Is Your Perfectionism Holding You Back? 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism

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This is part 2 of a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to turn perfectionism into a positive force in your life.

• Part 1: 10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist
• Part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism
• Part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

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“If you are a perfectionist, you are your own worst critic.” — Unknown

“Perfectionists vary in their behaviors: some strive to conceal their imperfections; others attempt to project an image of perfection.” – Flett, York University

Perfectionism — is it really all good or does it have its problems?

On the surface, the life of a perfectionist appears aspirational or even perfect. Many accomplished athletes, celebrities, singers, and professionals are self-professed perfectionists. Yet perfectionism has its problems as I share below.

Hidden Problems of Perfectionism

There are two types of perfectionism — healthy perfectionism and neurotic perfectionism.

• A healthy perfectionist is driven by a desire for improvement and achievement while maintaining emotional well-being and flexibility. They are intrinsically motivated, set high standards, focus on growth not mistakes, and have a balanced approach in their life.
• An neurotic perfectionist is an extremist and strives for incredibly high standards at the expense of their well-being and relationships. They are driven by fear of failure, self-criticism, and unrealistic standards, leading to coping mechanisms like procrastination and an obsessive focus on details.

Without putting themselves in check, many perfectionists end up being neurotic perfectionists.

When I was a neurotic perfectionist, I thought I was getting the best out of myself and life. In reality, neurotic perfectionism hindered my productivity, well-being, and relationships. Here are six ways perfectionism could be holding you back in your goals and life.

1) Diminished productivity

Every perfectionist wants to get the best out of their life and be a top achiever. But paradoxically, a perfectionist often reduces their overall productivity with their focus on doing things perfectly. The 80/20 principle tells us that 80% of results in a task can be linked to 20% of our total possible input. Yet a perfectionist strives to achieve 100% perfection in everything — spending significant time and effort to perfect the last 20% of a task.

The 80/20 Principle

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What a Perfectionist Does:

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While it’s important to be meticulous and to perfect tasks of very high importance, obsessing over every detail of every single task diminishes productivity and prevents things from getting done efficiently. The time spent perfecting each task comes at the expense of other things you could be working on. There comes a point when constant tweaking gives you diminishing returns, or even negative returns.

Separately, setting unrealistic standards and being fixated on achieving them turns a perfectionist into a workaholic who sacrifices sleep, rest, and life for work. Instead of resting and filling up your tank so as to get energy and fresh ideas, you regularly push yourself past the point of optimal performance. This leads to reduced productivity as you constantly run on low energy and focus.

2) Procrastination

The second problem of perfectionism is ironically, procrastination on your goals and tasks. Have you ever put off doing something because you were waiting for the right or perfect conditions to do it perfectly?

For example, a video content creator may want a high-end DSLR, a lavalier mic, and the best video editing software before starting their video channel, rather than using what they have first and improving from there. A perfectionist with an exercise goal may target to run 5 miles (8km) per exercise session, and put off their sessions repeatedly because they don’t feel up to it.

You also have sky-high expectations of what needs to be done, making the goal or task seem bigger than it really is. This creates stress and overwhelm and makes you put off something again and again. At times you may even avoid or abandon a task (i.e., escapism) when it seems impossible to achieve your vision. To you, if you can’t achieve your vision, you might as well not do it at all (this is an all-or-nothing mindset).

3) Myopia – Missing the bigger picture

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As you get caught up in the little details, you miss the bigger picture and the bigger scheme of things.

For example, you spend hours refining the formatting of a report rather than focusing on the content. Or you spend weeks researching the best software for a project, unable to make a decision, while the project falls behind schedule. This obsession with perfection and little details causes you to miss the overall goal and objective.

You also experience frequent analysis paralysis, where you can’t make decisions quickly as you are caught up with making the “right” choice. You overanalyze every option and delay action to get everything correct and prevent error.

While such meticulousness is good for extremely large-scale goals with high stakes involved, this fear of making mistakes or a wrong choice, when applied to everything, prevents progress and results in missed opportunities, hence leading to stagnation.

4) Constant stress

Perfectionism also causes constant stress and anxiety. 

As a perfectionist, you are constantly overworking as you are always tweaking or improving something. You also have extremely high standards and a fixation to do everything perfectly. This leaves no room for mistakes or rest and makes day-to-day life very stressful.

What’s more, you refuse to delegate as you don’t trust others to do the work well. You also have difficulty letting go, always thinking about the tasks you should do and mistakes from the past — hence adding mental weight to your mind.

This overworking and constant stress and anxiety eventually leads to health issues and burnout. This is why research has shown that perfectionism is linked to stress, anxiety, insomnia, eating disorders, heart problems, digestive problems, and, in severe cases, suicide ideation.

