Perfectionism

Don’t Ruminate Endlessly

May 6, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don't Ruminate Endlessly Say you’re in the market for a laptop but just can’t bring yourself to pick out the right model. You’ve spent countless hours comparing different models, visiting various websites, reading reviews, exploring stores, and researching all the available features, even though you’re unlikely to use most of them. Draining indeed!

Too Much Choice Can Stress You Out

Choice may be a great “problem” to have. Books such as Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice (2004) and Sheena Iyengar’s The Art of Choosing (2011) have exposed how increased choice may be bad for you.

Sometimes, the only thing worse than never having a choice is always having to choose.

Overthinking can trip you up. You can get confused when you have too much information or overthink about what you should be doing. Behavioral scientists such as Schwartz and Iyengar call this phenomenon “choice paralysis.”

Combat your indecisive nature by limiting your search, say, by establishing a cut-off time. Tell yourself that you’ll look around for two hours and then you’ll buy the best laptop you’ve come across in that time.

Use opportunity cost as a filter. Don’t poke around the internet for a better deal on an airfare or follow an eBay auction if you’re saving less than, say, $15 per hour spent deal-hunting.

Idea for Impact: Choose to Reduce Choice. Simplify and Prioritize.

Overthinking everything can make everyday life a challenge. Unnecessary analysis costs time and money and causes psychological wear.

The benefits of forgoing further rumination and acting on available information often offset the from needing to do everything perfectly.

Choosing when to choose is important. Rethink which choices in your life really matter and focus your time and effort there. Life is all about values and priorities.
In decision-making, simple beats complex. Reject complexity and accept that you’ll be sure that you’ve made the right choice. Make a decision, and then change course if it ends up being horribly wrong. As Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has written in his 2016 letter to shareholders, “If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think.”

Five Ways … You Could Stop Procrastinating

March 16, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Don’t rely on motivation. Motivation is fleeting—it comes and goes. While it is advantageous to be motivated, the folks who get things done are those who find a way to work at whatever they are interested in, even when they don’t really feel like doing it.
Banish your inner perfectionist. Remember that many things in your life need not be done perfectly—they’re to be just done … taken to a little bit better shape than before at each baby step. Whatever you need to work on just needs to be an outline, first attempt, rough copy, version 0. It needn’t be perfect.
Picture the future self when you’ve achieved your goals. Figure out the finish line you are aiming at. Visualize what “done” looks like—a sense of achievement? Fame? Getting your co-worker off your back?
Confront your fears. Figure out the underlying cause for procrastination. If it’s fear or if you’re failing overwhelmed, challenge the worst-case scenario by asking yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Perhaps you may discover that you’re procrastinating over something that isn’t that important.
Trick yourself into getting started. Say, “I’m not really going to work on this now. I’ll just open the report and make some notes for two minutes.” Beginning a task builds momentum, and seemingly-difficult tasks tend to get easier once you get working on them.

Bonus: Stop trying too hard to overpower yourself into action. Sometimes, getting those other, less-important tasks done first could motivate you.

Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

February 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

It’s okay to be wrong about things. It’s okay to be upset. It’s okay if things don’t go the way you purposed. It’s okay if you say something embarrassing. It’s okay if you make a fool of yourself. It’s okay if you failed. It’s okay if you disappointed a loved one.

We’ve all made mistakes—rushed decisions, careless oversights, and lapses of judgment. Even after taking the thoughtful time and overanalyzing them, we’ve not been able to avoid faults.

And after their immediate effects come to pass, our minds are assaulted by those woulda-coulda-shoulda ruminations.

Don't Be So Hard on Yourself Mistakes are a natural part of your journey. They’re patches of rough and bumpy ground that will eventually help you get where you need to go. Life is a long game, and you’ll never know what your current experiences will mean over time.

Mistakes can offer a kind of insight and perspective that nothing else does. After all, you don’t learn quite as much from a right decision as you do from a wrong one.

Curb the idea that you have to be successful at everything you attempt. In the grand scheme of things, no one’s going to care about your failures, and neither should you.

Idea for Impact: Don’t be so hard on yourself. You are not your mistakes. Perhaps, when life rejects you from something good, it may be redirecting you to something better, whether or not you realize it at that time. Seek ways to move forward.

