Why Is Perfectionism Flawed?
Today’s topic is perfectionism and its flaws. You see the problem with perfectionism is, if you look at anyone that is like that, is that sometimes a person’s strength is their weakness. So let’s say for example, you’re getting ready for work, OK? And I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this. You’re getting ready for work. Let’s say you’re you’re running behind, and let’s say you’ve been doing it all week. For whatever reason, let’s say it’s been raining all week, OK? And you’re falling behind. So you decide to leave half an hour early, you know, just to make sure you avoid accidents and stuff like that. And you’re not rushing. And then for some reason you take half an hour longer, so you end up leaving like what maybe 3 minutes earlier? So anyone that can relate to that knows what I mean.
Time Is Funny
It’s almost as if time itself expands and contracts, or at least you’re able to do that, right? I mean, you could spend 10 minutes on your hair. You could spend 3 minutes on your hair. Sometimes I’ll just put on a cap and put on, you know, a little bit of makeup and spend one minute. But the point is that you can do a sufficient job half-ass, you know? And and it applies to a lot of things, but at the same time, it doesn’t apply to a lot of things. You don’t want to do your taxes half-ass, or repair your car half-ass. You don’t want to fly a plane half-ass. So there’s clearly a lot of situations where that does not apply, but there’s also many situations where that does apply.
When is Half-Ass Is OK?
So in the situations it does apply, you have to understand that let’s say for example… let’s say we’re talking about.. OK, let’s say there’s someone, or let’s just say generally people at work, you know, they’re focused on their own thing. They have their own priorities. They have their own tasks that they consider important because they don’t want to get fired, obviously. And so let’s say you you need some information, some documentation or whatever and it takes 5 minutes to do, and you’re you’re sitting there thinking to yourself it takes 5 minutes to do why does it take you two weeks to respond? That’s called mental momentum.
Mental Momentum
OK, mental momentum. It’s like. You can’t make a train make a 90 degree turn, OK and if you try to turn a van fast enough, it will flip over. So there’s a certain amount of momentum, you know, certain direction and speed that people operate with depending on what they consider priority, which is perfectly fine and in some cases very rational, but most of the time I would argue there is a mental momentum and whether it’s a professional life or personal life, it’s hard to get to those 5 minutes. That 5 minute task. It’s hard to get to that 5 minutes, even though it just takes 5 minutes. It’s hard to get to that because of mental momentum.
Examples
So there’s a lot of situations where it’s perfectly OK to do a half-ass job. Let’s say you don’t have three hours per week to detail your car, but you have 15 minutes to hose it down with the water hose. That’s fine. You know, let’s say you don’t have an hour every day to go to the gym, but you have 15 minutes to go for a walk. OK, that’s fine. There’s so many situations where doing a half-ass job is perfectly OK. It generally looks better to have something done than nothing at all, you know? You know, if you’re a busy person, if you have 101 things to do and there’s a growing list and you haven’t addressed it and it’s kind of nagging at you… just know it’s OK to not be a perfectionist. Trust me, I’m not perfect.
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