7 Ways to Stop Being a Perfectionist and Get Things Done Swiftly

Perfection is often perceived as the pinnacle of excellence. However, it's a double-edged sword. Perfectionism ensures that what a person delivers is of top quality and a flawless piece of work.

But if you're not careful, perfection can negatively affect your productivity and severely hinder your growth.

Delivering refined work is one thing, but obsessing over the smallest of details all the time may cause unnecessary anxiety and prevent you from keeping up with the deliverables.

So, in order to maximize your efficiency and achieve the set goals with ease, the best course of action is to ditch perfectionism and focus on getting things done quickly.

And here's how you can do that:

1. Control Your Thought Process

Perfection is not a bad thing in general. It's a thought process that you can benefit from if you know how to leverage it. Otherwise, it ends up causing more harm than good. 

The key here is to be aware of your perfectionist tendencies and know when they are about to get the best of you.

This may take some practice and getting used to, as you will have to learn to control your thoughts and process things accordingly.

Maintaining a journal or starting a blog can make things easier for you, as writing down your thoughts can help you reflect upon them in an overall better way and reach an optimal solution.

2. Build Tolerance for Errors

Avoiding mistakes is great and all, but you should have some sort of tolerance for errors. Making mistakes is how you hack growth and become better than you were yesterday.

So, it's OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. Not only does this help you keep your perfectionist tendencies in check, but it also makes it possible for you to keep the needle moving and conquer your to-do list without having to encounter excessive stress.

Making mistakes and failing at something is part of the process. And accepting this fact will help you get more done and learn new things along the way.

3. Set Realistic Goals

When it comes to quality standards, a common mistake perfectionists make is that they set unrealistic goals or targets for themselves.

This not only hinders their progress but also makes them endure excessive stress while they pursue the set milestones.

Your goals shouldn't be lenient enough that you end up procrastinating, nor should they be nearly impossible to achieve.

So, it's best that you try a more balanced approach and set goals for yourself that are challenging but in a healthy way.

4. Make Things Time-Bound

Making things time-bound helps speed up the process and makes it possible for you to get things done more quickly.

However, commitment to the cause is also necessary. So, in order to improve your productivity, it's important that you devise a schedule and stick to it.

Making things time-bound improves your efficiency and helps you accomplish more. So, it's highly recommended that you set the start and end times for the tasks at hand to ensure a better outcome from your efforts.

5. Be Open to Feedback

An individual's inability to be open to feedback or receive criticism often breeds a perfectionist mindset.

Embracing feedback and criticism is how you become aware of your shortcomings and eventually learn new things to overcome them.

This is how you evolve and grow as a professional, whether you work remotely or on-site, as constructive criticism paves the way for you to reach new heights. But for that, you need to have a positive mindset and learn to look at the bright side of things.

Healthy criticism allows you to add new skills and expertise to your arsenal, which in turn helps improve the way you perform.

6. Just Do Your Best

Perfectionists often take longer than most people to do things because they think that what they've done is not good enough.

This often leads them to be caught up in an endless loop of self-improvement, which in turn severely affects their productivity.

Obsessing over the quality of your work would get you nowhere. So, the best course of action is to simply do your best, submit the work, and ask the concerned stakeholders to review it.

Nothing is perfect in this world. So, stop setting unrealistic standards for yourself and practice self-acceptance.

All you can do is give it your all, and if it still doesn't work out, you can take it from there and improve as you go.

7. Stop Procrastinating

Perfectionism often serves as an excuse for people to slack off. Think of it as a defense mechanism to cope with the guilt as they delay things deliberately while depicting that they're doing their best to do the assigned work perfectly.

So, if you've been struggling with perfection and looking for ways to overcome it, ask yourself whether it's actually perfectionism you're dealing with here or something else.

What you perceive as perfectionism might actually be your tendency to procrastinate. So, it's best to confront yourself and accept the truth, no matter how harsh that is.

Remember, at the end of the day, it's you who will be affected by it. So, it'd be wise to identify the actual problem in order to come up with a fitting solution for it.

It's a Wrap

There you have it. The seven ways to stop being a perfectionist and get things done swiftly.

If you've been struggling with perfectionist tendencies and find it difficult to overcome them, consider the recommendations provided in this article and see if they work for you.