How to get rid of perfectionism and stop marking time

Where does perfectionism come from?

Bob Pozen, the author of the book, in the first lecture of the productivity course asks students if they consider themselves perfectionists. Usually, about half of the students answer in the affirmative and talk about demanding parents or teachers who have hammered into their heads that assignments must be completed with precision and accuracy.

I believe that people are not born perfectionists, but the family, school, environment help them to assimilate this way of thinking. And since this is a habit, you can get rid of it.

Bob Posen

The big problem with perfectionists is that they spend too much time on tasks that are not so important or do not require such a thorough approach. Therefore, they do not have enough time: there are too few hours in a working day to bring everything to perfection.

How to deal with perfectionism

Elizabeth Grace Saunders, author of the book, works as a time management consultant to help people get rid of the need to be perfect and start wasting time on things that really matter. She offers several ways to get rid of perfectionism.

Don't hang up labels

Instead of calling yourself a perfectionist, say that you "sometimes tend to act like a perfectionist." So you kind of allow yourself to do things differently.

Recognize that perfectionism is getting in your way

Now it is important to realize that by giving all of yourself to one thing, you forget about other areas that require your attention. For example, perfectionists sometimes simply do not do the right things or do them too late, and this prevents them from achieving success. If they had lowered the bar right away, things would have been different.

Limit yourself

The perfectionist will work on a task until he achieves the “perfect” result, no matter how long it takes. Therefore, Saunders advises setting deadlines.

Give each task a certain amount of time (it is better if it is half as much as usual) and watch your speed to meet the deadline.

This tip has helped a lot of people get rid of perfectionism. They realized that not doing something perfect does not mean being lazy and indifferent to the results of the work. You just look at your time budget and say, "Okay, how much time can I spend on this task to get a good result?"

Allocate time with the INO

Oftentimes, perfectionists simply don't realize that different tasks require different amounts of time and effort. To prioritize matters, Saunders recommends using the INO technique:

Investment objectives: high profitability, the time spent will pay off handsomely.
Neutral tasks: you get as much as you invest (example: meetings with employees or standard reports).
Optimized tasks: the result does not depend on the time spent (example: parsing email).

By distributing tasks, you will understand what is worth spending more time on. If working with e-mail is one of the optimized tasks, you should not re-read and rewrite the letter three or four times: this time will be useful for cases from the first group.

Here are some important questions to help you determine which category a specific task should be categorized into:

It's important for me?
If so, how much?
Is it worth completing the task at a high level, and not how it will turn out? Will the effort pay off?
What is the minimum set of actions?
How much time do I have for this task?