Hi there, writers!
I truly hope that you are getting the rest and recuperation you need this summer.
There’s this funny comic that has been floating around on social media.
There are two boxes, and the top one says “What People Think Academics Do All Summer.”
And there’s a drawing of a woman in sunglasses sitting in an Adirondack chair with a glass of wine. Her arms are thrown up in the air as she yells, “Yay! No work!”
And the second box says “What Most Academics Actually Do” and it’s the same woman, sitting at a desk cluttered with papers.
Her arms are thrown up in the air as she yells, “Yay! I can finally work!”
When I was an academic, this was how I always felt.
I couldn’t wait for the semester to end so I could finally get back to my own research and writing.
Unfortunately, no one is ever as productive as they want to be over the summer.
Many scholars start the fall semester with a feeling of deep disappointment and regret for not getting more of their own work done.
And of course, we also need to take into account that a large percentage of academics need to teach in the summer because they don’t have a salary for three months.
When we meet in September, a lot of my clients beat themselves up for not being more productive.
They don’t give themselves credit for what they actually needed to do, which was rest!
I say this a lot, but more than ever, we need to redefine the meaning of productivity.
Viewing productivity only in terms of measurable, material outcomes is narrow and limiting. It’s a function of late-stage capitalism, which academia is embedded in as much as any other institution.
This way of thinking about productivity as tangible results is essentially setting you up for failure.
If we take a more holistic view, we can see that productivity is actually interdependent with rest and play. It’s like trying to breathe out all the time without breathing in.
Try it! It doesn’t work!
Therefore, just because you have the TIME to work doesn’t mean you have the ENERGY to do it.
As they say, you’ve got to slow down to speed up.
When you are rested, the writing goes faster and ideas spring to the surface more easily.
The work feels a lot better to do. You may not believe me, but it can actually feel like a relief to get back to it.
So let’s shout it from the rooftops: rest is not lazy! Rest is productive!
As far as I know, no one gets to the end of their lives and says to themselves, “I really wish I had worked more.”
In fact, one of the findings from Harvard’s Happiness Study is that the most common regret people have is that they had worked too much and/or hadn’t spent enough time with their loved ones.
Trust that good things will come in your work after you relax, have some work-free fun with people you value, and refill your energy reserves.
Summer is also when you are able to refocus on yourself and your well-being.
It’s a time when you can try new things and set new habits.
And on that note, in today’s episode I want to talk about something that a lot of people struggle with, not just academics, but especially academics.
It’s perfectionism.
This is one of the things my clients worry about the most and dislike the most about themselves.
Some cite it as a reason for not being able to finish their books and being the reason why they hold onto work for way too long and don’t send it out for feedback.
For others, it’s the reason they can’t even start or why they keep restarting their project from scratch.
On the whole, perfectionism gets a very bad rap.
And being a perfectionist myself, I’ve also always looked at it as something that is harmful and holding me back from being my best self.
But what if there were actually different kinds of perfectionism?
And, what if you could turn it into a superpower that pushes you forward in all kinds of great ways?
That’s what I want to explore today.
Rethinking Perfectionism
So the inspiration for this episode is a book that was recommended to me by one of my dear writing coaching clients.
It’s called The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power by therapist Katherine Morgan Schafler.
Now, I have spent a lot of time in my life trying to learn strategies that will help me “fix” my perfectionism.
I mean, episode #44 of this podcast is called “Tips for Overcoming Perfectionism!”
However, reading this book has shown me that even thinking of it as a problem is itself problematic, as well as highly gendered.
As Schafler notes, society exalts men who demand perfection like Steve Jobs or Gordon Ramsay or James Cameron.
We see them as geniuses and respect their attention to detail, but we don’t tend to do that with women.
And it’s true, what female perfectionists can you think of who are really celebrated?
Perhaps Oprah in terms of the empire she’s created.
Although you could also argue that her empire is based on seeming relatable, friendly, and compassionate—NOT powerful, demanding, and exacting.
Having extremely high standards of performance often works against women—just look at Hillary Clinton.
Instead, female perfectionists are often pushed—both by society and themselves—to seek “balance” and to downplay their own brilliance and ambition.
The author points out that only women tend to call themselves “recovering perfectionists”.
In her view, the problem is that perfectionists aren’t actually looking for balance per se, which is why the pursuit often feels off.
Instead, they’re compelled to continuously strive to create a bigger life and to accomplish huge things.
All of these points resonate so much with me!
I’ve been calling myself a recovering perfectionist for years and, like I said, I’ve spent a lot of time seeking out ways to actively combat it.
But I have also always consciously wanted a bigger life.
For me that meant seeing the world and making a substantial impact on it with whatever I was doing.
I have perfectionism to thank for my accomplishments, but I was not thinking about it that way because I always viewed it as an obstacle to success.
