The true enemy of perfection
What if we viewed perfection as the enemy in the creative story? What change would it bring?
The true enemy of perfection is change.
<insert unhappy gasps from card-carrying perfectionists who embrace the title here>
I don’t mean to upset anyone but it is way more difficult for a perfectionist to change than most people. Observe.
To change, you accept:
You don’t have all the answers
You cannot be in complete control
You won’t be the A+ student
That you’ll need help
You’ll need to borrow from many people, concepts, ideas
You will make mistakes
Learning by doing is your guide
Mess is a part of the process
Failure is an option and a valuable experience
To be perfect, you have to:
Have it all figured out
Dominate what you do
Be the A++ student
Be one of a select few (who often don’t play nice)
Keep unrelenting standards
Hide away any lack of competency or beginner status
Embrace order, hard lines, high standards
Remove failure as an option
Overinvest in all-or-nothing thinking
That means:
No beginner status
No making mistakes
And that means:
Discomfort with learning new things
Limiting or refusing risk
That means:
Not learning from mistakes
Investing in unrelenting standards
Discarding things that won’t get you glory
It’s an inflexible identity. That means:
Girls as young as eight step away from activities where they don’t receive high marks or show high competency, limiting their options exponentially over time
Failure is a shameful thing. To avoid shame, most people will do just about anything. And that invites shame into the driving seat of your life and creativity
That means:
It limits opportunities. It narrows the playing field because it immediately excludes people who focus on reliability, adaptability, and attitude over moving the last pixel to the left. And this variation is vital for creative alchemy
It can develop into sourness. As people who are not-so perfect continually produce work and get it out there, a jealousy and a snobbery can manifest
It is isolating. A difficultly coping with other people’s lack of perfection makes it hard to be around perfectionists because they judge and critique rather than embrace enjoyment and variety
It makes people who aren’t perfect feel unsafe. There’s a certain violence in rigidity and a refusal of mistakes that is especially spiky. Especially people with disabilities, English as a second language, with diverse learning needs, and to people who wouldn’t pass muster in hierarchal assessments
But the saddest part of all is most perfectionists get so caught up in controlling what gets done, it stymies the perfectionist’s productivity in the end.
Image: an imperfect circle of wood casts a sculpture shadow on Windang beach.
That kills change. Because it means:
Failing to reinvent yourself once you’ve matured in status in one area of competence because you can’t bear the thought of starting again
Holding tight to an unrelenting standard that is extremely exhausting. So exhausting in fact, it drains away creative energy
The focus shifts to topping the last work instead of being present with what you’re creating, so no further positive energy is forthcoming
With only punishment and a lack of spark or energy, creation becomes a punishing process where burnout and dissatisfaction wipe away the protective joy of innovation
Facing obstacles without a spark and in the throes of burnout makes problem-solving all the more difficult
Looking so much at what people might think of the next work, the work doesn’t get the chance to bestow whatever lesson it wants to give
Work designed to people-please rather than stand on it’s own merits starts creeping in
Risk-aversion means discomfort with failure, and that means not keeping pace with updates and changes in style, trend, and technology
There’s only so much past glory can sustain before the self-doubt sets in
Once self-doubt manifests, the acid of unrelenting standards and all-or-nothing thinking eats the perfectionist from within
Change is a beautiful thing
Now that we live in a world where most things are uncertain, we have a duty to be more authentic, less certain, and less concerned about the guidelines and the templates.
This start of chaos is frightening. But it is also freeing.
It gives us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves.
It is no surprise to me that I keep talking to people (especially women) who are ready to shake things up a little. But we’re wedded to the idea of perfectionism.
I wonder:
Is it a patriarchal thing?
Have we imbibed messages at far too early an age that we must be knees together, hand raised, proving ourselves to succeed? For the small rocks and slingshots to ting, ting, ping against the glass ceiling?
Is it a lingering obedience to schooling?
Are we so obedient to what achievement means, have we not stopped to question it? Is that reflected in the amount of lawyers I know who became lawyers because that’s what smart girls who are good at English do before they circle back to their true love of writing? Or in the way status and power are so analytics driven?
But more than anything, I wonder:
What would happen if all these sharp-eyed, muscled creatives cracked the layer of black ice that is perfection and got loud and messy?
How much power would this potential unleash? Especially if it became a community-led recovery initiative instead of such an individual journey?
Where would we land if, instead of normalising and embracing perfection, we gently prodded and poked it until it let go, and let all those caged perfectionists free?
Why does it matter so much to me?
(writing time 72 mins)