Skip to content

The Perfectionism Trap (And How to Escape It)

2024-03-15 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Thomas Curran · recording, 18:32 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness (also: Productivity and time, Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Evidence-based framing, Lesson from a book, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, His medical past, His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present

Drawing on his interview with perfectionism researcher Thomas Curran, Ali explains why perfectionism does not bring better performance and traps people in a spiral of excessive standards and failure, then gives five tips: lower the bar, surrender, reframe failure, step out of your comfort zone and sketch your goals.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Harry the healthy striver and Percy the perfectionist; Thomas Curran on the perfectionism spectrum

  • ★★ Ali contrasts a healthy striver, who welcomes constructive criticism, with a perfectionist, who holds himself to excessively high standards, is ashamed of his mistakes and worries what others think. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Thomas Curran says perfectionism is a matter of where we sit on a perfectionism spectrum, rather than of being or not being a perfectionist. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Thomas Curran says his work shows the middle of the perfectionism spectrum, where most people sit, slowly creeping upwards, with perfectionism growing over time, particularly among young people. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — The productivity paradox: no link between perfectionism and performance

  • ★★ Ali says it is easy to assume that perfectionism brings more productivity and success, but this is not true at all. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ Thomas Curran says self-confessed perfectionists such as Serena Williams, Victoria Pendleton, Steve Jobs and Demi Lovato reached the top, yet the data show no relationship between perfectionism and performance. — 00:01:59
  • ★★ Ali cites a study of student athletes in cycling trials rigged so that all failed to beat their personal best: on the second attempt the perfectionists tried less hard, while the others kept their effort. — 00:02:29
  • ★★ Because perfectionists find setbacks hard and turn to failure-avoiding behaviour such as procrastination, Ali says perfectionism tends to make you perform worse after a setback. — 00:02:58
  • ★★ Ali's second reason perfectionism does not bring better performance: perfectionists work very hard, probably too hard. (hedged) — 00:02:58

00:03:32 — The perfectionism trap: deficit thinking and a spiral of ever higher standards

  • ★★★ Thomas Curran says perfectionism comes from a place of deficit: the sense that you must move through the world proving to other people that you are good enough. — 00:03:32

    “It comes from a place of deficit.”

  • ★★★ The perfectionism trap, as Ali describes it: excessive standards lead to failure, failure brings shame, guilt, anxiety and low self-esteem, and perfectionists overcompensate with even higher standards next time. — 00:04:11

  • ★★ A healthy striver chasing a new squat personal best in the gym, Ali says, enjoys the process of trying to get there. — 00:04:11

00:04:41 — Sponsor read for Brilliant

  • ★★ Thomas Curran says the imposter phenomenon is strong among perfectionists, particularly those who, like him by his account, came from a working-class background into a middle-class world. — 00:06:08 · imposter syndrome

00:06:21 — Imposter syndrome, socially prescribed perfectionism and social media

  • ★★ Thomas Curran says imposter syndrome correlates more with socially prescribed perfectionism, driven by other people's expectations, than with self-oriented perfectionism. — 00:06:54 · imposter syndrome
  • ★★ Ali says we live in a highly competitive society designed to make us feel deficient, which cultivates perfectionism. — 00:07:23
  • ★★ Ali says research shows that perfectionists who compare themselves on social media with people who seem better off feel less satisfied and confident in their own lives. — 00:07:23

00:07:52 — Tip one: set reasonable standards, lower the bar and start somewhere

  • ★★★ Thomas Curran: To get past perfectionism when starting a piece of writing such as an essay, Thomas Curran advises just writing something, even a letter to your mum. — 00:07:52
  • ★★ Ali explains the law of diminishing returns: up to a point, output rises with input or effort; beyond it, each extra input adds less, and eventually output falls. — 00:08:18
  • ★★ Applying diminishing returns to working hours, Ali says your 80th hour of the week is probably nowhere near as productive as your 20th, because you are just getting tired. (hedged) — 00:08:56
  • ★★★ Against perfectionism, Ali sets reasonable standards: whenever he catches himself procrastinating or being too perfectionist, he reminds himself to lower the bar, embracing mediocrity so that perfect does not become the enemy of good. — 00:09:25
  • ★★ Lowering the bar makes it easier to start, Ali says, since perfectionism leads to procrastination: perfectionists are so afraid of failure that they do not start at all. — 00:10:24
  • ★★ Ali advises deciding what "good enough" means for each task, then stopping and moving on once it is met; reasonable standards also lower the risk of burnout. — 00:10:24
  • ★★ Ali says it is fine sometimes to aim above what is expected, but trying this with everything is a recipe for burnout, and for beginners or procrastinators high standards hold them back. — 00:11:05

