Welcome back to my channel, Scott here.
Now listen, how many of you think perfectionism is a good thing?
Think about it, being perfect.
Sounds great, right?
Hey, in this video, I'm going to give you three reasons why being a perfectionist
is not a good idea, and actually stick around till the end because I'm going to give you
a much better way to approach any task, any situation, any project with much more efficiency
and much more excellence.
Let's go.
Now, the problem with perfectionism behavior is that it comes from a place of
fear of failure or a fear of being judged by other people, even by ourselves.
And the trait that follows perfectionism is procrastination.
Now, I've been a perfectionist, and procrastinator, I've had this behavior before in the past,
and I still get it from time to time.
And the thing with perfectionists is that they're over thinkers.
You know, they have to make everything just perfect, don't they?
And you know, you have to do research, all the research, cover it from different angles,
and everything just has to be just right.
But what actually happens with the perfectionist here is, they get super overwhelmed,
and then you start doing a unrelated task, unproductive tasks that have nothing to do
with what you actually wanted to do in the first place.
Great project.
Loved it.
Boom.
OMG, amazeballs.
Thank you.
This procrastination type behavior just causes halts in activity, or often, waiting
until the actual, two hours before the deadline of when the activity has to be completed or
the project, or you pull an all-nighter just to get it done.
Then once the task is complete, which is often in a rush, meaning substandard output, this
perfectionist will just start viewing everything through a negative lens and go over and over
and over and just scrutinize this, the output, their work, through this negative lens, and
just beat themselves up with this negative self-talk about how crap it is, and how bad
the task was, and how bad their work was, and what people will think of them, and how
they think of themselves.
And it's just negative self-talk.
It's just such a limiting behavior and way to talk to yourself.
I actually have a whole video on how to beat negative self-talk, check it up here,
I'll link it in the description below.
Definitely check that out if you struggle with this.
Now this moves me onto the third thing, which is the pattern becomes this vicious
cycle and they desperately want to get things perfect this next time, but the same behavior
ensues where the perfectionist just criticizes and scrutinizes and over thinks, and essentially
self-sabotages.
How do we break this pattern of behavior?
Because you want to do a good job, right?
We all want to do a good job.
Well, most of us.
So how about striving for excellence, and striving for excellence without having these
shackles of fear attached to you?
All right, be proactive.
Take action.
All right, listen, try these three things.
One, set a deadline and stick to it.
So try a self-imposed deadline, or if it's a work thing, there will already be a deadline
in place, right?
Two, block out some time to work on the task.
So say if you have a week for it to be completed, open up your calendar or your diary and look
for the available space.
If you don't have any available time, make some time, slot the time in and be specific
about what you're doing.
So let's just say you're writing a task like that project, right?
So you might need, say, to do some research on it, allow two hours.
You might need to call some people and get some different stakeholders involved, that's
one hour.
You might need to write up the actual project, that's four hours.
And put these in, be specific and put them into your calendar like that, and stick to
those tasks in that time.
And three, complete it and just be comfortable with the output, right?
You've done your due diligence, you put the work in, you maximized the time that you had
available, you allocated the time and you were focused on doing those tasks in that
time.
Complete it and be happy with the output.
Then of course you, the perfectionist, you want to know how it went.
But here's the key difference, right?
Listen, you do this, you view it through a positive lens.
So you still look at it, but you view it through a positive lens, and you ask yourself, "What
did I do well?
What can I improve on?"
And you see it as an opportunity for growth, a step towards growing.
What can I improve on and do better next time?
So what does this do?
Well, it creates productivity because you're no longer scared of judgment.
And because you're no longer scared of judgment, you see this as an opportunity to affect personal
growth.
So you take action, learn, assess, repeat.
Okay?
So learn, assess, repeat.
Okay, this is going to be best illustrated on this board, right?
So essentially you've got learn, assess and repeat.
So you're learning, you're assessing, and then you're repeating the process.
So the problem is when you're a perfectionist and you're procrastinating and you're not
going through this, so here's where you start, right?
And you wait all the way until right here, and then you rush it and delay it.
So you're so caught up on getting this right, so you focus on the micro on the short term
of getting it, and you're so concerned about being judged and everything that you're procrastinating
the project.
Now, if you're not living in fear, you're not shackled by this fear and you're
going in with more of a striving for excellence and growing and understanding that as a process,
you're seeing here, right?
Long term.
I'm not sure if you can read that.
It says long term.
So you're going for the long term outcome.
So you know that this step, and when you get to here, when you get to the first step, this
step here, you're assessing, you're assessing how it went and looking for those opportunities
to grow.
Whereas, the perfectionist, the procrastinator, they're looking at, what I did wrong.
How shit was it?
How crap was it?
And they get caught here.
They get caught all the way down here.
Whereas, when you're striving for excellence, you're here and you assess, right?
You go again, you learn, and you assess, and go up, and you're here, and you're here, and
you're here, and you're here.
And that's where you are in the long term.
You end up so far up here and the whole time you're not concerned with or fearing the outcome
because you know you've got the long-term approach in mind and every stage is about
growth.
So, with this approach you're displaying a growth mindset and setting yourself up for
the long term with huge advancements and ultimately success in really whatever you put your mind
to.
So to learn to enjoy the process and see it as the opportunity to grow and to reach your
long term goals versus getting caught and stuck in that moment of fear and perfectionism
and procrastination, because you end up staying here, while if you're viewing as grow, you're
happier, you're more efficient and you're just showing more excellence in whatever you
do.
Now I want you to hit this notification bell below, because in my next video I'm going
to be talking about bettering yourself and doing a deep dive into how to become happier,
better, more fulfilled, more successful for yourself but also for other people, those
that you love and really using that as leverage to push yourself and drive yourself to become
a better person.
In the meantime, I strongly recommend you check out these two videos here.
One is going to be on self-discipline and how to actually get more self-discipline.
Really with self-discipline it's, you know, if you can master that, you can essentially
master anything.
So get that one right.
And how to beat negative self-talk.
I mentioned this earlier, you can check that video out as well.
I strongly recommend that.
If you liked this video, do me a favor, give it a thumbs up, so I know that I can
produce more content like this.
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like.
And you can follow me on Instagram where I've got lots of different types of content than
I do here on Youtube, so that is @scottswalwell.
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Check out my handle there and my page.
That is it for this video, and I will catch you in the next video.