In in my last post about perfectionism, I’ve ended up posing a question: what makes an accomplished perfectionist? In other words, how does one balance the act of accomplishment with a strive for perfection? It’s a pretty thin line if you ask me, and in this post, I’m going to shed light on some of the techniques you can use to achieve that.
Accomplished perfectionism is the fusion of two separate genes: those that empower a person to get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible, and those that compels him or her to do their best possible job on these things.
To illustrate, take a look at the following phrases which are more likely to be said or thought by a carrier of each of these two genes:
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Are you a perfectionist? You know, are you the type of person who seeks completeness and flawlessness in every project and every single task you do? Do you obsess about the smallest of details, often times to the point of exhaustion? And does that often lead you to miss important deadlines, because “good” is simply just not “good enough”, at least for you?
If you’re anything like me, then you’ll resonate with symptoms of what’s called perfectionism. Being a perfectionist at work and college is something I’ve been very proud of, despite not being fully aware of it. Everybody I came to deal with including my boss and colleagues was impressed by the level of sophistication and professionalism I’d go about completing my tasks.
This, of course, also had its toll on me most of time. Long working hours in the office (by choice) trying to get that deliverable up to my standards and still meeting that deadline was the norm for me.
Then a couple of days ago I came across an article that was like a revelation. It made me realize that now I’m at this point in my career life where I have to make serious changes to my work habits if I want to be an accomplished person. This post is me trying to analyze that change and hopefully helping fellow perfectionists along the way.
I’m pretty sure you are probably wondering now: why is being a perfectionist something you would want to change? How does it ruin one’s professional life? Doesn’t it make you, I don’t know.. better than the others?
If you think about it (or have experienced it yourself) then you’d probably agree with me on this: perfectionism can get in the way of accomplishment. Well, at least a certain kind of perfectionism.
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I realized something a couple of days ago by reading an article that came as a sort of a wake-up call for me: being productive doesn’t necessarily make you an accomplished person!
I will elaborate on that so it makes little more sense to you:
There’s a common phrase I use quite often (especially at work) to describe the thing where you pretend to do something by acting as if you were really doing it, but never actually getting it done. It’s called going through the motions.
It amazes me how often we find ourselves inadvertently going through the motions of achieving things, doing everything we know we’re supposed or told to do, but eventually not reaching the finish line, or reaching it a bit too late.
I wasn’t aware of how guilty I am of this until I started my current job a couple of years ago and started to learn about the environment and work culture. Two years down the road, I’ve realized that what we actually do here at the company is far from trying to get projects done. We obsess very little about end results and a lot more about methodologies, frameworks, work policies, clearing our responsibilities and basically just getting the ball on to the other side.
Make no mistake, we do like to feel accomplished, and we’re actually getting paid to do so. But we’re lousy at that, and you know why? Because we think that by going through the motions of working on various projects, clearing many seemingly important tasks, being all productive and punctual, we’re bound to drive projects to the finish line. The only problem is, we usually don’t. Our projects carry on for years (I’m not exaggerating!). So what is it we’re doing wrong? Or to put it in a more general way:
How does going through the motions of accomplishing things not help us accomplish them?
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Have you ever had an "Aha!" moment after reading an insightful article that explains something that you've long experienced but weren't exactly sure whether it was a "real" thing and a known phenomena? I recently had this kind of moment after reading couple of articles about one's "creative flow" at Steve Pavlina weblog and I thought: man this stuff is so dead on, I gotta share it with everybody! But here's the kicker: I'm going to put my own visual illustration twist on this subject and give you a nice, concise and memorable step-by-step guide to relive your creative moments based on Steve's brilliant 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output. Reliving your creative moments isn't just for the fun of it, it will help you get your creative fluid juices running again which will let you tap into your creative potential to create awesome works of art in whatever it is you do professionally.
Some Background
Turns out this phenomena we're talking about, one's creative flow, or simply the "flow", is a long-known one studied and proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The Wikipedia's entry on this subject states that the:
Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.
So you'll know you're in the flow when..
- you're resistant to anything that tries to interrupt you or put you out of it
- you lose all sense of time
- you forget about your basic needs like hunger or sleep
- you don't feel like what you're doing is work as much as trying to achieve that goal you set out to achieve
Rings any bells? I bet everyone of us has experienced all or some of these symptoms at some point in time. I know I did. At my previous job, I used to diss off people who'd interrupt me during peak working hours for trivial matters. I got a reputation for being cranky or having "the bad day", but really what it was is just me trying to keep the pace of my flow going in order to fix that nasty bug or roll out that long overdue feature. But now I know better, because with these rules, I know exactly how to initiate and maintain a creative and productive working session. So let's explore these rules in details, shall we?
Preparation: What needs to be done beforehand
Because maintaining a steady flow of creative ideas requires complete focus on your goal and ultimate objective, you will need to take care of the following 3 things first:
- Set up your own conductive environment. It depends on your preference whether you want to work within stimulating and active environment or prefer secluded and quite environments (like me). Also you might want to play some music along, you know the kind that gets you going.
- Master the tools of your trade. In my opinion, nothing kills creative flow of ideas like getting stuck on some technical issue related to the tool(s) you're using during your creative session. A basic competency of these tools is a must to minimize disrupting your flow.
- Allocate enough time that you think will take you to finish the task at hand
Define your scope
Some people have a habit of drifting out of their real goal when they follow their natural progression of ideas. You know what I'm talking about: you're trying to do something and it leads to something else seemingly related, and before you know it you're tackling a whole different problem than the one you set out to do. While this is clearly a prospect for innovation, when your creative energy is shattered among several different problems, it quickly wears you out and you end up achieving none, or at least not the one you were meant to achieve. This is why you need to consider the following 3 points which will help you "tunnel" your creative ideas into something productive and worthwhile:
- Define a clear purpose. You're going to need a clear goal to focus on. Decide on what you want to create and by all means avoid vague goals. This is your ultimate objective and achieving it will likely trigger the end of your creative flow and make you feel good about yourself!
- Identify a compelling motive. Why is your goal important to achieve? When you answer this question, you align this goal with your real-world objectives which will give you powerful driving force towards achieving it. You know, most short- or long-term goals, like our new year's resolutions, fail to see the light not because they're impossibly unattainable, but because we failed to associate them upstart with a compelling motive that keeps us going at times of weakness.
- Architect a worthy challenge. There are tasks that are just too darn easy to need your full creative energy. And then again, there are those that are too damn difficult that makes you want to kill yourself. More so than often, we get to choose how challenging our tasks should be. If so, then you need to know that on a scale of of 1-10, where 1 is trivially easy and 10 is impossible, the optimal creative range is 5-9 with a 7-8 being ideal. A wise man once said:
Achieving flow is a fine balance from feeling bored to feeling overwhelmed.
Ready? Go!
That's it! If you have all those elements (preparation + scope) figured out and accounted for, then you're ready to start. It will normally take you 15 minutes to begin to enter the flow state. Within 45-60 minutes, you'll be riding the waves of your creativity! But then again, it all depends on you and the nature of your task. Save and use the following figure to help remind you of the stuff we talked about today. Wish you all the best!
