Why is perfectionism good

If you're setting yourself up for continual failure by setting the bar so high no human could ever really clear it, then that amounts to the wrong kind of perfectionism. The consequences of this incessant sense of failure and worry are grim. Oh, and besides premature death, it also causes burnout at work. But while this sort of bad perfectionism seems downright scary, there is another type of perfectionism that isn't bad at all.

If instead of constantly failing to meet your own expectations and perpetually fretting about it, you merely insist on giving your best, that's nothing to worry about, according to Hill and his fellow researchers. You expect yourself to be instantly good at things. Perfectionists tend to expect a high level of competency from themselves right off the bat.

When they struggle to learn a new skill, they prefer giving up to working harder. Perfectionists tend to like things a certain way—their way. You equate success with happiness. Perfectionists believe they can only be happy when they achieve perfection. Their constant worries about failing to meet their own impossible standards can lead to health problems such as depression, eating disorders, and anxiety.

Try to impress yourself, not anyone else Experts have identified two types of perfectionism , a good kind and a bad kind. Writing, grammar, and communication tips for your inbox. Excellence-seeking perfectionists not only stringently evaluate their own performance but also hold high performance expectations for other people in their lives.

The second, which we call failure-avoiding perfectionism , involves an obsessive concern with and aversion to failing to reach high performance standards. Failure-avoiding perfectionists are constantly worried their work is not quite right or good enough and believe that they will lose respect from others if they do not achieve perfection.

Critically, our results showed that performance and perfectionism were not related to each other —perfectionists are not better or worse performers than non-perfectionists. Even employees high in excellence-seeking perfectionism were not better performers. However, we could not identify a specific reason for the absence of the relationship.

It is possible that perfectionists spend too much time perfecting certain work or projects while neglecting other tasks or projects. Identifying definitive causes will require future research. Taken as a whole, our results indicate that perfectionism is likely not constructive at work. We did find consistent, modestly-sized relationships between perfectionism and variables widely considered to be beneficial for employees and organizations i.

Yet critically, we found no link between perfectionism and performance. This, coupled with the strong effects of perfectionism on burnout and mental well-being, suggests perfectionism has an overarching detrimental effect for employees and organizations. In other words, if perfectionism is expected to impact employee performance by increased engagement and motivation, then that impact is being offset by opposing forces, like higher depression and anxiety, which have serious consequences beyond just the workplace.

Where we are so literally valued for the quality and extent of our accomplishments that those achievements often correlate, directly, to our ability to pay rent or put food on the table. Where complete strangers weigh these on-paper values to determine everything from whether we can rent that flat or buy that car or receive that loan.

Curran and Hill have a similar hunch. Competition even has been embedded in schools: take standardised testing and high-pressure university entrances. Rather than perfectionism leading to academic success, researchers have found high-achieving adolescents are more likely to become perfectionists Credit: Getty Images. Similarly, the gold-star method of parenting and schooling may have had an effect.

If other strategies, like making children feel guilty for making a mistake, come in, it can get even more problematic. Research has found that these types of parental tactics make children more likely to be perfectionists — and, later, to develop depression. Fear of failure is getting magnified in other ways, too. Take social media: make a mistake today and your fear that it might be broadcast, even globally, is hardly irrational. At the same time, all of those glossy feeds reinforce unrealistic standards.

As well as reinforcing unrealistic standards, social media gives us more reason to fear making mistakes Credit: Getty Images. Some perfectionism is inheritable. But it also arises because of environment after all, if it were just genetic, it seems unlikely it would be increasing so much. So how can parents counteract it? Model good behaviour by watching their own perfectionistic tendencies, researchers say.

And exhibit unconditional love and affection. Perfectionism can be a particular challenge to treat. You can train someone to be more self-compassionate in a therapeutic setting. But if they go back to the office, say, with the same demanding boss and same deep-seated behaviours, a lot of that can go out the door. Then, of course, there is that widespread if erroneous belief that being a perfectionist makes us better workers or parents, or athletes, or whatever the task is at hand.

We want to get rid of them. When we see a person with perfectionism, they can often be ambivalent towards change. People say it brings them benefits. If someone says, for example, they need to do three extra hours of work at home each night to be good at their job, they might experiment with not doing that for a week.

Usually the patient not only finds that it makes no difference — but that the extra rest might even improve their performance. The bigger piece, though, is replacing that critical ticker-tape with kinder messages — toward both myself and others.