The Best Self-Help is Free: Perfectionism is the Number One Enemy of Productivity

Chapter 8

This is Chapter 8 of The Best Self-Help is Free, a treatise by Mr. Stolyarov. You can read all chapters of this freely available treatise here.

The case of the hypothetical young artist discussed in Chapter 7 brings us to the human tendency which is the single greatest impediment to productivity - namely, perfectionism.

Perfection is entirely a human construct - and, like God, infinity, or the Platonic forms - is not to be found in the world. Every entity in existence has finite magnitudes of every quality, and it is feasible and conceivable for any of these magnitudes to be greater than they are. Thus, while it is possible to have more or less of anything and to experience outcomes that are better or worse, the perfect is wholly a figment of human imagination. The wealthiest man in the world is extremely rich, but he is not perfectly rich - because he can always have more wealth and be even better off. The most productive man in the world can never be perfectly productive - because there is always more he can produce. Such facts pose no problem to anyone except the perfectionist, who attempts to superimpose his fictitious constructs on reality instead of enabling reality to guide the formation of his mental models.

For the perfectionist, nothing less than some vaguely imagined ideal can suffice. Anything else is for him an indication of absolute and inexcusable failure. Yet, examining the matter realistically, we are certain to conclude that the perfectionist is bound to fail from the onset by his own criterion. Perfectionism thus engenders a pervasive sense of futility in its practitioner and mentally inhibits him from pursuing further productive work.