Perfectionism as Demotivator and a Cause of Procrastination and Laziness

If you know me you may not think of me as a perfectionist. If you really know me you know that deep down, I really am a perfectionist. Perfectionism is the need for things to be "just right". Perfectionism is called that because people often mistake the desire to get things "just right" with the desire for some kind of universal state of perfection. Rather, "just right" is anything but universal, and instead quite personal. Perfectionism is also fickle in how it strikes.

One of my brothers must do everything correctly and thoroughly and the results must be presentable and pristine. He has been unable to complete college-level classes as a result, and indeed he struggled mightily with grade school and high school. It wasn't enough to read the assignments and turn in a paper. Due to the unique wiring of his brain everything he reads must be completely understood, inside and out, and every assignment or paper that results must be "just right". The same principles apply to getting up in the morning, showering, dressing, and starting the day. The process must be perfect. My brother has to get up in the morning and start the day, but he doesn't have to read if he doesn't want to. It should come as no surprise, then, that my brother does not enjoy books and reading. Imagine what it would be like to you to have to read every word and extract every bit of meaning and subtext.

My perfectionism is much more selective. I can read books normally, and I don't mind looking like a ragamuffin most days if I don't have to be anywhere. No, my perfectionism feeds into writing, describing, and explaining. When I produce something I want it to be "just right", but "just right" is a whole lot of work and not always attainable. When I write papers I don't outline all my points and draw up a rough structure. I start at the begining. That's the way I read, so that's the way I write. I don't re-read my finished work to edit it but rather edit as I go. For every new paragraph or page I write I've re-read and altered the previous ones several times over. Do I get better papers in the end? No, I don't. It's a poor strategy, but its the one I feel compelled to follow.

To most people I might seem pretty darn lazy. I seem to have developed a negative affinity for work. I also tend to put off doing work until the last minute. I'm a talented procrastinator. Why is this? I'm sure some of it's innate. I was told that as a child I was unofficially diagnosed, based on observations by a local university professor and students, as ADD with hypoactivity: not hyperactivity but hypoactivity. Another element of my lazy, procrastinating behavior, though, is acquired. I think it has to do with perfectionism.

I have a rather poor self-image, and this has a lot to do with the trouble I have compromising with myself. Perhaps you've heard the term satisficing. Satisficing is a form of compromise in which your approach to something is "good enough". Satisficing is thought to be the standard human decision-making process. We decide our course of action based on what we know will work rather than trying to seek perfection, or as satisficing theory calls it, "optimisation". There is often a vast difference in time and effort expenditure when it comes to "good enough" vs "just right". Sometimes "just right" is only a little bit more work, but just as often it's twice the work for minimal payout. To avoid satisficing I simply wait until the last minute. Then I don't have a choice. If I start moving too early I'll start trying to optimize and I'll get stuck in a spiral, covering ground already covered and decisions already made. Since I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to reading this doesn't really improve the content of my output so much as fiddle with it until it bears some structure or impression of perfection. It also causes me to be too wordy because I keep spitting out words until I think I've explained a point every meaningful way possible.

I procrastinate, then, to avoid being forced to contend with myself and my inequities for too long. By forcing all my work into a limited span I can only retread ground so much. The pressure forces me to make headway, however painful said headway may be. It forces me to confront certain decisions I can't make without that pressure. It also hurts my output, because I tend not to give things the time they deserve. If I spent a few more hours on my output, though, I would probably spend it fiddling with my output instead of doing something more meaningful like trying to improve my understanding of the material. That just seems to be the way I'm wired. Whereas one person might be able to see improved content understanding with an additional 2 hours of work, most of it focused on information intake , I would need to spend probably an additional 4 hours, 1 dealing with content and the rest fiddling with sentence structure, meaningless phrasings, and formatting cues.

On a certain level I enjoyed programming in high school and in college. On another level I hate it. I have to get programming "right". Not only does the program have to do what I want it to do, the code itself has to look the way I want it to look. When I write for fun (RPGs or fiction) I have the same problem. I start at the beginning and just fiddle along in the order I'd imagine reading it, very little planning or structure guiding my work. Some may say this isn't perfectionism at all, but in a way it is. I have to do things a certain way or face cognitive consequences. May way of coping is to simply make sure my exposure to these unpleasant moments of satisficing are minimised. I procrastinate and I don't do any work I don't feel I "must" do, especially if the returns don't seem to justify the anticipated investment.

So is this the whole of it? No, not really. As with many other things, the truth is messy and complicated, but I think this represents part of it. I won't go into my detailed near-sightedness (also known as my lack of big-picture view) even though I think it's closely related. I suspect I'm not the only person who has this particular problem, and I'm sure my solution isn't the only coping mechanism but just one of many.