The dangerous downsides of perfectionism
bbc.com
bbc.com
Ugh. Been there, done that. I remember skipping the first year of fast pitch baseball because I was sure I’d never be able to hit the ball. It simply wasn’t true and can only have set me back when rejoining the following year.
I assumed perfectionism was generational or at least cultural. It’s distressing to see it’s widespread and increasing. The studies put a fine focus on the need to get smarter and model healthier responses to mistakes for the next generation.
I mean apart of genetic makeup - if you have wrong genetics no amount of practice will help you.
Just because your phenotype isn't ideal for a thing doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Also there are a large array of phenotypical that are harder to identify through testing than just giving it a go and seeing how you go / enjoy it.
Also, if two students start weight lift and he grows faster then you, the reason might not be that one is simply lazy and the other simply trains harder.
Maybe height disadvantage was canceled out by other genetical advantage in that case. The more popular sport is and the more competition there is, the less likely are those people will be to appear. You picked rare outliers to argue against trend.
> Furthermore, those with "good genes" do not always find success.
Of course. Nobody is saying that right genetics is the only factor. Starting to train young is oftentimes factor too. So is food quality. And quality of training. And amount of it.
> In competition, preparation and luck far outweighs the gene factor.
In modern competition, every single competing person have right genetics and tons of preparation under belt. And average sportsman is normally waaaay above average person.
Yeah, short people are on average lazier to learn basketball. That is why basketball players are disproportionally tall. And guys with white fibres are lazy to weight lift, but somehow not lazy to do different sports.
[0] http://www.hoopsvibe.com/features/285345-top-10-vertical-jum...
It's not true in all sports. E.g. Long distance running, cycling etc where skill plays a much lesser role.
If this were the case then only those with the highest, humanly achievable VO2 max levels would dominate the sport. But this isn't the case. Why? It's just a single contributing factor (in a vast sea of contributing factors) which can lead to success. I would argue a motivated athlete with a "can-do" spirit, but lower V02 will be more successful than any unmotivated athlete with a high V02 level.
Basically those born earlier in the year will generally have a physical advantage, which at a young age can make quite a difference (think of a chiold at 6 yeard old exactly compared to a child whi is 6 years and 11 months old).
These kids are then singled out and given extra training for the sport which they are good at, which compounds the effects.
I used to perceive various small failures, often just things like not doing chores on time, as a big deal and a sign that I'm failing as a person. This, of course, is not productive at all, saps my energy, and often results in me failing even more. But when you truly believe that it does make you a worse person, you feel as if you deserve these side effects...
It's a long story of how I got there but at one point I decided that I'm not going to give any non-major failures much credit and advance from them as soon as possible. It's really nice to be able to look at a small error, say "whoops", and move on to fixing it. I sometimes still relapse to the old way of thinking but it's a huge weight off one's shoulders. But it is also so weird to just say "Yes I was really wrong about that, and I really shouldn't have done this. But that's OK, moving on."
What I've found, though, is that this is not really the kind of philosophy the average person I talk to actually has. The implication that one is a failure if they do not complete certain chores efficiently, or don't do certain things, or don't know a given technology, or don't lose weight, is common. So is giving people a very limited amount of chances before they're marked in some negative way. Perhaps I am simply imagining it because it's something I'm used to, but we may just be living in a fairly perfectionist environment. The article appears to confirm this.
I think ultimately it comes down to the idea that people make mistakes naturally (i.e., automatically) and might end up in unfavorable situations through no fault of their own. From here, you can accept errors as a fact of reality that happen _to_ you, as opposed to _from_ you, which makes them much easier to rectify. If you don't believe this, all those minor mistakes are then your sole responsibility, so it makes more sense to feel guilty for them.
― Albert Einstein
I'm doubting this attribution is correct but the quote itself summarizes this approach nicely.
Mistakes do come naturally. Life is a probabilistic game of guessing what outcomes we will reach after making actions with restricted knowledge of the circumstances. Failing is imminent sooner or later. The sooner the better or loss aversion kicks in and we end up doing nothing, which most often is the worst action leading to a pit of cascading failures.
It used to be that, all my code had to be perfectly understandable, all my variable names the perfect metaphor / concept, my architectures the most scalable etc.
I found that the anxiety of having to make hundreds of correct decisions everyday left me exhausted. Ultimately it was not sustainable. I would agonised over tiny details for extended period of time.
