Ep. 44 - Tips for Overcoming Perfectionism

Today's episode is inspired by a recent breakthrough I had with one of my writing coaching clients. Incidentally, she’s an article writer and not a book writer, although it doesn't really matter for our purposes. 

But I want to talk about why you need to do less, both in actual practice, as well as on a mental level. In other words, I'm going to try to convince you why you need to stop striving for perfection and let things go earlier. 

Hopefully, by the end of this episode, you will see that striving for 100% in your writing, or in your life for that matter, is never the way to go. 

Check out Leslie's website at www.YourWordsUnleashed.com

Transcript

YWU Podcast Episode #44: 

Why (and How) to Do Less

Hi writers! 

How are things going right now?

If you’re in the United States, I hope you enjoyed a restful holiday weekend.

The fall is such a frenetic time for so many academics. 

You work so hard for months and feel like you’re reaching a breaking point.

Then Thanksgiving finally comes and when you get back, students are totally checked out and you need to try to reengage them for the final weeks of the semester.

It’s like a marathon until you finish your grading.

People are so tired right now and just trying to make it to the end of the semester.  

Therefore, today I wanted to talk about how to make your life easier by doing less. 

Easier said than done, right?

So today's episode is inspired by a recent breakthrough I had with one of my writing coaching clients. 

Incidentally, she’s an article writer and not a book writer, although it doesn't really matter for our purposes right now. 

But I want to talk about why you need to do less, both in actual practice, as well as on a mental level. 

In other words, I'm going to try to convince you why you need to stop striving for perfection and let things go earlier. 

Hopefully, by the end of this episode, you will see that striving for 100% in your writing, or in your life for that matter, is never the way to go. 

You can find the full transcript of this episode at www.yourwordsunleashed.com/44.

The 85% Rule

So let me start by telling you about this conversation that I had with one of my clients who I’m going to call Laura. 

She is a BIPOC junior faculty member at a research intensive school. 

Like I said, she's an article writer and co-authors most of her papers with other people. 

So she's in a in a field where sole-authoring is not the norm.

Laura helped me devise something that I want to call the 85% rule. 

So essentially, she came to work with me because she hasn’t felt productive enough and feels like she takes far too long to get her articles published.

I asked what the greatest challenges she faced in the article publishing process. 

Laura said that her biggest issues lie with getting articles prepped for review, because it takes forever for them to get to the point where she can actually send them out. 

She felt like things sit on her desk for months and months and months. 

And the longer they sit on her desk, the longer she has to put off starting new projects.

Which, for her being a few years into the tenure track and needing to show that she's establishing her own research agenda, is naturally of imminent importance. 

So as we talked things through, Laura realized that she had unintentionally fallen into a pattern.

She was constantly sending revisions back to her co-authors, then she waited for their feedback. 

Then she incorporated their feedback, which she had to also fit into her busy teaching schedule as well as her committee work. 

And then she would send it back to them again for approval. 

So this whole process would take months and months because you're dealing with co-authors who are under the same kinds of constraints with their time. 

Finally, I asked Laura what percentage done she was trying to get her papers before she submitted. 

Her answer was 99%.

And then I asked her, “what would be different if you shot for 85% done instead of 99?”

And her shoulders visibly relaxed, she took a deep breath of relief. 

And she responded, “I would not request as much feedback from others. 

I'd be more intentional about the feedback I take from my co-authors. 

And I'd feel better about the feedback I received from my reviewers. 

Because I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to make it perfect, and then feel bad that I need to make more changes later.”

Then she added with conviction, “I would also respect my voice and my instincts more.”

So basically, it took Laura processing this with me to see her own patterns.

She could see that in asking for so much feedback before submitting, she had actually been putting other people's ideas ahead of her own.

In the process, she had been ignoring her own intuition that was telling her that things were in good enough shape to submit.

So as we continued to talk things through, Laura realized that if she aimed for only 85% she could actually submit two papers in the next couple of weeks. 

These were articles she thought would take months to submit.

And in both cases, Laura just had to do some light revisions, and then DECIDE that the article was ready enough to submit. 

