Finding Leverage At Work To Overcome Perfectionism

00:00:00.000 | All right, Jesse, what do we got next?

00:00:04.240 | Next question is from Roger, a senior level consultant in Wisconsin.

00:00:08.340 | For midsize projects such as preparing a large proposal for a new client, my tendency is

00:00:12.880 | to allow the effort to fill the available time up to the deadline.

00:00:16.840 | How do I know when something is good enough to be done?

00:00:19.360 | Yeah, these type of perfectionist issues are common, especially in knowledge work where

00:00:25.240 | you have many different things you're being asked to do.

00:00:28.460 | It can be psychologically difficult at some point to say this is good enough, let's move

00:00:32.000 | on.

00:00:33.960 | If you can't get to that point, you end up like Roger is talking about here, feeling

00:00:38.760 | every minute, staying up late, letting other things fall on the wayside because you're

00:00:43.160 | just not quite comfortable finishing because it could be better.

00:00:47.640 | What about this?

00:00:48.640 | What about that?

00:00:49.720 | And that can be damaging both psychologically, but also to your career prospects.

00:00:55.480 | The one thing I would recommend, Roger, is clearly identifying the subset of things you

00:00:59.920 | do in your job that are what I call needle mover activities.

00:01:05.100 | These are the things that really make the biggest difference in your career.

00:01:09.000 | These are probably going to be the things that most heavily leverage your hard won skills

00:01:13.360 | and or produce the most value for your organization.

00:01:17.080 | These are the things if you can do them at a very high level, will give you leverage

00:01:21.300 | over everything else.

00:01:23.500 | This is what we care about, right?

00:01:24.960 | So if you are a ad copywriter, a madman type situation, it's like how effective are the

00:01:31.520 | ad campaigns you're writing?

00:01:33.420 | Are they actually generating a lot of business for clients?

00:01:35.540 | That's the needle mover activity.

00:01:36.780 | If you're the developer at a startup, how crisp and robust is your code?

00:01:43.460 | If you can write really sharp code that's very stable and very efficient, man, that's

00:01:47.420 | what matters.

00:01:48.420 | That's what allows us our product to work.

00:01:51.720 | It saves us all these hours of repair and support.

00:01:55.340 | It's the skill that matters.

00:01:56.460 | If you're a professor, papers.

00:01:58.460 | Are you writing papers that are attracting citations and are being published in top venues?

00:02:03.220 | These are needle mover activities.

00:02:05.140 | Once you clearly identify what the needle mover activities are, you can be much more

00:02:08.920 | comfortable with the psychological toll of saying this is good enough with everything

00:02:12.300 | else.

00:02:13.300 | So you're the ad copywriter.

00:02:16.060 | This is the thing that really matters.

00:02:18.280 | When there's a one-off thing you're asked to do, like, "Hey, can you get together client

00:02:21.700 | testimonials for our website?"

00:02:24.620 | You're more comfortable saying, "I'll just do a good enough job.

00:02:28.220 | I found some testimonials.

00:02:29.540 | I made a plan.

00:02:30.540 | I found them.

00:02:31.540 | I checked them.

00:02:32.540 | I did it on time.

00:02:33.540 | It's at a reasonable level of quality.

00:02:34.540 | Great.

00:02:35.540 | Let me get back to the thing I really care about."

00:02:36.540 | You're a professor doing a committee.

00:02:38.100 | Let me make sure I'm responsible and reasonable and I show up and do the stuff I say I'm going

00:02:42.860 | to do and I don't want to hand in crap, but I'm keeping this pretty contained.

00:02:47.420 | I have an hour for it here, half hour for it here, and I'm happy with just that's good

00:02:52.100 | enough.

00:02:53.100 | So when you know what really matters, you don't sweat so much about the stuff that doesn't

00:02:58.540 | matter so much.

00:03:01.680 | Now keep in mind, if you don't take this approach, if you instead fall back on the perfectionist

00:03:07.940 | approach, "I just want everything to be beautiful," this can actually be counterproductive for

00:03:14.560 | your career.

00:03:16.720 | If people learn, "Oh, you're someone that no matter what I give them is going to do,

00:03:20.920 | they're going to obsess about it and it's going to be 2x better than I would do myself.

00:03:25.600 | If I tell them to get client testimonials, they're going to find all these different

00:03:29.480 | testimonials and go back and get them revised and they're going to find images and it's

00:03:33.040 | going to be really great for the website," I'm going to start wanting you to do more

00:03:37.640 | and more of these things.

00:03:39.760 | You will become my go-to person for these type of activities.

00:03:43.760 | And what you're going to find yourself then is drowning in what in the research literature

00:03:47.280 | they called non-promotable activities.

00:03:49.760 | So activities that are not directly related to the main thing you do.

00:03:53.480 | You're the professor who everyone wants on their committees because you really do such

00:03:56.760 | a good job, but now you can't do your research.

00:03:59.000 | And that's what ultimately matters for you keeping your job.

00:04:01.560 | You're the ad copywriter that everyone wants to pull onto their internal facing initiatives

00:04:06.280 | because they know that stuff will get done.

00:04:09.080 | And because of that, you're not producing the award-winning campaigns on which you could

00:04:12.120 | build your career.

00:04:14.280 | So there's a cost beyond just the psychology of, "Oh, my schedule is full because I can't

00:04:18.520 | let things go."

00:04:19.520 | There's a cost to your career trajectory if you're too good at too many things.

00:04:24.240 | Put your energy into the needle moving activities, be reasonable, a reasonable, responsible human

00:04:29.080 | on everything else.

00:04:30.080 | I won't be late.

00:04:31.080 | I won't drop the ball and I'll be fine.

00:04:34.360 | But I'm not really trying to blow you away with the stuff that doesn't really matter.

00:04:37.720 | I think it's actually better for your career growth paradoxically to be worse at some things

00:04:42.640 | and better at others.

00:04:44.040 | It's not the case that being as good as possible at all the things you do is actually going

00:04:47.080 | to be the fastest route to progression inside your career.

00:04:51.600 | [Music]

Finding Leverage At Work To Overcome Perfectionism

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