I was eventually exposed to and much later internalised the idea that there are three types of decisions:
1. those you get right 2. Those you get wrong 3. Those you don't make
Anything is better than 3 in a non-life or death situation. If you're trying to learn 1 is not so important and doing 2 is the only way to truly learn.
I think it would help if as a community we would recognize that sometimes writing crappy code is OK, as long as it's a conscious decision and.
But there is a nice feeling knowing that what you’ve finished is as good as it can be, because you’ve exhausted every damn option.
But it can backfire. Either because you may at some point not know where to stop, or because you are so intimidated by the idea of not getting it right you do not even dare to begin.
If the song never gets 'as good as it can be', that's perfectionism.
This is why I think one of the most important goals you can have is to devise a productivity strategy which reaches across all of these realms and levels of abstraction. That meta-skillset encapsulates all the others and has the widest impact.
How can you find out which one you have?
Less precise but easily available test: http://www.topendsports.com/testing/tests/muscle-fiber-compo...
And it makes it even worse when you're spending this extra time to go that extra mile and you're fully aware how nonsensical and irrelevant it all is but still can't let it go.
I've got plenty of both. For example, I love hand-writing and good pens and paper, but I never get journals to write in. I know that as soon as I made a single error, the entire journal would feel tainted to me and I would no longer get any satisfaction from writing in it.
I felt the failures around be needed to just delay gratification, and work hard, because life is difficult.
I looked at my classmates, and thought they were just not serious, and needed to work harder.
After all, going to school is easy. (I still belive the worst day at school is better than any day I spent in construction.).
I'm chugging along. I'm thinking about how short life is. I'm thinking about that vague pain in my head. The pain the Neurologist said wasen't psychological, because the pain was coming from cranial nerve locations in my skull. (I forgot to tell him I used to read through Grey's Anatomy for recreation.)
I thought I was doing well. Doing great in school. Keeping down a job. I really felt I could do anything.
I was lonely though. I broke up with my college girlfriend a few years earlier--why--for no good reason? Just young, and dumb.
My vague head pain was my daily friend.
I was toying with getting two professional degrees. Why not? School is easy. Just delay gratification. Don't mess up your life with chaos, and all the drama of a relationship.
Then a classmate died of a anyurism. I didn't know the kid, but he was the image of health.
It wasn't long after I went home for a holiday, and at around 11:30 pm, I had a panic attack. A scary one, but I had minor ones before, so no big deal. I'll just go to sleep, and feel great on the morning.
Wake up at 8:30 am, and the minute my bedroom door opens intense anxiety sets in, and stays with me all day.
After a few weeks, I see a bunch of doctors. They all say different things. I pick out a Therapist out of the yellow pages. See him for months. Anxiety just off the charts.
I finally see the "right" doctor, and he gives me a long half life benzo. It works, but only works for a few hours during the day. Alcohol worked better. It scared me because the last thing I wanted was to be one an alcoholic.
Well the intense anxiety went on for a decade. My life definely suffered.
I went from the better, capable guys in the room, to someone who could barely walk into the room.
I don't have any advice. I wouldn't wish what happened to me on my worst enemy. My doctor did say my case was unusual.
I'm still kinda a perfectionist though. My life is close to being homeless, but when I do something; I still do it well.
Enjoy your life.
One thing I'd suggest, if you haven't already, is look into your family history for any for signs of it. In my case, there's a very clear hereditary line of panic disorder and other similar ailments that came down through the generations, eventually landing in me as well.
We like to think of our "mind" as something that exists completely separate from the physical reality of the brain, but in the end it's an organ like any other, and any malfunctions within it can affect us in subtle ways. For example, during the run up to a panic attack, I tend to get very irritable and easily frustrated. I've come to recognize it as a sign of what's to come and take steps in advance to try to curb it.
Agreed. Members of my mother's side are especially known to be "worriers". Sporadic levels of anxiety on my father's as well.
> I've come to recognize it as a sign of what's to come and take steps in advance to try to curb it.
Via therapy, I've discovered my own version of this, mostly around breathing. I tend to hold my breath as I start to go into my head. If I catch myself doing this, I can sometimes reduce most of the physical effects by focusing on breathing again. It's easier said than done.
Don’t give up hope though— there’s so many causes for anxiety, low magnesium, inflammation, poor gut flora etc. Try as many things as possible, whether that be a silly self help book or meditation class.