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Key Concepts
- Perfectionists can become discouraged by failing to meet impossibly high standards, making them reluctant to take on new challenges or even complete agreed-upon tasks. The insistence on dotting all the i’s can also breed inefficiency, causing delays, work overload and even poor results.
- Perfectionism can encompass some positive qualities, including a drive to succeed, an inclination to plan and organize, and a focus on excellence. So-called healthy perfectionists embrace the trait’s sunnier side while minimizing its darker features.
- In recent years researchers have developed tools to parse and measure the beneficial, along with the detrimental, aspects of perfectionism. In addition, they are developing treatment programs that push perfectionistic tendencies in a more positive direction.
More from this issue of Mind
July
2009 Issue- Illusions Seeing in Stereo: Illusions of Depth
- Reviews and Recommendations MIND Reviews: Finding Our Tongues, by Dean Falk
- Ask the Brains Why is it hard to "unlearn" an incorrect fact?
- Buy the Digital Edition
David Liu is a technology entrepreneur in San Francisco. He has helped found several start-ups to market products he has developed, including those stylus pens the UPS driver hands you to sign for your packages. But even as he dreams up new inventions, an ongoing patter in his head objects that they are stupidly obvious. And despite his accomplishments, Liu teeters on a mental precipice: “It feels shameful, like, hey, I’m in my early 30s, I should have had a Yahoo by now—or I should at least have had a company I sold for tons of money.”
Liu is a perfectionist, someone who demands utmost excellence from himself, an expectation that can lead to fear of failure and reflexive self-criticism. Even when he is doing well, Liu has trouble feeling good about himself. “It’s so habitual, the beating-myself-up part,” he says.
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