As per my last post, it’s a liberation for me to think of the phrase ‘Do it less than perfectly’. When you want to do something perfectly, you put it off because it’ll take so much time.

Another great insight offered in the book Overcoming Perfectionism by Roz Shafran, Sarah Egan and Tracey Wade is the belief of perfectionists that one must spend a lot of time on tasks. They invite perfectionists to do an experiment, spending less time on tasks and they confidently predict that one learns that the outcome is pretty much the same without having to spend forever on a task. And, if we reduce the amount of time we spend doing stuff trying to get it perfect, we’ll have time to live a more balanced lifestyle, taking time for leisure, family, physical exercise, work, sleep etc.

Finally, I love their insight that ‘thorough’ is often the enemy of the good when it comes to perfectionists because we who have this fault waste so much time and energy and end up unable to see the wood for the trees.