The Perfectionist and Time Management
Time management is often a huge issue for perfectionists. I wrote about three types of perfectionists in a previous blog.
Time management impacts all three.
The person who has high expectations of themselves often does not set realistic timelines for getting work done. We not only want to do the thing perfectly, we think we need perfect conditions (to include the amount of knowledge in our heads) to do the thing.
The person who perceives that others have high expectations of her is often paralyzed by the prospect of failure.
The person who places high expectations on others often finds themselves in a crunch because someone else didn’t do something to their standards. Or because someone walked out of their life because they were tired of never measuring up to that person’s ideals.
Common Time Management Traps Perfectionists Face
Not even doing the thing
The mindset that goes along with this one is “If I can’t do it perfectly I don’t want to do it at all.”
This is a way we can avoid failure (even though we pre-fail by doing this). This is a person who considers failure and mistakes to be so catastrophic they would rather miss out on the opportunity to do something cool/great/rewarding instead of feeling the sting of possible failure.
Underneath this mindset, there are likely deeper beliefs generated by challenging relationships. Maybe a teacher, parent, sibling, peer criticized or rejected her. She was ostracized because she didn’t live up to their expectations. Failure could mean abandonment, loneliness, emptiness.
Procrastinating the thing
Procrastination isn’t always about perfectionism. But when it is about perfectionism, it’s about extending our perfectionist mindset to every.single.detail, distraction, and obsessing.
Extending the perfectionist mindset
We don’t just want the thing to be perfect, we want the conditions to do the thing to be perfect.
I do this with blogging and creating my social media content. Ideally, I want a whole day to be uninterrupted so I can focus in a state of creative flow. I do take measures to set boundaries with my time to give this to myself once a week, but if I could only work in this creative flow under those perfect conditions, you would probably not be reading this blog right now. Real life is full of interruptions. It’s messy. Taking my laptop with me while my daughter is at the orthodontist isn’t ideal working conditions, but I can knock out the outline of a blog post there. I will always want and work towards that uninterrupted solitude for creative work flow, but I can’t not work when it doesn’t happen.
Sometimes this takes the form of gathering supplies. We get hung up on Pinterest looking for ideas on what we will need to do the thing. Then we have to investigate all the options for those things. What colors do they come in? Where will I find the best price? Best quality? Quickest shipping? Do we actually need all those supplies? Do we need to save for the expensive versions of those supplies, or can we make do with something we already have?
Sometimes this takes the form of researching and learning. We can get so caught up in reading about how to do the thing and learning what skills we need to develop to do it that we don’t get started. We are unwilling to give it a try and let ourselves learn along the way. We do not have a compass that tells us when we know enough to get going. Sometimes all the research we do sends us deeper into a hole of self-doubt, because we start to realize how much there is out there to know about the topic. We can miss that we already do know a lot about it, and dismiss what we bring to the table as “not enough.”
Distracting from doing the thing
Those who struggle with internalizing expectations from others may find themselves doing this one. If we distract ourselves from getting to work on the thing we can push the timeline we have available to do the thing back so far that there just is not enough time for any human to reasonably do the thing perfectly. The pressure is off to make it perfect. If anyone would have failed at that task, then nobody can blame us for failing. We can come up with really rational-sounding reasons to distract from getting something done. Often we even fool ourselves with these logical reasons excuses.
Obsessing over the details of the thing
Many perfectionists are detail-oriented, and we want to get every little part of the thing right. This takes a huge amount of time. We plan time to do a task, and then it takes much longer than we planned. So what do we do? We beat ourselves up because we didn’t get it done in the time we allowed ourselves to do it. Yeah, that helps (insert sarcasm).
Sometimes we know we will be slow at getting the thing done, and that just makes it all the more overwhelming. Doing the thing is hard enough, but the amount of work involved in double/triple/quadruple-checking that we didn’t miss any mistakes makes it feel all the more daunting. No wonder we don’t want to get started.
Starting, but then quitting the thing
With this one we have avoided the hurdles of pre-failing and procrastination, but our all-or-nothing thinking comes into play. We might actually be doing fantastic, but then we hit one hurdle. And quit. We think things like:
“If that one tiny thing is going to go wrong, then I can’t do this at all.”
“The whole thing is messed up, I can’t fix it now.”
“I have screwed up my entire timeline for this thing.”
“I am a failure.”
Often, time management issues with perfectionism are driven by comparison and negative self-talk.
