In this Wednesday Workout, we are thinking about how to cope with perfectionism. We all want to do our best, be the best, succeed and fulfil our potential, but what if that very desire is stopping us from reaching that goal?
You can’t be brilliant at everything
Although we always want to do our best and get the best grades possible, there will always be some types of work or assignments that suit us best and some that we struggle with. This might be related to different concepts that we are learning about – we might find some easier to understand and work with than others, or it might be about the style of assignment – some of us might be more comfortable with exams, some of us with essays or written assignments.
Try to enjoy the things that feel easier or where you have a natural interest. Trust your instincts and curiosity and use these areas or types of work to excel. Enjoy these moments.
Try not to worry about the things you find harder (everyone finds something hard – it’s not just you). You might need to spend a little extra time on these things and that time might not feel enjoyable. But remember, you can only do your best – you don’t have to achieve the same results in every area of your studies. Enjoy getting these things done and reward yourself for that extra effort.
What does it mean to do your best, and what if that’s not good enough?
All anyone can ever do is their best. You can aim to achieve a certain grade or a certain result – but you can’t control what grade or outcome you end up with. All you can control is the effort that you put into your work. And as a student that effort will sometimes be very effective, and sometimes other things will get in the way of your effort. That is completely normal.
As a student you are constantly learning – you are learning complex material in your degree, but you are also learning how to complete different types of assignment, how to think in your discipline – and even how to be a student. Don’t underestimate these things – they are really important.
This means that sometimes you will be working on something in a brand new way, using a new method or dealing with content that is completely new to you. And you will be doing this at the same time as completing other assignments for other modules, or revising for exams or working on projects. This is really challenging.
Doing your best means putting every effort into what you are trying to accomplish. It means balancing your time between different tasks. Sometimes it means learning as you go along. And sometimes it means integrating learning from previous tasks.
You only have a certain amount of effort – and it will only spread so far. And you will have things other than your studies going on in your life – and those things will also draw from your reserve of effort. So at any given time, you might have more or less effort to work with. And that is ok.
Your ‘best’ is not a particular grade or outcome.
Your ‘best’ is the amount of effort, energy and thinking that you can dedicate to a particular task, on a particular day, at a particular time in your life, in the context of all the other tasks and life things that are going on.
Sometimes that ‘best’ will satisfy you and you will feel proud of yourself, and sometimes that ‘best’ might feel like it wasn’t good enough. But if you have put in your best effort, whatever the outcome, that is good enough. That is the ‘best’ that you could achieve on that day.
Everyone will have better ‘bests’ and less better ‘bests’ as they move through their studies, and you have to accept them all as being your best at that moment in time. It doesn’t mean that you won’t accomplish more in the future, but it also doesn’t mean that you have done badly. Your studies are a journey with lots of highs and lows – stay focussed and enjoy the good moments because in the end, things will work out.
Know what is needed and only worry about what you can control
One way to tackle perfectionism is to identify exactly what is needed to complete a task, and also to figure out what you can and cannot control in completing the task.
When you’re completing an assignment, always refer back to the assignment brief and the learning outcomes that the assignment is assessing. Do you understand what is being ‘tested’? Do you feel clear about what the lecturer or teacher is looking for? What makes a good assignment?
Sometimes this will be obvious, if the assessment or assignment is largely content based. However, sometimes this will be less clear and you might need to ask for guidance. Don’t be afraid to ask what is needed. You could ask the lecturer or teacher, your personal tutor, other students in your class – or you could look for previous examples of completed assignments.
Write down the criteria – or make sure you have them to refer to. Use these to guide you and stop you from over-working or wasting energy where it is not needed.
You can also make a list of the things that you can control about your assignment, and the things that are outside of your control. Try not to worry about the things that you cannot change or effect. If you are working in a team or group, there is a limit to how much you can influence or control how other people work. This can make group work frustrating or challenging. But the key is to speak up, let your team know what you are worried about and then try not to worry about it any more. This is really hard, but you can only control the parts of the work that you are contributing.
How do I get on with things and stop wasting time procrastinating?
Everyone procrastinates. That is part of being human. The key is being able to recognise and manage your own procrastination. Different things work for different people, so you might need to try different techniques to see what works for you. But here are some ideas.
1. Don’t be overambitious. You will not study for ten hours straight every day of your Easter break, so don’t write that in your schedule and then feel disappointed when you don’t achieve it. Plan for something more realistic, and you are more likely to stick to it. Perhaps three blocks of two hours might work better.
2. Reward yourself – build in pleasure and relaxation. Your study will be more effective if you allow time for your brain to process all that learning. Your brain processes really well while you are relaxing or distracting yourself with exercise, TV, video games, preparing and eating a healthy and delicious meal, or socialising. Make sure that you build these activities into your schedule. Be strict with your time – don’t get lost in a box set for a whole day, but schedule enjoyable downtime to follow periods of study effort. You will learn better and stay more motivated.
