April 30, 2015

The Fallacy of Perfection

Perfection doesn’t exist. We know this intuitively, but regularly ignore this knowledge practically. We say things like, “I’m only human,” “everyone makes mistakes,” and “nobody is perfect.” However, when the time comes for goal setting, and lifestyle design, this knowledge gets twisted into an ego rationalized system of denial. “I know I’m not perfect,” we say, much to the horror of our egos, “but I’m going to set the ideal of perfection as the goal anyway.”

The “Fallacy of Perfection” is the idea that by setting perfection as the goal, when we fall short, we will still be healthier, happier, more successful, and better well-off.

 

The sketchy part is that this isn’t actually true. Life simply doesn’t work that way. We use this lifehack without a clear understanding of what’s happening in the background. Meanwhile, it turns out to add quite a bit of frustration to our lives, and decreases our ability to perform!

In a TED talk I really enjoy, Shawn Achor outlines why setting goals which are unachievable does not lead to increased happiness, and satisfaction with your achievements. There are big two reasons:

• 1.  By setting goals that are just too far out to reach, and then increasing the difficulty the next time so that it is again just too far away, we set a satisfaction hurdle that we never cross. We can never count our wins because we never reach them.

If the supposed goal is perfection, or any other unrealistic endpoint that we tell ourselves we are content to fall short of, by definition, we will never reach it to feel the satisfaction of success. This leads us to become discouraged, prompting feelings of lower self-esteem, lower levels of fulfillment, and increased stress. Whatever we tell ourselves, the inability to reach our ultimate goal has profound effects on our psychology. Which brings us to Shawn’s second point:

• 2.  Cognitive function improves when we are in a positive state of mind. Shawn explains that, “Your brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You’re 37% better at sales. Doctors are 19% faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed.”

Not only do we set ourselves up for failure by goal setting perfection, we induce mental states that set us up for decreased levels of performance in the future. Meaning, not only will this strategy cause us to fall short, it will cause us to fall shorter the next time!

A Better Hero

Instead, we need to adopt a more constructive strategy of setting ourselves up for success by going after challenges, but with realistic goals. Now I’m not suggesting these marks should be easy. There is no achievement without challenge. Nor am I saying we should create targets that are always met. There is no growth without failure. Often, we are not even in control of the goals set for us. That’s Ok, because it is the people around us, pushing us, and believing in us, that create some of our most worthwhile results.

However, there are some areas in your control that I want you to focus on.

First, recognize that you can’t do everything. You are one person, and you cannot do it all. Often, perfection takes shape in the idea that we have to complete every task we can think of as soon as we can. However, most of these tasks are just not that important. Personally, I try to do one important thing every day. One. That’s it. This approach has resulted in much more productivity, and much less time-wasting procrastination. Now it is necessary to better identify what constitutes “important,” but that’s another whole story.

Second, recognize that you don’t have to be the best at something to be damn good at it. The idea of perfection comes out in our subconscious again when we start comparing ourselves to others in a self-defeating manner. You don’t have to be the best at something to teach another person something they don’t know. You don’t have to be the best to create meaningful improvements in the world. Frustration at not being the best more often stifles self-improvement, and performance satisfaction, than it does encourage growth. (If you don’t believe me, refer back to Shawn’s second point.)

Perhaps most importantly, identify the things you don’t do because the path from where you are to “perfect” is just too overwhelming to even begin. Making the end goal into some untouchable god is both untrue, and hindering. It just takes one step. You don’t need to know everything at the beginning. You just need to start. You will find your next step. I promise. Know that your dreams are within reach. Just start.

Hacking the Hack

So now that we understand the Fallacy of Perfection, that it is a destructive mindset, and when to avoid it, we need to talk about why to embrace it. Yeah I know: “But you just said it was a destructive mindset.” Here’s the thing, as with so many little bits of our personal psychology, once you learn to recognize it for what it is, and understand it -once you illuminate the problem- it doesn’t quite work the same way. We can still use this lifehack to our advantage, when designing our lives, if we use it right.

The gift of a new perspective allows us to better see ourselves, and our decisions, like an out of body experience. There is a Taoist metaphor that while it is the clay that constitutes a pot, it is the empty space revealed inside that is what is useful to us.¹ Since we have identified the Fallacy of Perfection as the clay, we are free to see past it to the empty, and useful space it creates for us to work within. With focus, we now recognize -deep down- that we can never achieve a perfection that doesn’t exist. Perfection is not our goal. It is just a container we are working within.

The most simplistic way to implement this appears as follows: Set up the task. Envision what perfection looks like. Know that that does not exist. Find your true goal. Define it clearly! Then work for that achievement. Work within the Fallacy of Perfection, but do not believe it.

It is dangerous, what I’m asking. If you forget -as soon as you start believing the Fallacy of Perfection is true, or that perfection exists again- you re-expose yourself to all of its menace, and frustrations. However, if you can use it without believing in it (I know you can!) your world will open up with so much possibility!

Don’t stress. Here’s the thing:

Perfection doesn’t exist. Well, impossible doesn’t exist either! By working in the space within this fallacy we give ourselves permission to go after the outrageous. To dream, and to strive… and to live! We can let ourselves set huge goals without (or with manageable amounts of) fear, and frustration. It’s not going to be perfect. It’s just not. But it will be spectacular! And maybe, just maybe, you will get far closer to perfection than you ever thought possible.

-Michael Speck

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¹Translation by Stephen Mithchell, “Tao Te Ching.”