5) Negative self-esteem

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Many perfectionists are their harshest self-critics. You are always pushing yourself and expect nothing less than the best. You blame yourself for problems and mistakes, wondering if things could have been better if you had done X or Y instead. You also beat yourself up over issues from long ago.

And when things go well, you take it as a given. Things that go well are taken for granted. If things go poorly, you beat yourself up endlessly. There is no room for rest and self-appreciation.

This constant self-blame and lack of self-appreciation mean negative self-esteem and a constant feeling of unhappiness, regardless of your accomplishments.

Lady Gaga, pop singer and winner of 14 Grammy Awards, said before, “I am perpetually unhappy with what I create. Even though I might tell you that ‘Edge Of Glory’ is a pop masterpiece, when it’s all said and finished there will be things I dread, and every time I listen to it I’ll hear them.”^[1]

Similarly, Michael Jackson, pop legend and known perfectionist, once said, “I’m never pleased with anything, I’m a perfectionist, it’s part of who I am.” Jackson’s extreme perfectionism contributed to his personal struggles and internal conflict, as he was never happy with his work. He died in 2009 from overmedication that led to a cardiac arrest.^[2]

Yet the whole point of pursuing our goals is to achieve personal satisfaction and be happy. If one accomplishes all these goals and is still unhappy with their work, then it makes you wonder: what’s the point of any of these?

6) Strained relationships

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Lastly, perfectionism strains and damages relationships.

As a perfectionist, you have very harsh standards and these expectations can spill over into your relationships. You may impose unrealistic expectations on others, causing frustration, tension, or even resentment. This can prevent you from seeing the value in others’ contributions or perspectives, causing you to miss out on collaboration, valuable insights, and positive moments with others.

For example, a perfectionist may criticize a partner’s cooking, focusing on minor flaws instead of appreciating the effort and enjoying the meal together. A perfectionist parent may criticize a child for not doing better on a test, instead of acknowledging the things that were done right.

Being a perfectionist also means putting your work performance at the highest priority, to the point of neglecting your relationships. You spend a large amount of time at work, leaving little to no time for friends and family. Because a perfectionist associates their worth with their performance, you get very stressed and upset when things don’t go well (which is often due to your immensely high standards) and bring work struggles into your relationships. At times you even lash out at your loved ones for no reason.

Such pressure weighs down on your relationships and makes people around you tense and unhappy. In the end, perfectionism hollows you out and pushes people away from you.

How Perfectionism Limited Me

As a neurotic perfectionist in the past, I was very focused on doing everything perfectly in my work and life, as I shared in part 1. It helped me achieve great results in my goals. Yet such perfectionism limited me in other ways which I didn’t realize then.

Productivity and Effectiveness

Perfectionism got in my way of being productive. By trying to do everything perfectly, I ended up spending too much time tweaking little things that didn’t play a role in the bigger scheme of things. This took time away from the things that really matter.

This issue became obvious when I started working. While in school I could get away with perfecting everything right down to the nitty-gritty, at my job the breadth and depth of the projects were so vast that it was no longer humanly possible for me to be deeply involved in everything and still do them perfectly. I would spend many late nights and weekends working, with no end in sight. It was just not sustainable.

The same issue cropped up in my personal development business, when my business grew and the online space became more complicated. My focus on perfecting things slowed me down — as I was trying to tweak some little thing every other minute, the competitors and online space would be racing ahead.

Mental Health

I was also extremely hard on myself for any mistake that I made, or anything that went wrong. In my mind, there was always an ideal scenario for everything. If a presentation, exam, event, etc. went against my expectations, I would mull obsessively over it and beat myself up for a period of time. If things went right, I would be thinking about how it could have been better. I frequently forgot about the accomplishments I had achieved before — I was always looking for ways to be better.

This was bad for my mental health of course. Deep down I was negative and self-loathing. I would cover this up with emotional eating (a separate issue that I cover in a different series).

Relationships

In terms of relationships, I was unwittingly alienating people around me, whether they were friends or family. Because I had such rigid and high expectations, I developed a hard edge which was intimidating to people. I was living within a wall and emotionally inaccessible to those around me.

With loved ones, I would focus on the things they were not doing well, rather than acknowledging what they did do or did well — due to my natural focus on fixing things and getting things “right.” This was unfortunate as deep down, I have always regarded people relationships as more important than external achievements.

I then worked on tackling my perfectionism and turning things around, which I share how in part 3.

How About You?

Can you relate to any of the above? What negative effects do you experience as a perfectionist? Let me know in the comments section.

Despite these issues, we can learn to manage perfectionism such that it doesn’t compromise our work, health, or relationships. In the last part, I share how to overcome the cons of perfectionism and live a productive, positive life. Read part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide

This is part 2 of a 3-part series on the downsides of perfectionism and how to turn perfectionism into a positive force in your life.

• Part 1: 10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist
• Part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism
• Part 3: How To Overcome Perfectionism: A Complete Guide