So in one case, that meant she needed to reach out to a co-author and tell them they didn't need to read another draft she had just sent.

And if I was that co-author, I'd be super happy about that being taken off my plate!

So we came up with the 85% rule, which was very helpful. 

But in order to get that established as a habit, we also had to work on her thoughts. 

And so I asked her to do an exercise that I have talked about a lot on this podcast, which is about creating process goals. 

Basically, it's about becoming aware of the thoughts that are underlying our behavior, in this case, negative self-talk that is impeding progress on our goals. 

A lot of times, these thoughts are not completely on a conscious level. 

Some people will say, “I don't actually suffer from negative self-talk, but I am filled with a lot of fear. And that fear keeps me from writing as much as I want to.” 

And so I would argue that underneath your fears are some negative self-beliefs, right? 

So it's about becoming aware of what's going on perhaps at a very deep level in our minds, and then reframing these thoughts into empowering thoughts that are just as true. 

And if you want to know more about this, listen to Episode #27 “Prime Your Mind for Writing.”

So going back to Laura, she realized that the two main thoughts underlying her fear of submitting articles were: “I don't think this is good enough” and “other people know better than I do.”

So we worked on reframing these thoughts into process goals, or self-beliefs that facilitate forward progress and more self-satisfaction.

So with “I don't think this is good enough,” I asked her, “How do you reframe that into something that feels better, and is just as true?”

And she came up with, “I trust my instincts.”

And “other people know better” became, “I know! I'm confident in the message I want to share.”

These are now mantras she can repeat to herself daily when she needs to be reminded of her own agency and to trust her own intuition when it comes to her work.

So I just wanted to start with this example from a coaching session to show you how easy it is to get caught up in a perfectionist mindset.

In the process we ignore what we already know to be true, which is that we have great ideas, and that we don't have to get things to 100% for them to be valid. 

We also know that when we're striving for perfection, we’re not being efficient or using our time well. 

Wo the whole theme of this episode is to encourage you to do less.

If you do less, that opens up more space and time for all kinds of good things. 

The Reasons Why Doing More is Counterproductive

And so now I want to give you some reasons why doing more in the pursuit of perfection is counterproductive. 

Or in other words, why it's better to do less.

Not to care less, mind you, just to give less time and effort.

#1: It’s more time-consuming.

All right, so the first reason why is that, like Laura, it's way more time consuming. 

It's totally inefficient to give all of your effort to pretty much anything, but especially your writing.

I talked about shooting for 85% because getting things all the way up to 99 or 100% takes so much effort and so much time. 

And you know why? Because getting things to that level means you're spending a lot of energy dealing with minor details. 

So let me give you an example. 

In my last podcast episode, I made a small mistake.

I accidentally cut out a phrase that connected one section to the next, but I didn't realize I did that until I was much further along in editing. 

So I could have gone back and re-recorded the one phrase and spent time inserting that into the episode. 

But that would have taken a lot of time and effort. 

And because I wanted to get the episode out into the world for you all to hear, I let it go. 

So to do that, I had to be okay with the idea of making mistakes and trust that my audience will be forgiving of them and be able to figure things out on their own. 

Because getting to 100% just wasn't worth it.

In general, shooting for perfection ends up taking a whole lot longer, because you might end up either procrastinating or missing deadlines in the process. 

And that's true no matter if you're a perfectionist or not. 

We all miss deadlines because we are human and we always underestimate how long things are going to take to get done. 

But, if you are giving incredible attention to detail, this can have some really negative consequences in terms of being able to get things done in a timely manner. 

Versus the folks I know who publish the most often get things to 80 or 85% and then they send it off. 

If not for review, they send it to someone else to read.

They might revise things once, then send it off for review.

And they allow reviewers to help them fix it. 

So that requires having strong faith in your own ideas and confidence in the contribution you’re trying to make.

It requires taking a risk, but a calculated one because you have a high level of self-trust. 

And then you might also be inefficient because you're not delegating enough.

You might believe other people can't meet your high standards, and this can really affect your overall ability to get things done. 

I know lots of folks who actually have the funds to hire research assistants.

But they don’t give their Ras enough to do, because they don't trust their ability to do it all. 

