How to Get Over Your Perfectionism

Hi there,

I once knew a woman who could spend hours writing and rewriting a two-paragraph email. Fonts, spacing, the exact shade of blue in her signature line…she obsessed over all of it. When she finally hit send, her boss skimmed it for five seconds, replied with a thumbs-up emoji, and moved on.

She was crushed. Not because her work wasn’t good but because her perfection was debilitating. She was pouring her time, energy, and effort into details that nobody else noticed.

Spoiler alert: that woman was me.

I used to be someone who boasted about my perfection. And that’s the quiet tragedy of perfectionism. It becomes a point of pride and dresses itself up as discipline, high standards, excellence.

But too often, it’s just procrastination and avoidance dressed up in a fancy clothes.

The Trap of Perfectionism

Here’s the paradox: perfectionists don’t usually produce perfect things. In fact, they often produce… nothing.

(Or just a graveyards of Google Docs with names like FINAL_v27_FOR REAL_THIS_TIME.)

They rehearse endlessly but never perform. They draft endlessly but never publish. They prepare endlessly but never launch.

The research, they analyze, they prepare. But they never take that first scary step and do the thing!

The sneaky thing about perfection is that’s a moving target. The more you chase it, the further it runs. And you can burn entire years chasing an ephemeral finish line that doesn’t even exist, except in your head.

The Three Faces of Perfectionism

Psychologists break perfectionism down into three main flavors and most of us probably rotate between them:

1. Self-Oriented Perfectionism: The brutal inner critic. Every mistake, every stumble, every “less-than” becomes proof you’re not enough.
   

2. Other-Oriented Perfectionism: The micromanager. You hold everyone around you to impossible standards, then wonder why your relationships feel brittle.
   

3. Socially-Oriented Perfectionism: The people-pleaser. You live under the imagined spotlight of others’ judgment, paralyzed by what they’ll think if you get it wrong.

Each one hurts differently, but the common thread is control. The belief that if you could just get it perfect, you’d finally feel safe. Spoiler: you won’t.

Perfectionism feels useful at first. It pushes you to refine, to care, to avoid sloppiness. That’s why it’s seductive…because it’s half right.

But here’s the trick: perfectionism isn’t about raising quality. It’s about avoiding shame.

You’re not polishing that presentation because it needs one more tweak. You’re polishing it because you can’t stomach someone saying, “This isn’t good enough.”

Perfectionism disguises fear as ambition. And avoidance as having high standards.

READER POLL

Shipping at 70%

Jeff Bezos famously said most decisions should be made with 70% of the information. Normally, I wouldn’t take advice from a guy who looks like a shaved thumb with Wi-Fi, but he might be right on this one.

Waiting for 100% isn’t wisdom; it’s actually paralysis and avoidance.

Same goes for your projects, your career, your relationships. Ship it at 70%. Learn, adjust, iterate.

Think of Apple. The first iPhone didn’t even have copy-paste. Copy-paste! One of the most basic features. But they shipped anyway. And then they improved.

We could all take a lesson from that. You don’t need to nail it. You just need to start.

Turning Perfection Into Progress

So how do you fight the urge to polish until you vanish? A few shifts help:

• Flip the script: Instead of asking, “How can I make this flawless?” ask, “How can I make this useful and good enough to move on?”
  

• Practice visible work: Share drafts, early versions, prototypes. The feedback is more valuable than your private tinkering.
  

• Redefine “perfect”: Perfection isn’t an outcome. It’s the ongoing act of improving. Aim for action over analysis.

Final Thought

Perfectionism doesn’t mean you have high standards. It often means you have fragile ones. Because real excellence requires resilience, the willingness to be seen messy, to get it wrong, to recover and refine in public view.

The perfectionist hides. The master shows up, screws up, and keeps going.

The cure for perfectionism isn’t lowering your standards. It’s shifting your standards from outcome to process.

Perfection isn’t the flawless painting. It’s the painter who keeps returning to the canvas.

So go ahead: send the email, publish the draft, start the project, and launch your business.

The truth is, no one’s waiting for you to be perfect. Your life, your projects, your dreams are all waiting for you to show up.

Go get after it! 💪 

Shakila

P.S. Forward this to a friend. Don’t overthink it, it doesn’t need to be the perfect friend.

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