When to Stop Thinking and Decide

February 17, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

There’s a difference between the data you’d like to have to decide and the data you’d need before you can make a decision.

When you get to a point where any further data may serve to make your decision better-informed but wouldn’t really change your mind, it’s time to stop deliberating. Make that decision.

Be willing to act on adequate data.

How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist

January 21, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist

You have an enemy: a feisty, malign force working against you. It’s the internalized perfectionist. It’s the stream of subversive self-talk urging indecision, doubt, and fear.

The #1 hack to overcoming you perfectionist tendency is to accept that whatever you need to work on just needs to be an outline, first attempt, rough copy, version 0. It needn’t be perfect. You just need to get it to a little bit better shape than before. You can then consider the next baby step.

Idea for Impact: Many things in your life need not be done perfectly. They’re to be done … just done … done to spur more done … not to dwell to perfection.

Your goal now is not to be like a Picasso, Mozart, Steven King, Lebron James, Warren Buffett, or some superstar. All you have to do now is create, edit, fix, or process and get whatever it is you’re working on to the next milestone. Make this a rule.

A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self

December 3, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Self-confidence, so often peddled by the self-help genre as the panacea for low achievement, can indeed cause it. Beyond a moderate amount, self-confidence is destined to encourage complacency—even conceit. You’ll never reach anything better with that attitude.

Paradoxically, conceding your insecurities—and having a certain amount of humility about your capabilities—-is usually to your advantage.

Deep down, some of history’s greatest icons—from Abraham Lincoln to Mahatma Gandhi—regularly worried that they weren’t good enough. That’s what kept them striving harder.

A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self Face up to your self-judgment. Low self-esteem is present only when your self-appraisal is more acute than reality.

Channel that nagging voice in your head that keeps saying negative things about you. Don’t be self-defeatingly vulnerable. Don’t worry yourself into perfection, anxiety, or despair.

Engage that little “sweet spot” of insecurity to motivate yourself to exert the additional effort required to seek a better self. For example, ignore anyone who tries to calm your nerves by telling you to “just be yourself” or “who else could be better suited” before a job interview.

Idea for Impact: Satisfaction can be deadly. Lasting self-confidence derives from your ongoing effort, not by virtue.

The Costs of Perfectionism: A Case Study of A Two Michelin-Starred French Chef

March 30, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Marc Veyrat, a top-rated French chef, sued the Michelin Guide in 2019 for downgrading his world-renowned restaurant in the French Alps from three to two stars. Just the previous year, Michelin had awarded Veyrat the highest ranking. That achievement had marked his comeback after he had given up cooking for several years following a skiing accident and a 2015 fire at his restaurant.

Just Excellent …

Marc Veyrat sued the Michelin Guide after Shock Downgrade In an infamous court case, now known as ‘Cheddargate,’ Veyrat speculated he was downgraded after an “incompetent” Michelin inspector with an unrefined palate mistook the ingredients.

Veyrat claimed the anonymous inspector thought Veyrat had used English Cheddar in place of French Reblochon, Beaufort, and Tomme cheese in one of his signature soufflé dishes. “I put saffron in it, and the gentleman who came thought it was cheddar because it was yellow,” Veyrat contended.

“It’s worse than a wound. It’s profoundly offensive. It’s worse than the loss of my parents, worse than anything. It gave me a depression.”

Michelin’s review had commended Veyrat for being “true to his reputation” and described his cuisine as a “pastoral symphony” that blends “woodland fragrances and Alpine herbs.” But Veyrat would have nothing less than three stars.

… Not Exceptional

At the court hearing, Veyrat demanded a symbolic €1 in damages. He asked for proof that the Michelin inspectors had even dined at his restaurant. He demanded to see their judging notes and clarify how they had come to their decisions. (The Michelin Guide’s evaluation criteria are perhaps the biggest trade secrets in the restaurant business.)

In reply, Michelin denied the Cheddar-related allegations and accused Veyrat of acting like a “narcissistic diva” suffering from “pathological egotism.”

Veyrat lost the court case.