3. If you find you can’t sustain your efforts for long periods of time, make your efforts really short. That might sound counterintuitive, but if your mind wanders before an hour or two of study is complete, you are just wasting valuable time and effort. Instead, try the Pomodoro technique. This is just like interval training in sport. You identify the task you will work on, set a timer for 25 minutes, and then work solidly until the timer rings. You then have a five minute break before resetting. Pick another task, or the next part of the task, reset the timer and put your head down for another 25 minutes. You will find that you will accomplish more in a shorter sustained effort than in a longer distracted effort. So overall, you will be more efficient.
4. Mix up tasks that you find easy or enjoyable with ones that are harder. It is really easy to get lost in study that we find easy or enjoyable and never get to the really hard stuff. Or sometimes we get so bogged down in the harder material that we never have time to study the things that we enjoy. Make sure to mix them up in your schedule so that you get plenty of endorphins and other reward neurochemicals being released from those easier or more enjoyable topics to help us through the harder ones.
5. Study socially – be accountable. Share your study schedule with other students, and have regular meet-ups (in real life or on Zoom/Teams) to share your progress. You can even start a video call, work in silence individually for 30 minutes or an hour, and then share how far you’ve got, test each other and then carry on studying. It is very easy to feel alone and overwhelmed – but there are lots of us doing the same things at the same time, so we can actually use each other to help ourselves study more effectively ?
I have too much to do, I will never be able to do my best
Sometimes work and deadlines pile up and it is easy to feel overwhelmed. If we calculate what it would take to do our best in each task, we can quickly feel that there is not enough time to achieve everything and we might feel helpless or overwhelmed.
But we have made a fatal error in our calculation. We have considered each task in isolation – so what will it take to do this task well enough, and what will it take to do this task, and this task etc. As if we had all the time in the world to dedicate to each individual task.
Instead, what we should have been thinking is this. I have X number of days/hours to complete X number of tasks. How much time do I have to do each task? Can I borrow some time from this task to do that other task a little better? Is that the best compromise? OK. What can I achieve with these timings.
Our best is not an abstract or ideal notion. We don’t have infinite time and a total lack of distractions and competing tasks to complete.
Our best is always a compromise. Our best is the best we can do in a given situation with many distractions and competing tasks. And that best is more than good enough.
And actually, as soon as we accept that, we can become even more effective and achieve even more.
For example, if we have to write an essay. But a group project is due in and also a really big coursework in another module. We could worry about not having enough time to work on the essay. We could think that in ‘ideal circumstances’ we would spend a whole week working on the essay, and then spend time worrying about not having a whole week. Or even worse, trying to rush through a whole week’s work on the essay in a day or two.
But what if we actually realise – you know, I have three hours to work on this essay today and maybe two hours tomorrow. What can I do with that time? How can I be effective and write the best essay I can in that time? We can then be really effective and make the most of those precious hours without doubting ourselves and wasting time worrying.
If we can reformulate our effort to fit the time we have available, we will surprise ourselves and hand in the best essay that we could have achieved in that situation. And it will not be a bad essay, or a compromise. It will absolutely be the best. And it will be far better than the essay that we would have produced if we hadn’t accepted and worked with our limits.
What if I’m just not good enough?
Sometimes feelings of not being good enough, or as good as other people get in the way of our own success. A really good book to help us understand this feeling is called Mindset by Carol S Dweck. There are both paper and online copies available in the library.
Carol Dweck identifies two types of mindset – fixed and growth.
In a fixed mindset, we think that we are complete human beings with all out potential already inside us, pre-determined. We therefore have all the tools we need to survive and thrive in life, it is just up to us to work hard enough to bring them out. Our success is driven by how hard we work. And our failures or moments when we don’t achieve what we hoped for, are a sign that we are not as good as other people. They are a sign that we can never achieve more or do more.
In a growth mindset, we think that our potential is yet to be fulfilled. We are constantly evolving and developing as people, and what we can achieve will change every single day. We are always improving, learning new things and becoming more able to achieve complex tasks. Our success is driven by being open minded and looking outside ourselves, and any failures are just because we are not quite ready yet to take on those tasks – we will be able to learn from those failures and be better prepared in the future.
Trying to inhabit a growth mindset helps us to understand our journey as students and learners – and as human beings. Each assignment is a small stepping stone on the way to being and doing more. It is not the sum of who we are.
Key Take Away
The best take away is that whatever grade or mark you achieve, whatever the outcome of any assignment or task – that is not you. Those grades or achievements are just markers of where you were on that particular day, at that particular time in your life.
You are much more than those numbers or letters. You are a whole person full of potential, and your time will come.
Last Updated 03/10/2023
One thought on “Tackling Perfectionism”
Comments are closed.