Prioritizing for Maniacs: Tool #2
Slaying the Perfectionism Dragon
G.K. Chesterton said, "Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly." This quote baffled me for so long, because I was not only a perfectionist, but I was obnoxious about it. I took real pleasure in my "superior way" of doing just about everything. My house was typically immaculate, most of our food made from scratch, each ingredient sourced in a convoluted manner that fit my algorithm for price, quality, and preference.
However, I could not see the forest for the trees. I would leave critical tasks undone, because I had spent my time doing optional tasks perfectly (as explained in tool 1: unnecessarily tight specs). I would spend hours over a period of weeks or more finding the perfect new owner for some nice items I was giving away, rather than donating them and letting the universe work it out.
There were a number of pivotal moments in my healing from perfectionism, including simply failing at times. It was instructive for me to run up against the wall and realize, "I simply cannot do everything as well as I want to, and some of these tasks are still worth doing even if I have to scale back my vision." Maybe my diaper bag was no longer perfectly prepared for any and all outcomes, but I could now leave the house in far less time because I settled upon keeping a basic bag in the car at all times and only carried a diaper and pack of wipes in my purse.
Looking back, I can see the perfectionism that had me in its clutches for years was rooted in the fear-based education of my childhood. I am not sure why this was common, but adults around me would catastrophize about the downstream impact of a single bad grade or detention. I remember middle school teachers lying that sometimes colleges would go and look back at middle school grades if they couldn't make a decision between two high schoolers with similar attributes. Further, we had been told that the college we went to would determine whether we had a successful life, or as was implied, failed at life. In other words, if you messed up a 7th grade math quiz, you might end up miserable as an adult.
Throw in beauty magazines aimed at women and girls, with the constant messages about perfecting our skin, hair, teeth, nails, and especially, our figures. Think about the subliminal messaging that occurs when a self-conscious teenage girl reads articles about "blasting belly fat" paired with a picture of a model with no belly fat: the reader must really have an unacceptable level of belly fat. This occurs even more so when she sees a stunning actress labeled as defective in some way. Consider the advice about how to get noticed by your crush: the implication is that girls should be working to attract males, rather than being told that the vast majority of healthy teenage boys are naturally quite interested in girls. To quote Harrison Ford's character in Seven Days, Seven Nights, when talking to a magazine editor about advice for women wanting to attract a man, "Show up."
Instead, girls are sold this lie that they need to be perfect to be attractive, to be loved. Rather than coaching girls on what they are more likely to need in future partnerships, namely, boundaries and high expectations, they are told the opposite. Why? Because telling girls they're fine the way they are means you can't sell them lotions and potions. There's no money in helping girls and women feel secure.
I can point to hundreds of sources of perfectionist messaging that impacted me over my life, from those mentioned, to the framing of motherhood as a place where I needed to do everything well, or my baby would end up subpar (just like 7th grade me!). I can point to the images of mostly women joyfully serving others across thousands of ads and tv shows, to the verbiage of the wedding industry (e.g. "bridal bootcamps" + "the most important day of your life"=your looks determine how happy you and your husband get to be.). Over and over I was told that in order to be a woman, I had to be perfect, but never make obvious how much work it took to achieve that. "Effortless perfection" is a myth that causes endless anxiety while preventing real connection. "I have to be perfect so you love me, but also lie to you about what my life is really like so you admire me."
When the burnout sets in, women are often told that they need to relax, that nobody is imposing these standards upon them. In some ways, there is a truth to that. Many people do not have one single person in their life giving them direct perfectionist messaging. However, anyone living in the culture is receiving this messaging any time they see a billboard, hear or watch an ad, see a magazine cover at the grocery store, get given feedback that only points out the small percentage that isn't perfect, or watch another person get savaged online for some small perceived infraction. We watch the harshness with which women are treated existing in an unaltered state or having limits with their families, and we think we can avoid this fate.
The solution to this is to recognize perfectionism for what it is: a Catch-22 designed to keep you miserable and inauthentic. No matter what you do, someone is going to criticize it, so inoculating yourself against criticism from people whose advice you wouldn't take is key. At the end of the day, you are the one who has to live your life, in your body, with your choices, so start cross-examining the harsh self-talk. Ask it where it gets off talking to your best friend that way. Reframe catastrophic predictions with humor, to retrain your brain to do its own work and not copy pathologies it learned earlier in life.
Ask yourself, "Is this thing worth doing?" And then, knowing your specs, do it as badly as you can get away with. Save your best efforts for where you really need them and give yourself the gift of good enough.
Read the whole series:
- Know your specs (January 15, 2026)
- Slay the perfectionism dragon (January 22, 2026)
- Eisenhower matrix (January 29, 2026)
- Scheduling maintenance (February 5, 2026)
- The Ignatian Method (February 12, 2026)
- Believe that you too only have 24 hours in a day (February 19, 2026)
- Big Picture Questions (February 26, 2026)