00:11:51 — Tip two: surrender and let life happen; wabi-sabi and the tyranny of the shoulds

  • ★★ Ali's second tip against perfectionism is to surrender and let life happen: be okay with failure rather than avoiding it, and content with no progress or even regression towards a goal. — 00:12:04
  • ★★ Ali likens letting life happen to wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy rooted in Buddhism about accepting the beauty in imperfection and surrendering to the ebbs and flows of life. — 00:12:04
  • ★ Ali says the psychoanalyst Karen Horney, who studied Buddhist principles late in life, coined the phrase "the tyranny of the shoulds". — 00:12:33
  • ★★★ Since "should" sets our imperfect real self against an idealised perfect self, Ali replaces it with "want to", "feel like" or "could choose to", as in "I could choose to go to the gym today", removing the coercion. — 00:13:03
  • ★★ Ali's third tip against perfectionism is to reframe failure as success: failure is not humiliating but humanising, and we fail far more often than we succeed. — 00:13:24

00:13:37 — Tip three: reframe failure as success

  • ★★★ Ali describes four levels of dealing with failure: failure is bad, failing is normal, failure is a learning process, and failure is a success; he suggests asking which level you are at and what would take you to the next. — 00:13:46

00:14:46 — Tip four: step outside your comfort zone

  • ★★ Thomas Curran says taking small steps out of your comfort zone helps you learn, become more confident and break through your perfectionism. — 00:14:49
  • ★★ Ali's fourth tip against perfectionism is to step outside your comfort zone fairly regularly, challenging the aversion to failure and criticism by putting yourself where the risk of failure is high. — 00:14:49
  • ★★ Wanting to improve his charisma, Ali forced himself to put his hand up and ask a question in every class and lecture at medical school; it was scary at first but showed him that no one actually cares. — 00:15:19
  • ★★ When Ali started his YouTube channel in 2017, walking around university filming people with a big camera felt weird. — 00:15:19
  • ★ After about seven years of vlogging, Ali says filming in public is still a bit scary but squarely within his comfort zone. — 00:15:19
  • ★★★ Although his book is called Feel-Good Productivity, Ali says not every moment has to feel good: stepping outside your comfort zone and embracing the discomfort drives feeling good in the long term. — 00:16:00 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ For stepping outside your comfort zone, Ali finds Tim Ferriss's fear-setting exercise really helpful. — 00:16:00 · Tim Ferriss

00:16:18 — Tip five: sketch your goals; open goals and NICE goals

  • ★★ Thomas Curran says that for the especially perfectionistic, rigid, firm and often lofty goals are really problematic, since they may not be met for no good reason. — 00:16:22
  • ★★ Ali's fifth tip against perfectionism is to sketch your goals: vague, sketchy goals rather than very specific ones. — 00:16:22
  • ★★ Ali defines open goals as goals designed to be non-specific, open-ended and exploratory, such as "I'll see how far I can walk in six minutes". — 00:17:03
  • ★★ Ali cites a walking study he discusses in his book: people who set open goals walked no less far than those who set SMART goals, and were keener to repeat the walking test. — 00:17:03
  • ★★★ SMART goals still help you raise your standards over time, Ali says, but for beginners or anyone struggling with perfectionism, making a goal less specific, less ambitious and vaguer helps them get started. — 00:17:38
  • ★★★ Otherwise Ali uses NICE goals, from his book: near-term, input-based, controllable and energising, such as the steps you walk rather than your position in a race. — 00:17:38 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: NICE goals · perfectionism

Also: People: Demi Lovato · Karen Horney · Serena Williams · Steve Jobs (entrepreneur) · Thomas Curran · Tim Ferriss · Victoria Pendleton

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book)

Organizations: London School of Economics

Concepts: diminishing returns · fear-setting · imposter syndrome · open goals · reframing failure · SMART goals · socially prescribed perfectionism · the tyranny of the shoulds · upward social comparison · wabi-sabi

Also centred on perfectionism: Stop Waiting: Productivity Advice I Wish I Knew Sooner

← Previous: The different types of burnout - which one are you? · Next → How I came up with my book title 💭