Re: Lazy Perfectionism

In one of his recent post “Leaving Things As They Are,” visionaryhussy from The House of Supreme Sultriness brings up being a lazy perfectionist. For some reason I felt obliged to explain why perfectionism brings a bout of laziness with it by default. Take what I’m saying here with a grain of salt. This is all based on personal observations only and not scientific in any way.

So when you are a perfectionist, you are deeply interested in getting the details right. You might be such a perfectionist that you miss the big picture or your end goal in your focus on details. However, all of this merely focuses on the result and not your thought process even before starting a given project.

That means that when you’re assigned a project (by someone else or yourself), you’re going to see the details in front of your mental eye before seeing the result. And because of this focus on details in the early stages, you will inevitably feel overwhelmed just by the idea of starting.

To put it differently, take this scenario: imagine you’re writing down all of the things you’d like to do for a project. Someone who is not a perfectionist would start with rough umbrella tasks and break it down from there as they see fit or as the project’s completion necessitates. A perfectionist would build themselves up from a pyramid’s corner and expand from there. Understandably, they will be quickly overwhelmed to the point of paralysis.

In the former case breaking down the tasks into smaller bits comes as means for achieving a goal whereas the latter is out of principle and often uncontrolled/uncontrollable.

PS: I’m glad visionaryhussy is learning to accept himself the way he is – even the parts of himself he may not like. That’s true ballroom spirit right there!