I have tried (and failed) to come up with some personal examples. I'll be thinking about it throughout the day, though. Thanks in advance for your help. I really need to make a big push to hit my end of the year deadlines, and right now, the biggest obstacle is my own self-doubt. I don't know what I'd do without the bunnies!

Thanks in advance for your help

and/or words of encouragement. Really, every little bit helps. =\

I think the first step is accepting the fact that other people make mistakes as well. At least that's how it worked in my case.

I work in an office where we are supposed to catch ALL errors. This is impossible, and yet that's our job. Tailor-made for stress and crazy making, yes?

One thing that helps us deal with the fact that There Will Always Be Errors No Matter How Hard We Try is to think of the actual consequences of a "failure." For example, one day we were reading something in the statutes and discovered a piece of old law that had a sentence that was completely missing the verb. Ouch. When that happens, it is almost always All Our Fault, so I was rather appalled, but then my coworker shrugged and said, "Well, it's been in the statutes like that for 5 years, and nobody's died. We'll just fix it now."

Yeah, it was a mistake, and yeah, we should have caught it, but look, it happened, and yet somehow the universe managed to carry on. So now, when I make a mistake I just slap my wrist and say "BAD proofreaders, BAD!" and move on.

Join a chess club. A physical space where you must go and face your opponent directly. You will lose and often, sitting there watching the clock slowly click down, knowing your fate is sealed while you scramble for some solution. If you can arrange to play against child geniuses, all the better.

This is one reason why submission (in the bdsm sense) is so popular in the circle of movers and shakers. Submission leads to humiliation, and that hardens the psyche to take risks in real life without fearing failure.

For a quick fix, go to a stand-up comedy open-mic night with absolutely nothing prepared.

Well, I do improv. It's one of those areas where I'm ok with that. At work, not so much.

Other people making mistakes doesn't help me. I've had it drilled into me that I need to be *better*. No matter what. In fact, the more mistakes others make, the more perfect I have to be, because I have to help them, as well.

The slap on the wrist thing doesn't work. Not sure why. Maybe because I'm worried about the little mistakes snowballing into something serious? Of course, by the point I start facing up to that, they have already done so, and so I'm kinda in back-to-the-wall mode.

Improv has its own infrastructure, doesn't it? Your audience is expecting the occasional lapse, and is forgiving of it. Straight-out stand-up removes that safety net. Maybe that's it. Look for your safety nets in life, and find ways to remove them.

I've tried the "cutting your legs out from underneath you" approach in the past. I'm excellent at self-handicapping. I do almost everything "the hard way." I know how to fail. I want to feel ok when I do fail. And to be ok with the possibility of failure. Like, if I fail, it's no big deal.

Improv actually works better for me because of the built-in forgiveness.

One thing that I eventually was able to accept and helped me a lot with perfectionism was the idea that it's better to have something done and not perfect than to not finish at all.

Also, you already know how badly I suffer from Imposter Syndrome. I thrive when I get outside validation/praise, but that's kind of hard to come by in a work situation. So another coping mechanism I use is to congratulate myself on each little step forward. Full on taking a moment to just kind of revel in the success of opening a document/making a phone call/returning an email, whatever. The littlest steps I'll praise myself for!

Hang in there, friend. You've been in similar situations before and succeeded. This time will be no different!

I struggle with this too. My job involves decision making, important decisions that affect people's lives, and I worry about making the wrong decision every single day. But then I look at what other people are doing at work and realise I'm pretty f'ing good at my job.

After I qualified as a lawyer I worried for years that one day the Law Society would contact me and say, sorry, we made a mistake when we marked your exam papers, it was another person called Senyar who passed, not you. So I've had decades of this worry that I'm going to fall short of the mark, but so far all that's happened is that I've succeeded beyond my wildest dreams - quite possibly precisely because of my perfectionism and attention to detail.

One thing that I eventually was able to accept and helped me a lot with perfectionism was the idea that it's better to have something done and not perfect than to not finish at all.

That's probably been my saving grace. But until I'm almost up against the deadline, I console myself with thinking that I'll come up with a better way to do it any minute now...

As for praising myself, man. I can't shake the feeling that I'm being hubristic/setting myself up for a fall. It's all just damned noise in my head, I know, but I can't escape it. Or I haven't, yet.

You've been in similar situations before and succeeded. This time will be no different!

Heh, that's what I'm worried about. I want to finally break this cycle of deadline emergencies. But I only seem to be able to function in panic mode. Even though I think about how nice it would be to be *ahead* of schedule for once, I just don't seem to be able to get there. =(

I recommend reading "The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything" by George Alec Effinger.

Among other things, there is an interesting little segue about how you can succeed with the less than perfect before others succeed because insisting the perfect (it's not exactly this, but it might as well be).

perspective helps. a lot. We just had this discussion at our admin roundtable because it came up as a topic. here's perspective for you:

scale of consequence should be a major consideration. I work at a large pharmaceutical manufacturing operation. The operators deal with very dangerous chemical reactions, hazardous materials and reactions on a daily basis. For them, the consequences of a small error can be extreme, and conversely, they have a very strict set of operation procedures, doublechecks and SOP mandates they must follow. Failure to do so carries pretty severe penalties.