Nobody Likes Rejection, Certainly Not a Perfectionist

Veyrat’s wounded pride is understandable. The Michelin Guide is arguably the world’s foremost arbiter of haute cuisine. Many chefs base their entire identity on getting three Michelin stars, the ultimate culinary accolade, and, in so doing, self-inflict extreme pressure to be labeled “exceptional.”

Chefs Face Extreme Pressure to Be Rated by the Michelin Guide The Michelin Guide is not without controversies. Michelin stars can bring significant prestige, but also intense pressure on chefs. The unrelenting psychological stress and the financial demands of producing ever more creative dishes have even led a few chefs to suicide. Over the last decade, several renowned chefs have also requested Michelin to revoke their stars and opted out of the system in a quest for better work-life balance.

In 2019, South Korean chef Eo Yun-gwon sued Michelin for including his restaurant in the Michelin Guide after he’d told them not to. He declared, “The Michelin Guide is a cruel system. It’s the cruelest test in the world. It forces the chefs to work around a year waiting for a test [and] they don’t know when it’s coming.” Some chefs closed their restaurants and launched lower-key eateries that still cater to discerning epicures.

Idea for Impact: Challenge the Perfectionist, “All-or-Nothing” Thinking

This Marc Veyrat-Michelin Guide episode is yet another reminder that being a perfectionist—and insisting on excellence at all costs—has a dark side. Perfectionism can cause adverse outcomes such as excessive procrastination, low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety.

Perfectionists tend to engage in “all-or-nothing thinking”—that they are either perfect or worthless. In reality, most of us operate on the continuum between these two extremes. We’re neither perfect nor worthless, just “good enough.”

If you’re struggling with perfectionism, it’s crucial to take in the concept of being and doing “good enough.”

Avoid Decision Fatigue: Don’t Let Small Decisions Destroy Your Productivity

January 20, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Making some decisions depletes mental resources for making more important ones

Every decision you make impacts the quality of successive decisions you’ll have to make, even in unrelated situations.

That’s because, according to the much-debated “muscle metaphor” of willpower, your mental stamina is limited.

As Roy Baumeister and John Tierney explained in their bestselling book on Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (2011; my summary), you have a finite strength of will for making prudent choices. As you go about your day, your willpower is depleted and “decision fatigue” sets in. Consequently, you’re likely to employ one of two cognitive shortcuts in decision-making: you avoid the act of deciding altogether or make a less-thoughtful, sub-optimal decision.

Don’t get overloaded with so many pointless decisions that your cognitive productivity ends up falling off a cliff.

President Barack Obama claimed that he makes deliberate efforts to avoid decision fatigue so that he can devote his mental energies to things that matter. Michael Lewis quotes Obama in the October 2012 issue of Vanity Fair,

You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits … I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. … You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.

In the same way, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sports a limited wardrobe. He has previously declared that doesn’t waste time and energy to pick his daily outfits: “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve the community.”

Avoid Decision Fatigue: Don't Let Small Decisions Destroy Your Productivity

Idea for Impact: Establish healthy routines that can eliminate unnecessary deliberation

Life is the total of all the mundane and momentous choices you make. Being monotonous in handling the former enables you to excel in the latter. Limit decision fatigue by

putting as much of your life as possible on autopilot using routines / rituals and checklists,
limiting the choices you have (read Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less), and
delegating decision-making where possible.

Good routines can provide structure to your day, protect you from your more effective negative impulses, and bring order and predictability to your life. Besides, according to renowned career coach Marty Nemko, “modern life, increasingly defined by unpredictability, can be anxiety-provoking, and routines provide an anchor of predictability.”

Do You Have an Unhealthy Obsession with Excellence?

September 10, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Yes, you must develop the habit of excellence, even in little matters. However, the price of perfection can be prohibitive. A maniacal emphasis on excellence can lead to a blind obsession that can drain productivity.

If you’re a manager, insisting on perfection everywhere can hurt workplace morale, reduce employee engagement, and decrease opportunities for innovation and change.

Managers too often call for excellence in the small things because they’re unable to prioritize what matters most. These managers tend to be the ones who also struggle with delegation—given their exacting standards, it makes sense that they would have difficulty letting others do their job. And because monitoring people’s efforts is often time-consuming and difficult, perfectionist managers tend to just decide that it’s easier and quicker to do the job themselves.

