Perfectionism - Top time waster

Top ten time wasters

One of the main reasons that people give for not completing a task is that they are perfectionists. I have to turn away when people tell me this. It is a form of conceit. They are somehow suggesting that the rest of us are muddlers.

You can only hope to be a perfectionist in one very narrow area of your life. If you are prepared for the rest of your life to go into decline then it is possible.

I have seen programmes in How Clean is Your House? when people have claimed that they are too busy to clean their houses as they have better things to do. Again a form of conceit that such things as acting reasonably and cleaning their houses was beneath them. Unfortunately in life you have to maintain a certain level of cleanliness, presentability etc even if you are a self declared genius.

The real reason is a fear of failure. If they do not actually finish these tasks that they are working on because they are seeking perfection then they cannot be judged. If you look at the work before they have finished you are obliged to suspend judgement because they claim they are still working on it.

A good example of this is when people who are not noted for their abilities in any particular area of endeavour say " Oh well I would have done X or Y" everyone can be a critic.

I am not a perfectionist so what I have done is cut down my areas of endeavour in an attempt to become competent in about three areas and not spread myself too thinly.

I have to remind myself constantly what I am supposed to be doing as I can easily waste time researching, watching films that might be interesting, listening to the radio reading books rather than working, exercising or thinking up new ideas. Also I try not to take on a new scheme before the first one is working properly. I also accept that a proportion of my schemes will fail.

Those who have not failed have not tried hard enough.

I have worked with a few perfectionists they are devastated when they make a mistake which unfortunately we all do. They then retreat to their area of expertise and doing nothing out. I have never met a happy perfectionist. They wear it like a badge of honour The like to suffer from their affliction.


My top ten time waster would be not doing the right things in the right order.

It is the old 80/ 20 Rule If you concentrate on a handful of things you will reap the biggest reward.

The problem with that is the minor matters will keep phoning you to be dealt with. The answer to them is just say No. Pass on the minor matters and you days will be less stressful.

On my desk I have a couple of minor matters which I should get rid of and will bring me very little reward but they are taking up too much time. I attempt to get rid of them and try not to take on similar matters in the future. It can never be 100% foolproof. They have a habit of creeping past your defences.

You have to learn to live with failure and enjoy it. I have !

Since I started writing this I came across an article explaining why we are affected by perfectionism. It is our childhood of course. Obviously most of us have not been able to come to terms with this and we spend our lives recreating what we learnt in our early years.

When we are young we take our self worth from those who we think are our superiors being parents, teachers, friends and relatives. When we are children we have no other sources of information so we become used to trying to comply with what are told by those groups of people.

Until we leave home we are totally caught up in what we are told. It is a shock when we go out in to the world there are pole who not not seem to care about such behaviour or do not seem to comply with the behaviour we have been taught to respect.

We can either go off the rails and ignore outside influences, carry o our lives as though the voices keep telling us what to do or come to terms with our own behaviours. Most of us still carry out for the rest of our lives what we have been brought up to think of as good behaviour, If we fail which we will we suffer from regret that we have never lived up to the expectations of others.

It is a well balanced person who is able to judge themselves solely on their own unbiased criteria There are plenty of people out there who feel free to judge us and let us know that we are not up to much.


Perfectionism is just a fear of failure. They set themselves unreachable goals. It is better therefore not to set any goals so your have not failed


n its pathological form, perfectionism can be very damaging. It can take the form of procrastination when it is used to postpone tasks ("I can't start my project until I know the 'right' way to do it.")