Perfectionism: a Blessing and a Curse

Posted on June 20, 2007 by Bruce Keener

Are you a perfectionist? Does it hurt you or help you?

I learned long ago that I am one, and that it can be both a blessing and curse:

  • A blessing in terms of motivation to continually improve
  • A curse in terms of time management: easy to spend to much time “perfecting” something that is not that important

So I worked on balancing my life to minimize the curse aspect of being a perfectionist. Not to brag on myself, but I did well with it and developed a reputation for being both practical and quality-oriented.

But, in my retirement I am not tempering my perfectionism like I did, and spend too much time on some things. A case in point is the time I spent over the past few weeks trying to get “just the right site design” for Keener Living.

While a good site design is important, quality of content is more important and I want to be able to spend more time on it.

But, you know what? I still worry about site design. Speaking of that, I am about ready to change it back to what I had: I just don’t like how small the font size is in this one — I looked at it today in Internet Explorer on a 1920 pixel screen, and the fonts were almost too small for me to read. So maybe I do need to be a perfectionist in this area after all :) I’ll spend Thursday working on it, but will also take some time out to have lunch with an old friend who is also retired.

I think the problem is that I do not have many time pressures now, so I can spend as much time on something as I want to spend. You may say that this does not sound like a problem, but I am starting to feel out of balance because of it. I am confident that I can get control of this, now that I recognize it. But, I am frustrated with myself for not recognizing it sooner.

Life is too short: we really need to pay attention to what we spend our time on, and not spend too much of it on stuff that doesn’t matter. Seems to me that this is as important in retirement as it is at any other time in our life.

What are your thoughts on perfectionism?

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  • capo

    Cut yourself some slack. You’re retired, right? Well if you want to spend a lot of time tweaking the KL interface and you’re enjoying doing so, why not? OTOH, if you enjoy disciplining yourself then there’s nothing wrong with that either.
    As for perfectionism – I’m a perfectionist with another negative twist – my weakness is “all or nothing”. An example – if I start an exercise program and decide to work out every other day, I’m fine as long as I have a perfect record and don’t miss a day. But if I get sick or have to work late or whatever and miss a session, that’s it. I’ve ruined my string of wins and lose my motivation to continue. I recognize this about myself but it’s still hard to overcome.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce Keener

    Maybe I should take more advantage of being retired than I have. I just don’t want to get so side-tracked that I neglect to spend time contributing to a world in which I have had more blessings than I deserve.