In Schafler’s view, the problem is not that you’re a perfectionist. It’s that you’re not accepting it and owning its positive qualities.
In other words, you’re not being your full self.
So let that sink in for a second!
This paradigm shift necessarily turns typical advice on its head, which raises an important question: what might be possible if we stopped resisting perfectionism and instead embraced it in all its glory?
As the author writes on p. 45,
“When you stop resisting perfectionism, you’re practicing nonresistance. Engaging in nonresistance frees up energy… If you direct your energy in curative and intentional ways, you can build a life that you want instead of a life that feels hard all the time.”
The 5 Different Types of Perfectionism
So now that we’ve established that perfectionism is a gift rather than a hindrance, let’s talk about the diverse ways it manifests in different people.
You know I love typologies!
This book is great because it provides a handy quiz that allows you to type yourself according to five distinct categories that the author created based on her therapy clients.
I invite you to go take the quiz on your own.
But I will list out the five different kinds of perfectionists and maybe you’ll see yourself reflected in these descriptions:
#1: Intense perfectionists
“are effortlessly direct and maintain razor-sharp focus on achieving their goal. Left unchecked, their standards can go from high to impossible, and they can be punitive with others and themselves for not achieving impossible standards.”
#2: Classic perfectionists
“are highly reliable, consistent, and detailed-oriented, and they add stability to their environment. Left unchecked, they struggle to adapt to spontaneity or a change in routine, and they can experience difficulty connecting meaningfully with others.”
#3: Parisian perfectionists
“possess a live-wire understanding of the power of interpersonal connection and hold a strong capacity for empathy. Left unchecked, their desire to connect to others can metastasize into toxic people-pleasing.”
#4: Procrastinator perfectionists
“excel at preparing, can see opportunities from a 360-degree perspective, and have good impulse control. Left unchecked, their preparative measures hit a point of diminishing returns, resulting in indecisiveness and inaction.”
And #5: Messy perfectionists
“effortlessly push through the anxiety of new beginnings, are superstar idea generators, adapt to spontaneity well, and are naturally enthusiastic. Left unchecked, they struggle to stay focused on their goals, ultimately spreading their energy too thin to follow through on their commitments.”
Now, these are general descriptions, and it’s possible you could be a combination of more than one of these.
I myself am a combination of intense and classic perfectionism. I would say that I’m very organized, detail-oriented, and highly motivated by deadlines—both internal and external.
I am not very spontaneous, and last-minute change of plans stress me out.
What I like about this list is that it allows for diversity in peoples’ actions and outcomes.
Perfectionists are an eclectic bunch, but what everyone shares is the desire to strive towards an ideal and intense engagement with what they’re doing.
This list also helps me as a coach.
I can understand better why some of my clients never miss a deadline, even pulling all-nighters to meet them (which I don’t encourage).
Meanwhile, others have an incredibly hard time getting started or maintaining momentum.
I also like it because, similar to the Enneagram, which some of you might be familiar with, outcomes depend on your level of emotional health.
As Schafler writes, “Why you strive and how you strive determines whether your perfectionism is healthy or not.” (76)
Here are two sets of questions she encourages people ask themselves to figure this out:
“Why are you striving? Is your motivation to bridge the gulf between an ideal and reality born from the desire to excel and grow or from the need to compensate for perceived inadequacies and avoid failure?” (76)
And “How are you striving? Are you hurting yourself or others in the process? Or are you striving in a way that feels good for you?” (76)
Being a healthy, or adaptive, perfectionist starts with recognizing that you are already enough.
You are already whole and complete even without any achievements. What you end up accomplishing is the cherry on top.
Whereas unhealthy perfectionists, and let’s be real, academia is full of them, don’t feel whole.
They operate from a mindset of deficit.
They use work and accomplishments to compensate for feelings of inadequacy that are often established in childhood.
The problem is that the accomplishments themselves rarely create higher self-worth or a sense of lasting happiness.
That endorphin hit is fleeting because it’s coming from outside of yourself.
I’ve spoken about my own journey through the academy a lot on this podcast.
For decades I believed that hitting certain milestones of success was the key to satisfaction and well-being.
It was like I believed I had to earn the right to things like rest or being happy.
Maybe you can relate.
During that time, a huge red flag that something was off was that I was constantly resentful.
I resented my job, my department, my institution, and even other people who just seemed like their lives were going well. It was very petty!
In many ways I felt like a victim of circumstance instead of someone who had proactively chosen to go down this path and commit to it for the long haul.
Schafler writes that, “We use resentment as a bid for validation, and we also use resentment to avoid the awesome task of taking responsibility for our lives.” (256)
Boom! That’s heavy.
