the activities that give her the most joy as well as the bigger payback, i.e., mentoring and coaching employees. It takes courage to overcome perfectionist tendencies because it requires admitting that you are human—and to be human is to be imperfect. Acknowledge that you’ve made mistakes all along the way in life and possibly the biggest mistake of all is being driven to be a perfectionist.

Here are some tools to combat perfectionism (from What Happy Women Know by Dan Baker Ph.D.).

1. Kaizen: The Perfectionism Antidote
Kaizen is the Japanese word for continual improvement through small incremental steps. Use yourself as a standard and whatever it is that you’re working on, strive to make it better by a fraction of an inch.

2. The Pareto Principle
This principle hypothesizes that 20% of our efforts deliver as much as 80% of our results—meaning that the remaining 80% of effort delivers only 20% of results. Consider this: If 20% is enough to deliver a reasonably acceptable job—maybe not perfect but certainly well above adequate—then the remaining 80% of the time spent seeking perfection is wasted on a very small gain.

Be aware of the difference between setting high personal standards and perfectionism. Setting high standards involves establishing reasonable goals in pursuit of success, while perfectionism involves setting impossibly high goals and is motivated by fear of failure.

What might change if you told yourself that you will never fail, i.e., that you’re constantly learning from experiments you try in your own personal “journey to joy”?

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” –Henry Ford

P.S. We teach what we need to learn. Having Maximizer as my #1 strength means that excellence is my only standard. I struggle with the concept that something has to be only a little bit better. On my own personal “journey to joy”, I’m letting go of perfectionism and learning to embrace the concept of being the best I can be and letting go of other people’s judgments. That’s about them, not me (even the good stuff!). As long as I always do my best, that’s all I can do. When things don’t turn out the way I had hoped, I just focus on what I will do differently the next time. Life is a journey!

I just love being a coach and helping my clients gain a different perspective, especially when they are getting in their own way. I’m working with a highly motivated corporate client who has engaged me to help her become a better leader. As is always the case, even when I’m engaged to help someone within a specific area, I coach the whole person, not just on the business aspects. After all, we are a whole person, not just the person who shows up for work. A common theme is that she’s working so many hours, she doesn’t have time for the rest of her life. She has a young daughter who she believes that she’s short changing, not only by the number of hours she works but even when she’s home, her mind is still on the job. We’ve talked about ways she can leave work at work so she can enjoy being with her daughter, i.e., be fully present with her daughter. One tip to help you be fully present is to focus on one of your senses. Notice what you’re seeing, hearing, feeling or smelling in the moment and be grateful for that moment.

At any rate, my client feels as if she’s always behind on her emails in spite of the fact that she’s created systems to filter her incoming emails and created blocks of time to respond to them. (I’ve encouraged her to never check emails the first hour of the day. That’s responding to others’ issues and can zap you of energy to focus on your more strategic projects. Block out that first hour of the day and work on those initiatives that are most important (the “Big Rocks”) and then respond to emails.) As we were talking, it became apparent that having her emails be well written and easily understood was very important to her and she was spending an inordinate amount of time making sure that they were “perfect”. I challenged her to define what “perfect” is and determine who gets to decide when that objective has been achieved. Hmmm…..! At the same time, I asked her if she knew of anyone who had been promoted because they wrote great emails. I think you know what the answer is.

We focused on her bigger vision for her life and the aspect of her job as a leader that she loves the most and guess what? Emails weren’t even on the list! She’s experimenting with different approaches so she can focus on what she loves the most which is mentoring and coaching her employees to be the best they can be. That’s the payoff for spending less time on her emails and more time on people development—a win win all around. I’ll keep you posted on what’s showing up in her life in future blogs. I’ll also share some tips on creating more joy in your life by letting go of the need to be perfect in future blogs.

“The very worst thing in the world is to do very well what need not be done at all.”
– Peter Drucker