By Zi Ethan Wong on February 2025
In a results-oriented society, we want everything we do to turn out well and for us college students, the pressure to perform is more obvious than ever. Our future depends on our academic performance where anything short of perfection is undesirable and unacceptable. Students, who will soon become working adults, must show a good academic standing through their coursework and grades to get the attention of employers.
The goal of maintaining a high GPA convinced us that our work must be nothing short of perfection and our blood, sweat, and tears should be used to make sure that everything turns out perfect. Ideally, based on effort, every hardworking student would finish their studies and pursue successful careers with the employer of their choice, but what if the opposite happened, and students have burned out from trying to meet those standards and are unable to achieve their desired outcomes?
The Horrors of Perfectionism
Being a perfectionist means that we pressure ourselves to achieve perfect results, and anything short of it should be looked down upon. Speaking from experience, I wanted everything to be perfectly done on the first attempt, but this pressure to be perfect leads to high expectations in myself that I cannot reasonably fulfil. Primarily, my mental health might take a hit, or numerous hits depending on my mood. The moments of self-doubt will replay in my mind, telling me, “you are not good enough.” Those words will echo through my every waking moment, reminding me of my failure to achieve perfection.
This overwhelming pressure to succeed leads people like me to delay starting almost everything, convincing myself of a hypothetical ‘perfect time’ to start. Since nothing is perfect, this ‘perfect’ time ends up being wasted time waiting for something that does not exist. Predictably, this ends up backfiring and I accomplished nothing important while waiting for that ‘perfect time’.
Am I a Perfectionist?
If you are like me and are asking yourself whether you have perfectionist tendencies, here are some noticeable traits found in people that admit to suffering from the perfectionism bug.
Perfectionists are people who have a debilitating fear of failure and never do anything outside of their comfort zones. Due to that fear, everything must turn out perfect with the first attempt, and anything that remotely has a chance of backfiring will be ignored. Believing that failure will lead to worse outcomes, and the sting of failure proving too much to handle, the perfectionists will only do things they know they are good at, and nothing else.
Because perfectionists fear the shame of failure, we procrastinate on our tasks that we promise to do to avoid the risk of failure, not until it meets our ‘perfect’ standards, which unfortunately is impossible to meet. The tasks will continually be delayed and remain on hold forever. Hence, this procrastination of our tasks due to our demand of ‘perfection’ means that the ‘perfect’ task will remain undisturbed, and nothing gets accomplished in the end.
A ‘Good Enough’ Mindset to Overcome Perfectionism?
While striving for perfection can be an admirable trait as we demonstrate an attentiveness to detail, it is unrealistic to expect everything to go well in our messy lives, and this dedication to perfection may backfire and negatively affect us mentally in the long run.
What if instead of perfectionism, we should instead strive towards doing the best we can in everything we do? How about instead of being ‘perfect’, we settle with a ‘good enough’ outcome? With phrases like ‘doing something badly is better than doing nothing at all’ and ‘good enough is good enough,’ people might be encouraged to try, without the fear of failure damaging their confidence.
Without the pressure to be perfect hanging above our heads, we might feel happier knowing we did our best instead of perfectly. Maybe, the perfection we seek may come from the imperfections of what we did.