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You're Not Perfect, So Stop Trying to Be

Your rigid perfectionism may actually be a symptom of your ADHD. Here's how to stop it from holding you back.

7 Comments: You're Not Perfect, So Stop Trying to Be

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  1. “Wear mismatched socks to work. Put a mustard stain on an old tie and wear it to the office.”
    No offense, but those are really stupid suggestions.

    1. It seems that perfectionism probably isn’t much of an issue for you anyway, Kiraste, given your unkind comment. Maybe you could have said something nicer, such as “I don’t agree that the suggestions to […] would be very effective.” Anyway, it wasn’t the suggestions themselves that mattered. It was the point that forcing yourself out of your comfort zone can help you overcome perfectionistic tendencies, by helping you face your fears of embarrassment or shame.

  2. or, I don’t have time to clean the bathroom today but I’m doing laundry so I’ll wash the rugs. Then never put the clean rugs back because the bathroom isn’t cleaned all the way like I want it. which means I can’t have people use my bathroom because it doesn’t look as nice without the rugs. which means I don’t invite people over to my house. which means I sit night after night with the cats watching TV because cleaning the bathroom is not motivating enough to do when there’s my DVR shows to watch…….anything is more important than housecleaning….lol

  3. As a 63 Mother, housewife and now caregiver to my 92 old Dad, yes, be perfectionist has sure gotten in the way throughout my life. I once told a friend that she and I were “ perfectionist procrastinator”. If we can’t clean it, organize it, or do it perfectly, we put it off. Well Duh.
    I have tried the Nike shoe Ad to my mind set
    “ Just do it”
    Even writing this comment was stressful. 😅

  4. I really struggle with this. I’m at a point where in both high school and university, unless I was 100% sure that something was going to be perfect, I wouldn’t start it. I never felt like my good enough was good enough. And my self-loathe pushed me even further into perfectionism.

  5. I have had trouble with this issue. I am an attorney and therefore have a high stress job. I have taken on a couple of “mindless” jobs in the past few years, just to get my mind to slow down and get a “regular” paycheck. I find it VERY difficult to do those regular jobs fast enough to please my employers. For me, I want to do the job right. The employers want it done fast. I mean really fast.

    One job was at a national retail bookstore. I was supposed to shelve books. Their required job speed seemed impossible to me. I was supposed to alphabetize and stuff books into shelves where there was no room. Thankfully, they moved me to a sales position where I interacted with customers more. It worked out.

    Last year, I got a night stocker job at a grocery store. They tried to move me to another department with a daytime schedule because I was not fast enough at stocking the groceries. I wanted things to be orderly, have time to rotate older stock to the front, and remove out of date stock. Too slow. :-/

    1. I had the same problem with my only food job–my job was refilling the salad bar, but my need to do all those Department of health regs to the letter in a perfect way made me so slow, I was finally fired.

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