Becoming an “Imperfectionist”

Thank you to Miss JN for asking why I'd stopped updating my WeChat account — you nudged me back onto the road.

There was no reason for stopping, other than laziness. And behind the laziness and procrastination was the fear that I wouldn't write well. I kept thinking I needed a solid block of time, a calm creative environment and frame of mind, as if after burning incense and taking a ritual bath. Little did I know that such a state almost never exists. What actually happens is this: once you start writing, you gradually slip into that state.

Yes, perfectionism is sometimes a harmful form of self-suggestion.

Today, let's talk about the benefits of becoming an “imperfectionist.”

What's the flip side of perfectionism?

First, a bit of science. In job interviews, we often come across people new to the workforce who, when asked about their weaknesses, offer “perfectionism” as filler. We all know it's another way of bragging; some sincere people genuinely believe it's a positive flaw, with a hint of pride in it. But in reality, perfectionism can lead to irrationality, negative emotions and limitations. Social anxiety, procrastination, low self-esteem and depression can all be partly blamed on perfectionism too. A six-year study of 450 older people found that those with perfectionist tendencies had a 51% higher death rate during that period than everyone else, and other research shows perfectionism is closely linked to higher rates of depression and suicide.

Perfectionism and procrastination

Perfectionism isn't necessarily an excuse for procrastination; it's actually a cause of it. There is a book called How to Be an Imperfectionist, whose author, Stephen Guise, also wrote a very well-known book called Mini Habits. As I see it, Mini Habits is about one thing: building habits through sheer willpower is an exhausting path — you can't lift yourself up by your own hair. But habits can be built by design, by working with how the human brain behaves, setting up small mechanisms that open a different, easier path to growth. Compared with “work out for an hour,” the psychological resistance to “do 3 burpees” is so small it's negligible. Chasing perfection does the exact opposite — it's designing obstacles for yourself.

Perfectionism, involution and the local optimum trap

My guess is that perfectionism and involution — that endless, zero-sum rat race — are also gifts from our genes: the Red Queen effect in evolution, where we have to keep running just to stay in place. Evolution never stops; both competition between species and competition within a species require us to keep racing forward. But once we hit the local optimum trap, perfectionism turns into involution: we put in huge effort just to be a tiny bit better than others, because in today's society of intense, homogeneous competition, you have to be a little more excellent, or a little more of a “slash” multi-hyphenate, to stand out. But chasing perfection takes a huge amount of energy and leaves us no slack to handle sudden risks. Under evolution, what happens to a species that climbs to the peak of a local optimum? — It goes extinct.

Perfectionism and the pursuit of excellence

People often say anti-perfectionist things like “done is better than perfect” and “the best is the enemy of the better.” Yet at the same time we prize the pursuit of excellence, high standards and strict demands. Where's the difference? From my own experience, pursuing excellence means aiming for the best overall in the long run, getting better across every dimension, and being strategic about focusing on what matters and letting the small stuff go; perfectionism, on the other hand, insists that every single detail be as good as it can possibly be.

So where does the difference lie? To judge whether a mindset is good or bad, the key is how it affects our actions and how it makes us feel about what we do. What matters is that we consciously observe the difference between perfectionism and the pursuit of excellence.

What perfectionism and the pursuit of excellence have in common is holding ourselves to a higher standard, and we often need to strike a balance between the two.

My solution

Deadlines and breaking tasks down. When you run into a specific problem in life, always look for humanity's leading answer to it — most problems have already been given excellent answers by extraordinarily clever people. The answer might come from cutting-edge theory, or from the practices of outstanding organisations or individuals. But as Chairman Mao said, “once you get specific, you go deep”: every excellent answer contains its own tree of knowledge, which often brings with it a pile of good new questions. So time planning and deadlines are important. Spending 20 minutes looking things up and then making a 10-minute phone call will certainly produce a better decision than going with your gut — but that's all the time you get, and there must be a result before the deadline. As soon as I notice myself tending to procrastinate out of perfectionism, I keep breaking things down into sub-goals and setting a deadline for each sub-task. Often, when I discover a knowledge gap, I grab a scrap of cloth from wherever I can and patch it first; if it really matters, I come back later and take a proper course to fill in the systematic knowledge.

Other remedies for perfectionism

Never use guilt as your motivation to move forward

Focus on the process

The timer method

A results diary

Imagine the worst outcome

……

There's quite a lot more in the book How to Be an Imperfectionist.

In short, remember: “imperfect” does not mean “failure.”

So next time we tease ourselves, maybe we can say: “Ah, I really am such an imperfectionist.” 🤷‍♀️

One more little story: there was another trigger for today's writing.

Today I suddenly realised that a few months ago, in a moment of panic, I made an extremely basic mistake that may have caused my team a huge loss. So I felt really low. The result of feeling low was that I lost the willpower for today's intermittent fast and instead walked into a Lawson by the road, bought a bag of crisps, and polished off the whole thing within 10 minutes.

(The only saving grace: I chose the lowest-calorie bag of crisps on the shelf.)

As I ate the crisps, I felt the urge to write. In that moment a flood of things I wanted to say and ideas came pouring out, and I realised a conflict was going on in my mind, good and bad thoughts locked in a tug-of-war.

My good self was saying: It's nothing, just solve the problem. What you're feeling right now is only a chemical signal; negative emotions won't help you with anything.

My bad self was howling in my head: How stupid! I can't do anything right! I'm just an idiot! Everything I've achieved was just luck. See? In the end, you're still the weakling.

In that moment, it wasn't that I wanted to write; it was that my thoughts needed an outlet, and they rushed towards the outlet called “writing.”

That kind of feeling doesn't last. This time, I didn't wait to get back to my computer; I picked up my phone and started typing. Because I knew: if I went with the flow and gave myself closure, the deep, thorough satisfaction of finishing this piece would make me even more eager to answer that call next time. It would be a wonderful start.

On the other hand, if I let it slip away, the world is full of readily available placebos and anaesthetics that let you quickly shake off “the guilt and regret of missing a shining moment in your own life” and accept spending your time on nothing meaningful — just open your phone, scroll through a couple of videos, or even reply to a couple of messages in a work group chat, and the urge disappears.

There are always callings in life, and they need to be answered. It's like a lamp: if you don't wipe it clean when it gathers dust, its light grows fainter and fainter until we can't see it at all.

I'm glad that today, I answered the call.

In fact, in that moment I only made a start; most of this was finished tonight. So, starting is success.