However, we also have a research and development arm. And as any scientist worth their degree can tell you, research by definition is basically a process of failing until you succeed. Scientific method is defined by how to accurately track and document, in minute detail, exactly WHAT got fucked up on your last attempt. Probably 80% of experimental drugs projects fail to make it from the initial discovery steps, through scale-up and due diligence, through regulatory and finally release to market. Either they fail to be effective, or the process isn't adequately stable/repeatable, or they have adverse effects that are worse than their benefits, or they're so hazardous or otherwise troublesome to manufacture, hence the cost outweighs the benefit.

So to circle back to our original discussion, as a business / administration team, my colleagues all elected to kind of take a middle ground approach. Nothing's going to explode if we send off a cover letter with a typo in it, unlike what the operators deal with, but we do need to be prepared to submit our work to the scrutiny of our peers for review, just to ensure we're doing our due diligence. But at the end of the day, life IS failure (princess), and anyone who tells you any different is selling something.

dunno, does that help at all? And to JanetLand's point, I've quit at several places who took that kind fo "failure is not an option" micromanaging attitude to busywork. It happens to be my least favourite attitude, and it's also probably the fastest way to kill any sort of buy-in or motivation in your employees. I am a responsible adult, I take pride in my work, and I am far more intolerant of my own mistakes than anyone else could be, even with the knowledge that my attorney boss has extremely high standards (I am a legal secretary helping edit Very Important Agreements, so we have to).

I think it would be in any businesses' best interest to treat their employees like responsible adults and let them take pride in their work, if for no other reason than to improve morale and reduce turnover. Sadly the sorts of little tinhorn dictator control freaks that tend to gravitate to middle management often fail to subscribe to this philosophy.

Last but not least, and to actually JFC answer the fucking question, already, lfr! *ahem* I've discovered for myself the simple concept that "perfection is the enemy of done". I can go on polishing that turd until it shines, but at the end of the day, it's still a turd, and we still gotta flush it. Surprisingly enough everyone I work with generally considers my "eh, fuck it, good enough" to exceed their expectations, especially since I make deadlines.

I have a hand-out I give to clients who are struggling with this -- I like some of these suggestions; they are basic but I think some of the struggle against perfectionism also must include struggling against trying to struggle *better* with perfectionism (all info adapted from an interview on PsychCentral.com with Michelle Russell):

5 WAYS TO TACKLE PERFECTIONISM

1. Compare yourself to others.

I know, this probably sounds surprising when the prevailing wisdom says not to. But we perfectionists need frequent reality checks.

Think about whatever has you firing on all cylinders and what you’re hoping to achieve. A report with absolutely no errors? A living room fit to be featured in House Beautiful? A body like the cover model on that fitness magazine at the checkout stand?

Now notice how many people are doing quite well, thankyouverymuch, without raising the bar so high. People really do have satisfying relationships in non-model bodies, successful careers despite the occasional typo or misjudgment, and comfortable, happy homes with undusted mantelpieces. It’s good to look around and remind ourselves of this from time to time.

2. Use the 10-Year Question.

If you catch yourself ruminating about something you think you’ve done or might do less than perfectly, ask yourself, “Ten years from today, will I even remember this, let alone care about how well it was done or whether it was done at all?”

In the extremely rare cases where you answer “yes” and “yes,” go ahead and give the doing or fixing your best effort, and then move on. Most of the time, though, this little thought exercise will help dissolve your worry, or at least shrink it down to a more manageable size.

3. Take some time out.

Perfectionists overcommit—to others and to themselves. See if you can find a way out of an upcoming obligation (or two, or three) that you don’t really want to do but think you “should.” Also, look at your own to-do list and see what you can defer for now, or even take off your list entirely.

Now don’t just fill up this time with other stuff. There will always be more stuff. Allow it to be “white time” (analogous to white space) during which you have absolutely no agenda. Do whatever your body and spirit want—take a nap, go somewhere for a change of scenery, stretch, dance, meditate, walk on grass, finger-paint.

Perfectionism stems from an overly self-critical mind. Give your mind a break and let it rest. Nurture the other parts of you¬—they deserve it. Gradually, your mind will learn that the world doesn’t end if you leave it to itself for a little while.

4. Take one tiny but direct step.

It seems counterintuitive, but there’s a direct link between perfectionism and procrastination. You’d think perfectionists would want everything done neatly, thoroughly and on time, right? Instead, we often feel such pressure to do things perfectly that we overwhelm ourselves before we even start. Then we keep ourselves occupied with a million other things so that we always have a handy excuse for why we’re not doing Whatever It Is.

Try picking one very tiny thing and just doing it. Make the thing so small that it doesn’t intimidate you. But make sure it points directly toward something you want. Don’t browse the Internet for workout shoes—go outside and walk around the block. Just once. But do it. A single baby step is worth more than any amount of beating yourself up over not taking any action.

5. Ask yourself what you’d say to a friend.

I have a friend who calls me on this whenever she observes me going into overdrive. “If I were handling everything you are right now,” she asks me, “and I started criticizing you the way you’re criticizing yourself, would you stand there and take it? Or would you tell me to go fly a kite?” (Pregnant pause.) “Then why do you let you talk to yourself that way?”

It’s a good question, isn’t it?

Also, it's worth making sure you're not being a perfectionist about not being a perfectionist. You have a few areas where you feel free to make mistakes? Great! You can really just focus on those for a while. It's ok not to be perfect at not being perfect.