We compare ourselves to others and think we should be able to do things better than them. Or at least be able to do them as well/as quickly/as easily as it seems they do them. We don’t see the amount of work others put into things, or the amount of natural talent they were given to make the thing easier.
I used to be a ballet dancer.
It’s easy to look at ballet dancers and admire how graceful and effortlessly they dance, with their straight legs, perfectly pointed toes, and smiles on their faces. We don’t see the hours of strenuous practice, harsh instructors, bleeding toes, fierce competition, sweat, isolation from “real life”, and even eating disorders that go into that effortless graceful performance.
We do the same thing when we compare ourselves to people who are doing what we are trying to do, and think there must be something wrong with us when we have to put work into it. We tend to have an inner critic who berates us for not naturally measuring up to others. Of course this critic misses all the unseen factors that contribute to the other’s success (hard work, time invested, etc.) too. This critic is often a task master, constantly pushing us to work harder. This critic does not care that we may be naturally talented or have great skill in other areas. It tells us that it doesn’t matter if we are good at something if we are not perfect at everything.
So what can we do about it?
Strategies for Perfectionism and Time Management Problems
I know I probably sound like a broken record, but awareness is always the first step to change.
Notice your critical self-talk. I mean, really, notice it. What do you say to yourself? Would you talk to a friend that way? It might be a good idea to write down the things you say to yourself about productivity, perfection, and time management.
Take a hard look at how your perfectionistic mindset gets in the way of managing your time well. Ask yourself how fear of failure might be getting in your way.
Identify and evaluate the ways you procrastinate. If you know you tend to scroll instagram instead of getting to work on something, maybe you need to set some boundaries with yourself. But you have to notice how you end up procrastinating before you make that plan. What derails you?
Take the pressure off your deadlines or standards wherever possible. Even if you don’t think it is possible, challenge yourself to write down changes you could make (you don’t have to actually make them). Doing this clues your brain into the idea that there is another way, and sets the stage for it to shift from rigid thinking to flexible possibility.
Learn to delegate and learn to tolerate the discomfort of someone doing it differently. You might be surprised at what they come up with. Dare I say they might even have a more efficient way of doing something than you do? Or at least as efficient. My husband and I have had to learn this with sharing household tasks. We could dicker about how the dishwasher gets loaded or laundry gets folded, but in the end, it’s just nice that someone else is doing the job.
Learn to set boundaries on your time, with people who want you to be accessible to them all the time. I have some resources on boundaries here, here, here, and here. This requires some work on valuing yourself, your time, which can be challenging to a perfectionist, especially if your striving is because you feel like you are not good enough. You may need some support from a counselor to work on this piece.
Create a mantra for yourself that reminds you of the mindset you are working on. One of my go-to’s is “Do what I can, when I can, decide it’s enough.”
About to-do lists:
I like to keep a weekly to-do list – it takes the pressure off of the daily timeline. This feels gentler to me, somehow?
It might help to circle the things that are top priorities – try to keep it down to 3. This way, you have a visual reminder that if nothing else got done, you got to the most important things.
If some things are bigger tasks (either they are more time consuming or they just feel heavier to you),
WRITE THEM IN REALLY BIG LETTERS ON YOUR LIST!
Those things are taking up extra space in your head already, so it’s a good idea to let them take up extra space on your list. This way you are less likely to beat yourself up for not doing other things if you did the BIG THINGS.
Write down the things you already did and cross them off, not just the things you still have to do. Often we do not give ourselves credit for all the things we do. When we see them all together with our to-do list, then it makes sense why we didn’t get to every little thing.
If you don’t get to something on your list, scratch it off and write it on tomorrow’s. Or next Tuesday’s. Write it somewhere in the future so your brain knows you are on it, but also so it will let you off the hook for it today.
You could have some deep-seated limiting beliefs about failure and mistakes that makes working on this really difficult alone. A lot of perfectionism thoughts got started through trauma, and not just the big traumas we tend to associate with that word. Interactions from childhood that left you humiliated, left out, feeling less-than are powerful enough to mobilize that critical part of you who tries to protect you by being perfect.
Having someone walk through those experiences with you can be a powerful way to find that freedom to see yourself as you really are. EMDR therapy is especially effective at getting at this stuff, and if you are a woman in Pennsylvania, I’d love to help you out. You may want to add “call Jennie” to that to-do list!
Jennie Sheffe is a National Certified Counselor ™ who helps women find freedom from anxiety and peace in their chaos. She sees clients virtually in the state of Pennsylvania, or in her Carlisle, PA office. She offers Christian counseling and EMDR Therapy.