One way to reframe that thought is to think about the fact that it's okay for your RAS to make mistakes, you're there to supervise, and to help them grow. 

And these are all learning opportunities for them. These are professional development opportunities for people that you are mentoring.

So think about your own life and your own work. 

What have you been trying to get to 100% that's just not worth the effort?

What can you cut back on? What are those things that take up a lot of your time, that don't make a huge difference?

#2: It makes you much more stressed out!

So the second reason why it's important to not strive for 100% is because it makes you much more stressed out!

We all know on some level that pursuing perfection is nearly impossible. 

There's a constant level of anxiety and fear of falling short of your own really, really high standards that you are also projecting onto everyone else. 

This chronic stress can have negative effects on not only your mental, but also your physical, well-being, right?

If you're worried all the time about your work, about not doing everything you can, it’s likely going to affect your sleep.

The intense pressure to be perfect often leads to burnout.  

Like I’ve talked about in previous episodes, there are hugely institutional, structural reasons that academics are burnt out. 

But there's also the individual component of people pushing themselves very hard to meet impossibly high standards. 

You can push yourself to the point of exhaustion in your quest to be everything to everyone. 

So especially for folks who have people pleasing tendencies, or who tend to put taking care of others before taking care of yourself, all of this can really lead to burn out. 

You might be putting work in front of things like exercising and eating well, and even prioritizing it over your personal relationships.

I can’t tell you the number of women I’ve met who are struggling to juggle the pressures of the tenure-track with parenting young children.

The all-encompassing nature of academic work often means that they often put more effort towards their jobs than they would choose themselves.

And then if they don’t get tenure, and many don’t, because academia is not set up for mothers, they may end up deeply regretting not prioritizing their families more.

I’m not saying there’s any simple solution to this either, as it’s a structural dilemma.

But one thing you can do is not strive for 100% in anything. 

In this scenario, I don’t even think you should be shooting for 85%, so shoot for 80.

Ask yourself, what does doing 80% in my job and as a parent look like in practice? 

And then prioritize those lowered standards because this is a marathon, not a sprint! 

#3: It’s stifles creativity and can make you feel bad about yourself

And finally, a third reason why we all need to do less is so we don't lose touch with our own innate creativity and confidence in our own contribution.

And so, when we strive for perfection, it usually causes people to feel worse about themselves. 

Because the chance of getting things to 100% is so low, you're essentially setting yourself up for failure.

You will inevitably fall short some of the time and never feel truly satisfied with your achievements. 

And this will probably heighten and solidify your own self-critiques, especially as I’ve noticed that perfectionists tend to constantly compare themselves negatively to others.

The other thing is that striving for perfection leads people to become excessively narrow and rigid.

This can really stifle your creativity.

You expend so much energy trying to avoid mistakes when making mistakes is a totally essential part of learning and growth.

It means you’re not experimenting or, as in Laura’s case, not following your own intuition. 

So you're actually missing out on really valuable opportunities for growing and improving.

You might just stay at the same level rather than stretching in new ways. 

So ask yourself, where have I been trying to play it safe rather than be bold in ways that feel exciting to me?

Also, if failure was not an option, what would I do in my writing, and in my life in general?

Summing Everything Up

All right, so let's sum everything up.

I’ve talked about why and how to do less.

I introduced the 85% rule where you conscientiously choose to only get your work to 85% and then move on.

I also discussed three reasons why shooting for perfection is actually unproductive.

The first is that it’s very inefficient and often ends up taking longer.

The second is that it makes you much more stressed out.

And the third is that it stifles your creativity and confidence in what you have to offer.

In the end, being innovative and creative—and yes, productive—requires you to be willing to embrace imperfection.

Valuing your own voice and ideas and listening to your own intuition when you’re used to putting immense effort towards not making mistakes or trying to please others or avoid critique is not easy.

But, this inner work is so important if you want your outer work to be aligned with what you actually care about most.

And of course if you need help with any of this, reach out to me.

Schedule a free 30-minute consult where we can talk about your writing (and life) goals and how I can help you reach them.

I’m already booking clients for late spring 2024, so don’t wait.

I’ll talk to you next time!