10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist

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Note from Celes: Hey everyone, how are you doing? 🤗 I’m currently revisiting and updating the classics at PE, starting with the perfectionism series. In today’s post, I share why being a perfectionist may not be so perfect and my experience as a perfectionist.

This is part 1 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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Are you a perfectionist? Do you often seek to achieve perfection in everything you do? Do you feel a need to improve every single thing you do to the state of perfection, even at the expense of your well-being?

A perfectionist is someone who strives for perfection and sets extremely high standards for themselves. They have a strong desire to meet or exceed these standards in every aspect of their life, whether it’s work, relationships, or personal achievements.

In psychology, perfectionism is a personality trait characterized by “a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high-performance standards, accompanied by overly critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.”^[1]

To a perfectionist, anything less than perfect is unacceptable.

10 Signs You Are a Perfectionist

Perfectionism can manifest in various ways, and those who have it often exhibit certain behaviors. Here are 10 signs you are a perfectionist:

1. You have extremely high standards. You have very high targets and standards for whatever you set out to do. Sometimes, they stress you out. You may spend many late nights and sacrifice sleep just to achieve them.
2. You are very critical of mistakes. You dislike mistakes or errors as they suggest imperfection — whenever you see a mistake, you are the first to correct it. Just knowing that there is a mistake that hasn’t been fixed yet irks you.
3. You have an all-or-nothing mindset. This is also known as black-and-white thinking. Either you do something to the highest level or you don’t do it at all. You also tend to see things in extremes — if something is not done perfectly, that means it’s a disaster. There is no in-between.
4. You are extremely meticulous and have a very high attention to detail. You focus on the smallest details of a task just to ensure that everything is in place. You spot mistakes when others don’t see any.
5. You are highly self-critical, even over little things. Whenever something goes wrong, you become really hard on yourself, wondering why you couldn’t have done it better and why you made that mistake.
6. You mull over outcomes that don’t turn out as planned, wondering if things could have been different if you just did X or Y. You also spend quite a bit of time analyzing and second-guessing decisions and actions after they were made, wondering if you had made the best choice.
7. You procrastinate just to do things at the “right” moment, or because you want to do things to the highest level. You sometimes put off tasks because the conditions aren’t perfect or you don’t feel like you can do them perfectly.
8. You have difficulty delegating to others. You find it hard to delegate tasks to others as you feel that they can’t do them as well as you.
9. You become defensive toward criticism and have a fear of failure, as they suggest that you didn’t do things well or that something is wrong with you.
10. You spend an immense amount of time perfecting things, even beyond healthy limits. Perfection is the end goal. You often sacrifice sleep, rest, and personal time just to bring your work to the highest level. To you, it is all part of achieving the goal.

Do you see these traits in yourself? How about the people around you?

My Experience With Perfectionism

I used to be quite a neurotic perfectionist when I was younger. In fact, all the 10 traits would fit me to a tee! I’m still quite a perfectionist today, though I’ve learned to dial down the negative aspects of my perfectionism (more in part 2).

A big part of my perfectionism is my inner drive and desire to be the best I can be. I always feel that when we do something, we should do our best without giving excuses. And while we are alive and on Earth, we should make the most out of our time here and put our best foot forward in whatever we do.

The second reason is my upbringing. I grew up in Singapore in the 1980s-2000s, and the culture and society then had an extreme fixation on conformance and adhering to an extreme definition of perfection.

This was particularly so in my primary school, where we were told to be the best and to aim for the best — anything less was not acceptable. I was in the best class and when it came to tests and exams, we were taught to aim for 100/100 (a worthy goal), but made to feel inadequate when we got less than that. We would be punished, reprimanded, and shamed when we made the smallest mistakes.

In terms of conduct, we were made to follow many strict, dogmatic rules, like only being permitted to wear hair ties and watches of a single color (only black, white, grey, or blue was allowed), or that we could only have specific hairstyles and not have any hair touching or covering our faces. It was questionable as to how these rules helped us become better humans. Not conforming meant being singled out, shamed, and punished in front of other students.

The fact that I have a high sensitivity to stimuli — something which I thought was common to everyone, but realized wasn’t when I grew up — further heightened my perfectionistic tendencies. I would experience external and internal stimuli (such as sounds, sights, and emotions) on a very deep level, and frequently observe details that many don’t.

These factors made me aim for the highest standard and be very meticulous in everything I do — i.e., a perfectionist. I would take this behavior to the highest level and become a neurotic perfectionist. This behavior extended to my studies, work, and relationships.

Examples of Perfectionism in My Life

Making Websites

For example, when I started creating websites as a teenager (as a hobby), I would spend late nights, sleeping just 1-2 hours some days, tweaking my sites to perfection. This included the content, graphics, and right down to the HTML syntax.

My sites had to look great at every resolution and on every browser; the content I produced had to meet the highest conceivable standard. I was constantly making little edits like tiny one-pixel changes and was very particular about how everything looked. It was an unbending, personal standard that I had set for myself.

Such efforts paid off, as my websites received over half a million pageviews a month. My visitors could recognize the quality of my work compared to others.

Gaming

Then as an avid gamer, I was always perfecting my playthroughs in each game. As a kid, my brother would criticize me if I made mistakes that resulted in the character’s death. 😑 This taught me to be very precise in how I executed each move and in achieving 100% perfection.

I fondly remember how I broke all the top scores in Crazy Taxi (a racing game) and completed every bonus challenge (some of which were insanely difficult). I played King of Fighters ’95 for months, perfected my attacking strategies based on the opponent, and won it many times at the hardest difficulty. In total, I completed over 100 games, from RPG to action to racing games, during my childhood!

School & Work

In university, I often took over project work due to teammates slipping on their tasks or just to improve the overall standard. I spent a lot of time perfecting the output, right down to the nitty-gritty. If it was a presentation, everything had to have a consistent look and theme, including matching font types, font sizes, and colors. If it was a report, all the content and formatting had to be seamless.

Even though it was at the expense of my time and rest, even though I ended up doing much more work than other teammates, the end result was worth it as we would get the best grade.

Then with my work at PE, I’m very meticulous about the content I create. For example, with each course, I spend many months creating and refining my course materials before launching it. After I conduct a live course, I would spend another few months improving it based on the participants’ feedback for that run.

I’m always thoroughly editing every article, podcast, and video before it gets published. Even then, I continue to tweak and improve my content after that. Perhaps this is why many readers appreciate my material and share it; teachers and professors alike use my material as part of their course curriculum.

The Result

Being a neurotic perfectionist helped me achieve immense results and become an overachiever in every area of my life. It helped me do well in school, perform well in my corporate job, and excel in many goals and projects.

However, as I grew older, I realized that neurotic perfectionism has its damaging effects as I share in the next part of the series. Read part 2: 6 Hidden Downsides of Perfectionism

To You

Are you a perfectionist? Can you identify with any of the signs? What do you think is the cause of your perfectionist behavior? Let me know in the comments section.

This is part 1 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