Smart Managers Have the Self-Discipline to Turn Excellence On and Off

Do You Have an Unhealthy Obsession with Excellence and Perfectionism? The smart managers I know of accomplish great things because they often have a “sixth sense” that reminds them that some activities matter more than others do and therefore merit more attention.

They give themselves permission to produce second-rate work on the road to doing a first-rate job.

They are very selective about when they push their teams to the max—only when the stakes are big enough and when it’s entirely justified.

Idea for Impact: Be Excellent Occasionally

Expecting excellence in every detail uses up a lot of bandwidth.

Get comfortable with a little bit of lower quality now and then. Less-than-excellent is a satisfactory outcome. As the British novelist W. Somerset Maugham once warned, “only a mediocre person is always at his best.”

Making a conscious decision about where excellence matters and where it doesn’t is particularly pertinent to managerial success.

In the real world of limited resources, perfection is hard to achieve. The quest for excellence sucks up time, energy, and money that could generate better results elsewhere.

Managers, step back and look at the whole picture. You don’t have enough resources to do everything, so commit them where they’ll bring the greatest overall improvement (use the lens of opportunity costs.)

Have exacting standards, but don’t demand excellence in every idea.

The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg Mckeown’s ‘Essentialism’

August 21, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One of the great struggles of modern life is the intense complexity, chaos, and exhaustion of activity and reactivity. We have a tendency to take on too much, become accountable to too many people, and say ‘yes’ to too many demands on our time and our energy.

As I mentioned in my world’s shortest course on time management, the merits of ignoring the trivial many and focusing on the vital few is often overlooked. The need for essentialism—less responsibility, less fame, less money, fewer possessions, less mess—is something that’s easy to identify with, but requires abundant self-discipline to put into consistent action.

Business consultant Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (2014) is an excellent reminder that a rich, meaningful life entails the elimination of the non-essential:

Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.

McKeown’s wide-ranging discussion covers insightful get-a-hold-of-your-life principles—frugality, sufficiency, moderation, restraint, minimalism, and mindfulness—reframed in the essential-avoidable dichotomy. Here are prominent insights from Essentialism:

Get to grips with selectivity—whenever you can, judiciously select which priorities, tasks, meetings, customers, ideas or steps to undertake and which to let go. “The basic value proposition of Essentialism [is,] only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”
Most top performers have one thing in common: they accept fewer tasks and then fixate on getting them right. “Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”
If you don’t arrange your life, someone else will. “When we forget our ability to choose, we learn to be helpless. Drip by drip we allow our power to be taken away until we end up becoming a function of other people’s choices-or even a function of our own past choices. In turn, we surrender our power to choose. That is the path of the Nonessentialist. … The Essentialist doesn’t just recognize the power of choice, he celebrates it. The Essentialist knows that when we surrender our right to choose, we give others not just the power but also the explicit permission to choose for us.”
Pop out at least once a year to reflect and ask questions about what you’re doing and why. “The faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus.”
Pursue a well-lived, joyful, meaningful life. “The life of an Essentialist is a life lived without regret. If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest your time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live.”

Recommendation: Speedread Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. It will remind you of the wisdom to think through—and act upon—what really matters. Essentialism is chockfull of useful instructions on how to say ‘no’ gracefully, exercise your freedom to set boundaries, discover the power of small wins, and harness the power of routines to evade the pull of nonessential distractions that can subsume you easily.

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Perfectionism

Too Much Choice Can Stress You Out

Idea for Impact: Choose to Reduce Choice. Simplify and Prioritize.

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Just Excellent …

… Not Exceptional

Nobody Likes Rejection, Certainly Not a Perfectionist

Idea for Impact: Challenge the Perfectionist, “All-or-Nothing” Thinking

Wondering what to read next?

Making some decisions depletes mental resources for making more important ones

Don’t get overloaded with so many pointless decisions that your cognitive productivity ends up falling off a cliff.

Idea for Impact: Establish healthy routines that can eliminate unnecessary deliberation

Wondering what to read next?

Smart Managers Have the Self-Discipline to Turn Excellence On and Off

Idea for Impact: Be Excellent Occasionally

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Wondering what to read next?