As for me, it was only after hitting every milestone and still feeling unfulfilled that I was finally ready to radically transform my approach to work and life.
That’s when I turned to life coaching and meditation.
After many years of looking to external means for acceptance, I realized I needed to go inward and take responsibility for my own actions and feelings.
Through deep, slow reflection I was able to develop some distance between my thoughts and my identity.
That was when I was finally able to accept that I was already worthy just by being a precious human being living on this miracle of a planet.
And you are too.
Three Strategies to Create Healthy Perfectionism
So this book is chock-full of useful strategies to make perfectionism work for you in healthy ways.
I’m just going to highlight three key suggestions about focusing on process rather than outcome that can make a big difference in your life.
#1: The first is what Schafler calls “failing forward.”
This means not allowing things like setbacks or rejections—or anything you view as failure, really—to stop you from moving ahead.
Essentially, it’s not letting external predicaments determine how you feel about yourself.
Failing forward means growing from failure, learning from the experience and trying again with more knowledge.
For example, the first time I received a rejection on a journal article in grad school, I just gave up and didn’t try to revise it.
Looking back, I actually received very thoughtful, kind, and encouraging feedback from the editor to help me improve the piece.
But I felt ashamed of having failed and just stuffed it away in a drawer (this was back when reviewer comments were actually mailed to you as hard copies!)
I didn’t even try to write another article for several more years when I really needed one for the job market, which made things even more stressful and high-pressure.
It took me a long time to learn that when the goal is in line with your values and your dreams, then you keep experimenting and trying different things.
You keep learning lessons and growing from your mistakes along the way, until you eventually get there.
So as the Japanese saying goes, “Fall down 7 times, get up 8.”
And if you need a coaching challenge to go along with this, why don’t you go back to an old article you had shelved because you didn’t think it was perfect.
Do one revision of it and send it out for review.
This is how you can get energy flowing again.
#2: The second point is the importance of acknowledging the process.
Perfectionists tend to measure success in terms of tangible outcomes because we think achieving those outcomes will make us happy.
Just like I talked about with my own journey, solely focusing on attaining externally-recognized milestones actually pushed my happiness out into the unknown future.
And when you do this, it makes the process of getting to the outcome much less satisfying.
It’s easy to become fully future-oriented OR to fixate too much on mistakes from the past.
In doing so, you lose the opportunity to enjoy what you’re actually doing right here, right now.
I’ve known (and coached) a lot of people who have achieved huge things and gotten major recognition from their peers and maybe even from the general public.
But they usually reach a point where those achievements don’t do much for them.
These are the folks who treat academia like an addiction.
The solution is to start reorienting toward the present moment and amplifying the things about what you’re doing that bring you joy.
Then you actually allow yourself to feel that joy because, in the end, all we ever have is the present moment.
I may sound like a broken record because I say this so much, but writing a book is not meant to be easy!
You might be comparing yourself to other people who are publishing up the wazoo quickly and seemingly easily.
I can guarantee you that these folks don’t hold their work to impossible standards, they receive help from others, and they are finding ways to enjoy the process.
#3: And this brings me to the third suggestion, which is to clarify your intentions.
Schafler defines a goal as a quantifiable achievement—the thing you’re striving for.
By contrast, an intention “is the energy and purpose behind your striving” (163).
She encourages all perfectionists to really examine their own intentions for achieving something.
She writes, “When you only set a goal, you win on one day, the day you achieve the goal. When you set an intention, you start winning from day one because you keep getting the opportunity to honor the intention.” (163-64)
This is why I have most of my book authors come up with a list of intentions that I call process goals.
I talk about this in Episode #27 about how to prime your mind for writing.
Process goals are thoughts that, if you truly embodied and believed them, your writing would feel much more enjoyable and doable.
They encapsulate how you want to feel and who you want to become during the process of getting your book written.
For most people, this includes things like along being confident in your ideas, feeling competent with your research, and feeling at ease and in flow with writing.
It may seem counterintuitive.
But if you retrain your brain to allow for a little bit more openness and curiosity each day instead of rehashing the same negative self-talk that keeps you stuck, you are far more likely to attain the tangible outcome you want.
You will also enjoy yourself a lot more in the process.
So recognize that through working on your book, you have the opportunity to become a better version of yourself, not just a better writer.
Summing Everything Up
So let’s sum everything up.
I talked about why we need to rethink the notion of perfectionism as a problem and instead embrace it as a superpower.
I’ve given you five different types of perfectionists and three different strategies you can start using today.
These three things were: failing forward, acknowledging the process, and clarifying your intentions.
Like I said, there are tons more useful strategies and exercises in the book that I didn’t get to touch on.
So I hope you go out and get this book soon.
Again, it’s called The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler, PhD.
Perfectionists unite!
Get some rest, enjoy the process, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
