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July 2 - July 2, 2020
Imperfectionism is freedom because it’s our natural state. It’s the way we’re born to be. Perfectionism is the artificial construct that constricts, rigidifies, and conforms behavior to an unreasonable standard.
At its core, imperfectionism is pursuing and doing good things in life without so much as hoping for (let alone expecting) perfection. It’s prioritizing doing over doing well. This doesn’t rule out doing things well; it only takes away the crippling fear of not doing well.
The premise of imperfectionism—and this is key—is that having lower standards does not equate to getting worse results. A common, false assumption is that aiming for perfection gets you closer to it. The opposite is true: Embracing imperfection will bring you closer to perfection than a perfectionist mindset will.
The primary benefits of becoming an imperfectionist are reduced stress and greater results by taking positive action in more situations.
What would life be like if you fully accepted your insecurities, weaknesses, and mistakes? Use your imagination to feel what the freedom of imperfectionism would be like in an area where you’ve never allowed it. If you can visualize it, you can see the wild appeal of it:
Sincerely communicating effort over perfection makes us more relatable. Keep this italicized phrase in mind: effort over perfection.
You can have perfectionism as a general way of thinking, and you can have it in a specific way, such as needing approval or ruminating about past events.
One day, novelist Leo Tolstoy’s brother told him to sit in a corner until he stopped thinking about a white bear. Much later that day, Tolstoy remained in the corner, his mind fixated on the white bear he needed to stop thinking about. This experiment has been replicated in more studies, and the result is always the same: when people forbid themselves or attempt to rid their mind of something, it boomerangs back to them with alarming consistency and persistency. The solution, then, is to allow negative thoughts but not care about them.
In her book, The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal, PhD, says, “Studies show that the more you try to suppress negative thoughts, the more likely you are to become depressed.”30
Care less about results. Care more about putting in the work. Care less about problems. Care more about making progress despite them. Or if you must fix something, focus on the solution. Care less about what other people think. Care more about who you want to be and what you want to do. Care less about doing it right. Care more about doing it at all. Care less about failure. Care more about success. Care less about timing. Care more about the task.
Imperfectionism means caring less about certain things, because when you care less, you’re more relaxed in that area. While relaxed, it means you have no major concerns or distractions, and your mind is clear and primed to focus. This means more mental resources are at your disposal.
This is Shirzad Chamine’s Sage mode
Perfectionism and imperfectionism have powerful emotional implications. Perfectionism creates feelings of guilt, anxiety, inferiority, low self-esteem, and irritability. Imperfectionism creates feelings of satisfaction, happiness, joy, calm, and a healthy sense of self-worth.
Our emotions are largely derived from our expectations.
Generally speaking, when your expectations are met or exceeded, you’ll experience a positive emotion, and when they are not met, you’ll experience a negative emotion. This is simple and true.
“emotions emerge from the rate at which behaviors and outcomes meet or fail to meet self-goals.”31
Expectations are essentially weaker versions of self-goals, and the concept applies to them as well. Surprise bonus checks make people smile, and surprise bills upset them.
The most effective strategies for change target the earliest possible part of a process. For example, to eat fewer cookies, it’s better to begin with your grocery store shopping rather than relying on willpower
In the same way, it’s best to target your expectations if you wish to change your feelings about something since they’re a precursor.
Expectations are not tangible and inherently meaningful. They’re floating meters that tel...
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it’s best to have high general expectations (for confidence) and low specific expectations (for resilience and confidence).
Someone who struggles with perfectionism is more likely to have low general expectations, confidence, and self-esteem because they have extremely high specific expectations that are rarely met.
Do you see the difference here? Having low or no expectations for individual events gives you confidence because problems and mistakes won’t shock you.
When something goes wrong, you’ll be relying on your steady, generally high confidence, rather than being like a leaf in the wind, able to be taken off course at the slightest breeze of imperfection.
Imperfectionism is nothing artificial either. This isn’t a “trick” to make you happier. Remember, the unrealistic, ridiculous side of this coin is perfectionism. The idea that we can do anything perfectly is completely and irreversibly contrary to logic, the history of mankind, and every person’s experience.
