How to Overcome Perfectionism and Finally Get Things Done

If you’ve ever been in a job interview, you’ve likely heard the classic advice: when asked about your greatest weakness, never say you’re a perfectionist. It’s often seen as a clichéd, humblebrag. But for many of us, the struggle is very real and far from a hidden strength.

I struggle with perfectionism.

While some can comfortably leave a task at “good enough,” understanding that minor details often go unnoticed, I’m the person who spends an extra hour adjusting the lighting on a background object that no one will ever consciously see. It’s a drive for an unattainable ideal that can be both a powerful motivator and a paralyzing force.

Over the years, however, I’ve developed strategies to manage this tendency, turning it from a roadblock into a tool. Perfectionism doesn’t have to be the enemy of progress. As author Anne Lamott famously wrote in her book Bird by Bird, “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.” It’s a powerful statement that highlights how this trait can hold us back from creating, learning, and growing.

This guide will explore practical, actionable ways to overcome the negative aspects of perfectionism, so you can procrastinate less, reduce anxiety, and ultimately achieve more.

What is Perfectionism? Understanding Its Two Sides

Before we can tackle perfectionism, it’s crucial to understand that it’s not an entirely negative trait. In fact, psychologists often distinguish between two main types of perfectionism: adaptive and maladaptive. Recognizing which one drives you is the first step toward finding a healthier balance.

Adaptive Perfectionism: The Healthy Strive for Excellence

Adaptive perfectionists set high personal standards and are driven to meet them. However, their self-worth is not tied to the outcome. They see challenges as opportunities for growth and can derive satisfaction from the process itself, not just the final, polished product. This form of perfectionism is a source of motivation and energy.

• They are motivated by a desire to achieve, not a fear of failure.
• They maintain healthy self-esteem, even when they don’t meet their own high standards.
• They can channel intense focus and energy into detailed, effortful work without becoming overwhelmed.
• They are capable of accepting constructive criticism and learning from mistakes.

Maladaptive Perfectionism: The Paralyzing Fear of Failure

Maladaptive perfectionism, on the other hand, is rooted in fear. It’s the constant, nagging feeling that your work will never be good enough. This type of perfectionist sets unrealistic, often impossible, standards for themselves. The pressure to meet these ideals can lead to severe anxiety, chronic procrastination, and even depression. Their self-worth is directly linked to their achievements, creating a volatile and stressful internal environment.

• They are driven by a deep-seated fear of being judged or making mistakes.
• They often procrastinate on tasks because the pressure to perform perfectly is too monumental to face.

– Their focus is on avoiding failure rather than pursuing success.

• They are hyper-critical of their own work and struggle to ever feel that something is truly “finished.”

Most people exist on a spectrum between these two states. Your perfectionist tendencies might help you produce high-quality work, but they might also be the source of significant stress and stalled projects. The goal is not to eliminate perfectionism entirely, but to shift your mindset from the maladaptive toward the adaptive.

5 Actionable Strategies to Overcome Perfectionism

If you find yourself stuck in a cycle of procrastination and anxiety fueled by the need to be perfect, it’s time to take control. By implementing new habits and thought patterns, you can mitigate the negative effects and harness the positive drive for excellence. Here are five effective strategies to get you started.

1. Embrace Imperfection and the Learning Process

The first and most crucial step is to accept a fundamental truth: you are not perfect, and no one else is either. This can be difficult in our modern world, where social media and the internet present us with a constant stream of polished, finished products. We see the final masterpiece, but we rarely witness the countless hours of messy work, the frustrating setbacks, and the outright failures that led to it.

Think back to learning a new skill as a child, like riding a bike. You didn’t expect to hop on and pedal away perfectly on the first try. You fell, you scraped your knees, and you got back on. Each fall was a data point, a lesson in balance and coordination. Mistakes were a necessary and expected part of the process. Why, then, do we expect to write a perfect first draft of an essay or deliver a flawless presentation without practice and iteration? Grant yourself the same grace to learn and make mistakes as an adult.

2. Just Get Started: The Power of a Messy First Draft

The blank page is often the most intimidating part of any project for a perfectionist. The pressure to make the first sentence perfect can prevent you from writing anything at all. The solution is to separate the creative process from the editing process. Best-selling author Stephen King offered timeless advice in his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft:

“Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open.”

This means your first version is for you and you alone. Give yourself permission for it to be terrible. The goal is simply to get your ideas out of your head and onto the page. Don’t worry about grammar, structure, or elegant phrasing. Just create. This “brain dump” approach removes the pressure and allows momentum to build. You can’t edit a blank page, but you can always refine a messy draft. Feedback and criticism should only enter the picture once you have a prototype to work with.

3. Work with a Deadline to Force Completion

For me, this has been the single most effective strategy for managing perfectionism. Without a deadline, a project can stretch on indefinitely, a victim of endless tweaking. When I first started creating YouTube videos, I was intimidated by the high quality of the creators I admired. I knew I could never match them starting out.

So, instead of aiming for a perfect first video, I set a different goal: to publish one video every single week for a year. I told a friend, “A year from now, I want to have at least 50 videos out.” This schedule forced me to finish projects, publish them, and move on. My first video was far from perfect, but it was done. My 50th video was drastically better, not because I spent a year on one project, but because I completed 49 iterations before it.

[A comparison of the author’s first and a more recent video was shown here to illustrate progress.]

Deadlines force you to make decisions and prioritize what’s most important. They are the antidote to dwelling on the minutiae. This aligns with Parkinson’s Law, which states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” By setting a firm end date, you constrain the time and force yourself to focus on completion over perfection.

4. Focus on Incremental Improvement

Don’t try to go from a novice to a master in one leap. Instead, focus on getting just 1% better each time you do something. This concept of small, compounding gains is incredibly powerful over time. If you improve slightly with every iteration, you’ll eventually achieve mastery. But this requires you to finish things.

Each completed project, even an imperfect one, is a learning opportunity. When you put your work out into the world, you get feedback—either from others or through your own reflection—that you can’t get when it’s sitting on your hard drive. The skills you gain from completing your first nine projects will equip you to make your tenth one better in ways you couldn’t have even imagined when you started.

5. Measure Yourself Against Your Past Self

It is profoundly unfair and counterproductive to compare your beginning to someone else’s middle or end. If you make your first video, write your first blog post, or code your first app, you shouldn’t measure it against the work of a seasoned professional with a decade of experience. It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison that will only lead to discouragement.

The only meaningful comparison is your work today versus your work from last week, last month, or last year. Are you improving? Are you learning? This approach fosters a growth mindset and keeps you focused on your own journey. Let the work of masters inspire and influence you, but don’t let it intimidate you or become an impossible standard to which you hold yourself.

Your Imperfect Work Has Value

As I finish writing this article, I feel the familiar pull of perfectionism. There’s more I could say, more points I could cover, and more counter-arguments I could address. But a deadline is a deadline, and the goal is to provide useful information, not a flawless, all-encompassing magnum opus.

Imperfect work that is shared with the world is infinitely more valuable than a perfect masterpiece that never sees the light of day. A professional speaker friend once gave me a piece of advice that has stuck with me:

“The audience will never know what you didn’t say.”

So, finish that project. Share your creation. Embrace the process of learning and growing through doing. It might be imperfect, but it’s useful—and that’s more than enough.