How Perfectionism Leads to Procrastination

Do you have extremely high standards and expect a lot from yourself day in and day out? Chances are you are a perfectionist. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having high standards, in fact, you should, because if you go through life entertaining anything without standards to compare it to, you are likely to live a ho-hum life, and nobody wants that! However, I want to address the other side of the perfectionism pendulum—when you get so worried about not executing something perfectly that you end up doing nothing at all. Sound familiar?

Let’s paint a picture: you get out of a meeting with your client, full of energy and ideas about what you’re going to do next. You commit to a deadline for a proposal and designs—some kind of deliverable to move the project forward. In your mind it’s all crystal clear and you can’t wait to work on it. But as the date looms closer, something changes. You want it to be amazing, fantastic, and flawless. Even though your ideas are solid, you keep delaying the start of the process. The excitement that you initially felt begins to feel like dread. “I have to do more research, gather more information, find more sources of inspiration before I start so it can be really good. I’ll get started tomorrow—I’ve got time,” you tell yourself. Finally, it’s the day before the due date. You’re now not only beating yourself up for potentially messing up a big opportunity, but also panicking and stressing to pull it together by the end of the day. I’d like to introduce you to the twins that just wreaked havoc upon your nerves and your work: perfectionism and procrastination.

There are several common causes of procrastination, including:

▪ Complicated task anxiety

▪ Fear of imperfection

▪ Lack of self-confidence

▪ Priority confusion

▪ Lack of focus

▪ Indecision

▪ Boredom from minutiae

To clarify, procrastination is not laziness. When people perceive a higher challenge than they feel capable of, they sidestep the discomfort through diversion. For example, when you delay completing a task that seems like it will take a really long time, only to realize that it took less time to do it than to think about it repeatedly.

Because of the negative repercussions of perfectionism and procrastination, it is critical to break the cycle. For one, concern with the outcome being just right inhibits innovation and creativity. Also, you waste valuable time. And by “valuable time,” I mean it in the grandest sense, that you have a finite amount of time on the planet.

Do you really want to look at all your friends’ Facebook posts instead of writing the proposal for a potential new client?

Here are some tips to beat perfectionism-based procrastination that stems from fears about how you will be judged or perceived by others:

▪ Get in touch with the value of what you’re doing. When you find yourself back on Facebook (again) instead of doing something that will move you forward, take a moment to think about how the tasks ahead fit in the grand scheme of your life.

▪ Be aware of unrealistic expectations, and break your brain out of black-and-white thinking. Consider the Best/Worst/Real exercise: whatever tasks you feel compelled to do perfectly (and thus are procrastinating on), write down what you believe could be the Best Case Scenario, the Worst Case Scenario, and what is most likely the Realistic Scenario, which will be neutral.

▪ Remember that no else cares or matters. Most people are so wrapped up with themselves that they won’t notice any “slip” on your part.

▪ Understand the difference between excellence and perfection. Excellence stems from enjoying and learning from an experience, and developing confidence from it. In stark contrast, perfection fosters negative feelings from any perceived mistakes made, regardless of the excellence of performance.

▪ Eliminate distractions and delegate, drop, and delete anything that doesn’t contribute to your goals.

▪ Put time aside and use a single day for a single task: schedule doing the task, and only that task, for a certain day. Put it on your calendar.

▪ Break tasks down into sections of time by giving yourself 5 or 10 minutes of focus. You can shoulder through anything for 5-10 minutes, right? Devoting even a small amount of focus will break the siren call of pushing it off and get you on track to completing the task.

Hopefully, with these tools you can bust through any limiting beliefs about perfectionism. Now that you recognize the problem, you can solve it. While perfectionism and procrastination may have plagued you in the past, you now have the tools to create a new future—not tomorrow, but today. *

Celine Wallace is a New Zealand born Yogi, Lululemon Ambassador, wellness expert and writer, and Founder of Sattva Soul transformational women's events and retreats.