Contentment isn’t passivity. It’s the highest-quality setup for personal growth: a mind clear of distractions and a pure no-strings-attached desire to do something that matters to yourself and to the world.
Perfectionists with unrealistic expectations struggle with the idea of “never enough.” It’s discontentment so pure that the motivational boost to change or get more is outweighed by their dissatisfaction with life.
The positive version of this is called “not quite enough.” It means you’re not satisfied, but in a healthy way: You haven’t had your fill of pull-ups today, you want to write 200 more words of your book, and you’re determined to finish your taxes early. This type of “not enough” is healthy ambition to grow as a person!
Perfectionists continue to look for satisfaction in what they do when it can only be found in what they think about what they do.
Yes!
“Not quite enough” sources from excitement, empowerment, joy, and yes, even contentment. It suggests that a person’s needs may already be somewhat satisfied, but they want more, and with more effort, even greater satisfaction can be within reach.
be mindful of the areas in which you have expectations and then decide what will be enough. Mini habits are a great way to fix this mindset. When you decide that pulling one weed in your garden per day is enough, you’ll soon find yourself saying it’s “not quite enough” and pull a few more.
Perfectionists with unrealistic expectations look for perfect scenarios to take action.
If they want to write a book, they might only do it when they have a moderate amount of energy, because having low energy is more suitable for watching TV, and having high energy is better for doing something more active. They’ll also require themselves to be motivated (i.e., they have to want to do it). They’ll only write in their ideal writing spots and on their preferred writing machines. They must have coffee and food! And it must be a full moon. Those people don’t write much.
Whatever you want to do more of in life—exercise, write, read, swim, dance, sing, laugh, and so on—lower the bar for doing it. If you are willing to do it in the sewer, you will never fail to do it again.
If something is important to you, it should be your goal to make it casual—not special—because habits are casual.
Creating your bar for taking action is a choice you fully control.
If you choose to do at least 50 push-ups a day, you’re not going to do them in a public restroom. You’re not going to do them in your bed. But you could and possibly would do a single push-up in those locations if that’s all you had to do. Extrapolate this concept over an entire day, and it gives you many more opportunities to make progress.
Setting a low bar for action also switches your focus to the process of lasting change. A high bar requires a great performance. This puts more pressure on you to be perfect, which makes you look for perfect opportunities to perform your perfect task perfectly.
focus on the process instead of results,
“result apathy” is the ironic path to incredible results.
Being apathetic about results does NOT mean you’re not trying as hard. Not trying comes from general apathy. Result apathy is this: “I am going to do my best and not care how it turns out.”
The common misconception that trips people up is that they don’t know how to try hard without caring about results; they’ve never tried it. This is just like the motivation and action connection, where we falsely assume that we need item A to obtain item B. I’m telling you that you can let go of your need for results, perform better, and still get those results!
Perfectionists use their desire for positive results to motivate them to go through the process. Imperfectionists focus on the process and let the results take care of themselves.
In life, it’s always smartest to focus on what you control, and in this case, it’s the process, not results.
Improve your productivity by caring less about how much (or what quality of) work you get done
Audrey - this!
By nature, a mini habit is process focused. If you aim for answering one email, that’s not an impressive result, but it starts off the process of answering emails and forming this habit. Processes aren’t just for results; they help us overcome poor circumstances too.
Navy SEALs are mentally special because they keep their mind on the process even in hell-on-earth situations. At their “breaking point,” the men who quit during Hell Week were likely thinking ahead as Marcus suggested.
When a circumstantial thinker realizes I’m tired, they will loop back to this thought repeatedly, focusing intently on the tiredness. Further actions will be determined by this circumstance—not in a proactive way but in a submissive way. A procedural thinker on a mission who realizes “I’m tired” will snap right back to the process of their mission.
he focused on the process of survival and kept going back to What’s next?
Circumstantial thinking isn’t just focusing on present circumstances; it often takes your mind to the future.
Being severely dehydrated, his focus on finding water required him to think about the landscape and where water would most likely be. It took his mind off his many problems.
