The Antidotes to Perfectionism & Procrastination, The Two-Sided Coin
*listen to the podcast version of this episode here*
Our habits are our life. Our routine, what we make and have time for, what we do and feel each day is our life. It doesn’t begin after we accomplish something, or once we make the changes we aspire to. It’s right now, and we create it moment to moment.
So, then (acknowledging that many of the ‘habits’ we must have are because we’re living in our current digital, systemically imbalanced, capitalist age), what do we have control over?
What can we truly learn to change for ourselves in order to cultivate more presence and contentment in our daily life?
Two of the things that (at least for myself) are at the root of my stress are both perfectionism and procrastination, and they’re two sides of the same coin.
Perfectionism holds me to a standard that thwarts progress. It demands a lack of mistakes, as well as a feeling of discontentment both in the process and with the final result.
Procrastination, or avoiding what I know I want to work on, is an embodiment of anxious feelings. Knowing something needs to get done, for many of us, is not enough to make it happen in the moment. In fact, our brains become so overwhelmed by the necessity of the task, that we’ll do anything we can to rationalize putting it off. I’ll have more energy for this tomorrow. Later in the week, it’ll be easier. We create hypothetical scenarios that our future selves will surely fulfill for us, so our present self doesn’t have to.
Here’s the thing, though. Procrastination, as we all have probably experienced, exacerbates the anxiety. It prolongs the feelings of stress and then becomes a vicious self-fulfilling prophecy. And suddenly, we’ve missed a deadline, or thought about a task for a month that ended up taking 15 minutes, and so on. But is that it? We get stressed so we don’t do it? No…
Perfectionism fuels procrastination.
Like a partner in crime with procrastination, perfectionism looms over us at the start of a task, holding us to that unattainable standard. Perfectionism may even beat us down and say “It’ll never turn out how you want, why do it at all?” Perfectionism keeps us from progress, fueling more procrastination, fueling more stress, and so on.
Both of these concepts:
Lead to a lack of productivity
Are accompanied and/or driven by a sense of dissatisfaction with one's work
Originate from anxious feelings
And both:
Impede success or productivity
Harm your well-being and contentment
Pull you away from the present moment of “what is”
In other words, perfectionism can lead to procrastination, and procrastination can reinforce perfectionism.
Many of us, myself included, have been experiencing this rollercoaster for our entire lives. We may have improved here and there (noticing that something we dreaded for weeks took 15 minutes does sometimes help us do better next time for example), but it is still a debilitating habit we hold.
But this isn’t how it has to be. Seneca, one of the most prolific Stoic philosophers from two centuries ago, said:
“There are more things…likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality… Accordingly, some things torment us more than they ought; some torment us before they ought; and some torment us when they ought not to torment us at all.”
It is the imagination of a perfect outcome, or the imagination of our future selves handling something for us, that torments us in the present moment. The concoction of dream scenarios where nothing is hard.
So what can we do about it?
One of the best antidotes, according to the Stoics (via Ryan Holiday here), to imaginations run amuck with both perfectionism and procrastination, is logic. When we find ourselves imagining how hard something is going to be or searching for reasons as to why we shouldn’t do something in the present, we can combat with simple logic and search for the truth of the matter.
Is it true that this needs to be absolutely perfect?
Is it true that I 100% am incapable of doing what needs to get done?
Is it 100% true without a doubt that I can’t do this now, and therefore future me should be the only one to try?
In each moment of distress, when we notice ourselves participating in the cycle, we can take a mindful moment to pause.
Slow down, be in this present moment. Not the future one, not our minds, which may be filled with anxiety. This moment, right here and now, where we’re sitting, what our environments look like. And breathe. Is what I’m imagining or fretting 100% true?
Most of the time, the answer is no.
And if we pause long enough to listen to that logic, if we pause long enough with mindfulness to view our emotions without judgment and with more clarity, we then are given the freedom of choice. If this imagination isn’t 100% true… then I could certainly do this task now, or start it, couldn’t I? There’s actually nothing stopping me except my own feelings about a hypothetical future and my own standards.
Pause. Breathe. Challenge the negative belief, thought, imagination. Choose.
…
And more tangibly? Baby steps!
Whether we’re talking about a task you have to get done, or the task of improving on one’s habit of procrastination and perfectionism as a whole, a core belief that will be helpful in our contentment is that:
It’s not all or nothing.
It’s not perfect vs. not. Unstarted vs finished. It’s not all or nothing. You can start now, and make just a little progress here and there. That’s more than yesterday, isn’t it? More than last month? More than when you were a kid?
You’re on the right track.
You have more control over your daily contentment than it feels sometimes.
You have the power to use mindfulness to your advantage. Pause. Breathe. Challenge (perfectionism, procrastination, imagination) with logic, with mindfulness, with truth. Choose.
And lastly, believe in your capability to do the things. We’re not saying it’s easy (trust me, I get it). But it is possible, and worth it.