“Perfectionism” is probably related to Conscientiousness from the Big Five. Perhaps it’s also related to Neuroticism. My hypothesis is that Conscientiousness causes you to have a high bar for your performance, and Neuroticism causes you anxiety when you aren’t meeting that high bar.
Going along with Neuroticism, perfectionism may also be related to self-esteem or a need for agency in a particular area. For instance, during my insanely perfectionistic days, I would try to solve any word or logic problem that I ever came across, even if it wasn’t a good use of my time and energy. I think the motivation was that I needed to prove something to myself.
Update: Wikipedia’s article on Perfectionism) concurs that it may be related to Conscientiousness and Neuroticism.
This suggests that the main ways to deal with perfectionism are:
a) lower your bar for success (e.g. don’t set it higher than the task actually demands, or higher than is practical given your allotted time for the task): “OK, this is good enough… time to stop...”
and
(b) better cope with your anxiety when you fail to reach whatever bar you are measuring yourself by: “I’d like to put a bit more work into this, but no sense in beating myself up...”
I’ve used both strategies successfully in my own life.
“Perfectionism” is probably related to Conscientiousness from the Big Five. Perhaps it’s also related to Neuroticism. My hypothesis is that Conscientiousness causes you to have a high bar for your performance, and Neuroticism causes you anxiety when you aren’t meeting that high bar.
Going along with Neuroticism, perfectionism may also be related to self-esteem or a need for agency in a particular area. For instance, during my insanely perfectionistic days, I would try to solve any word or logic problem that I ever came across, even if it wasn’t a good use of my time and energy. I think the motivation was that I needed to prove something to myself.
Update: Wikipedia’s article on Perfectionism) concurs that it may be related to Conscientiousness and Neuroticism.
This suggests that the main ways to deal with perfectionism are:
a) lower your bar for success (e.g. don’t set it higher than the task actually demands, or higher than is practical given your allotted time for the task): “OK, this is good enough… time to stop...”
and
(b) better cope with your anxiety when you fail to reach whatever bar you are measuring yourself by: “I’d like to put a bit more work into this, but no sense in beating myself up...”
I’ve used both strategies successfully in my own life.