1710: Perfectionism

“I’m a perfectionist” may be the lamest, most clichéd answer possible to that equally lame and clichéd job interview question “what is your biggest weakness?” but, well, it really is a weakness.

Why? Because perfectionism often makes you feel responsible for things that aren’t your fault. Perfectionism often makes you feel bad for making mistakes based on information you weren’t given. Perfectionism often ruins an otherwise pleasant day when that one thing that didn’t go quite as well as all the other things weighs on your mind more than the considerably greater number of positive thoughts you could be having.

I came to the conclusion today that I suffer from perfectionism. I hate doing a bad job. I hate feeling like I’ve made a mistake. I hate feeling like I could have done more.

I made a mistake today. It wasn’t a big mistake. It didn’t get me into trouble. It didn’t hurt anyone or spoil anyone else’s day, and thinking about it rationally, from a distance, it wasn’t really a “mistake” at all since, as noted above, I didn’t have all the information available to hand. It does, however, have the potential to make more work for me — thankfully there is plenty of time to complete said work if it is necessary — and it’s probably something I could have avoided. I didn’t, however, and now this has happened. And I feel bad.

I’m assured that I shouldn’t feel bad, that I wasn’t to know, that it might not even be a problem at all — I won’t know that latter part until tomorrow — but it’s too late; the knowledge that I Did Something Wrong has already sunk in and already made me a bit mopey on the way home. Thankfully I managed to distract myself in time, so with any luck I won’t be spending the evening in a depressed haze staring at a wall as often happens on such occasions, but the fact remains: perfectionism stinks.

I’m not sure where this stems from. My most plausible explanation is that it likely hails from my childhood, where I was typically — not to blow my own trumpet here, it’s a statement of fact — one of the top-performing students in the class, both in primary and secondary school. On the few occasions where I failed to live up to the standards I had apparently set for both myself and others to expect of me, I felt really bad. I still have a vivid memory of a two-page spread in my Class 2 (year 3 or 4 in new money, I think) Maths book where the left page — on which I had completed a single sum — was adorned with the teacher comment “Lazy work” in red pen, and the right page — on which I had completed three sums, two of which were incorrect — was forever blemished with the words “Very poor”, also in red pen.

I was mortified at the time; the rest of my school books were so consistently good and I was so regularly praised and rewarded — “go and colour in a square on your rocket” — that doing something badly brought me crashing down to earth and upset me a great deal. I didn’t want anyone to see those pages in my books; they were a stain on my otherwise good record. To my credit, though, I always made sure I was both more industrious and careful in Maths lessons from that point on, even though I absolutely loathed that subject right through until the end of secondary school.

To date, though, every time something doesn’t quite go right, I end up feeling like I did that day I got that book back with those two awful pages. Whether it’s a negative comment on something I’ve written, an offhand remark by someone I know or simply the knowledge that I messed up somewhere — even if no-one else knows — it hits me right in the Black Dog and, more often than not, ruins an otherwise good day.

Thankfully, the very act of writing this post is helping banish such thoughts from my mind, and I fully intend to go and have a thoroughly pleasant evening now. So suck that, perfectionism.