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Can perfectionism be "cured"?

Of the list, it's the most relevant to me. Would a "shock therapy" work, where I force myself to treat all solutions superficially, only making things work without trying to understand and polish it all? If such a project is then successful, maybe that leaves a lasting, "healing" mental impression.

On the other hand, I have started to embrace it. It's a tough one to flip into a plus though, as it's a highly two-sided sword (other traits like charisma are useful without downsides, for example). For self-employment, startup founders etc., I suspect it's one of the worst blockers. For an IT forensics researcher, probably the opposite.

Any stories of how perfectionism turned out a winning trait?

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> Can perfectionism be "cured"?

I don't really consider it a "cure" but the way I manage my perfectionism (and holistic completionism) is to simply re-frame my goals to not meet perfect but to get as close to perfection as possible. As long as my actions get me closer to my goal, I am satisfied. It's a very brute-force and reduced version, but another way to say it is that if you want to go North, just never walk South and iterate in steps.

Also, I've basically eliminated failure from my personal language. Any task that doesn't achieve the desired result is simply a delay and I re-adjust immediately to find a new tactic that will put me back on track. If the time-effort to proceed isn't worth it, I dump the effort and change strategies. I long ago got rid of the idea that anything I create is special or worth saving. Outcomes are what matter. It's a very pragmatic approach and eliminates the perfection tendencies because it gets things done.

> I long ago got rid of the idea that anything I create is special or worth saving. Outcomes are what matter.

Yes, this is holding me back!

I have a bunch of stuff on GitHub, obsessing over every code comment, never to be read by anyone else. The few lines of code that are there are cared for meticulously. Yet these projects don't really DO much and therefore receive minimal attention.

Just the thought of these things being public "forever" is stifling.

It might be that you can redefine perfectionism.

If you are putting your energetic resource in a way not requested or required by the project, then you are wasting it. Or your incentives are not aligned or properly communicated.

How many times in commercial software, do you put all your heart into a thing and it gets promptly thrown into the garbage? All the time, in my experience.

Do what's barely good enough, and reasonably maintainable, and always focus on how your efforts translate into business income. That's a new definition of perfectionism that is universally valued.

I have to disagree here.

I feel like I am extremely empathetic towards other engineer, as well as customers. I hate slow and buggy software as an end user. I don’t want other people to have to deal with it.

I also don’t want teammates to have to do things they aren’t good at, or interested in. A backend dev should not need to learn the many intricacies of InnoDB tuning; they just want the ORM to talk nicely to the DB. I on the other hand absolutely love tweaking low-level things like that. So far, the devs have also expressed joy and gratitude that I enjoy this stuff. I have to assume customers enjoy reduced latency.

So anyway, no, don’t focus purely on revenue. Focus on making people’s jobs easier and more pleasant, and on making customers happy. Revenue follows.

Disclaimer, not a business person nor any interest in it whatsoever.

"Perfectionism" ends up being too vague IMO.

I'd call myself a perfectionist in that I really want complete and correct solutions to problems and for everything to be "just so". What was crippling in my early career was that I wanted this level of perfection at every step of building.

I was fortunate to work with some really good engineers who convinced me that I couldn't make large things to a high standard by keeping them perfect at every stage. Instead I needed a "forward wave" of problems I was choosing to solve now, and a list of side problems that I'd slap a good enough solution on till I could come back. (there's a real art to ordering what goes into that wave, mastery of this skill implies seniority).

If you can then learn to understand when you can leave all the "good enough solutions" that really are good enough, you'll find you actually iterate quite quickly.

> Any stories of how perfectionism turned out a winning trait?

Many, especially artists. But I would not take any solace from these exceptions because it hides the number of lives ruined by it.

> Can perfectionism be "cured"?

From my own perspective, there is no cure but you can prevent it blighting your life. Backsliding is always around the corner given a change in environment. The simplest solution is to work in an environment where the most crippling behaviours (extended procrastination, punishing rumination) are just not possible e.g. the type of work with non-negotiable external deadlines where you don't control "good enough". A solo startup developer it's probably the very worst environment and the best might something like a producer of live TV coverage.

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