What are the most research-supported defenses against Perfectionism and its procrastinating tendencies?

As discussed in the guide ‘Root Cause of Perfectionism’, perfectionists are prone to push off task completion by indirectly procrastinating, by for example over-focusing on a not important related task, or directly procrastinating by postponing progress to conditions which might be ever so slightly helpful.

I combined the most effective psychology tools in research to create a strategy for overcoming Perfectionism Procrastination. Here are its six components:

🔹 How you are ahead

🔹 Dichotomy of control

🔹 SMART goal

🔹 Divide into chunks

🔹 Sufficient post chunk dopamine hit

🔹 Aim to create a bad draft first

🚪 Emotional Threshold

After having grappled with perfectionism procrastination for an extended period, it can be especially difficult to start.

It can be more difficult to complete a task once one has previously failed to take opportunities to complete it. This could be explained by a connection between demotivation and feeling behind 1.

The memory of not taking an opportunity to complete the task could be reenforcing the subconscious fear that one is not able to apply oneself in the way desired, as well as creating the demotivating feeling of being ‘behind’ progress that you could already have done.

This build-up emotional threshold is a common phenomenon. It is no reason for discouragement, if anything it can fuel your desire to overcome it and add to your sense of achievement when having done so.

As demonstrated in How to ‘Cure’ Perfectionism perfectionism procrastination is the manifestation of amplified underlying emotional barriers.

The strategy discussed in this guide is consciously calculated to channel and manage this emotional threshold, however build-up it might be.

🌟 Utilise ‘Ahead’ Motivation

One of the most useful tools in pursuit of ‘learning to apply oneself’ is motivation. A focus on motivating rather than only on self-criticism, or willpower alone, is significantly more effective in the long term.

The feeling of being behind or ahead can have a significant impact on motivation.

It is often said that people like doing things they are ‘good’ at.

The feeling of having some kind of an advantage over others or compared to a less advantageous route you could have gone down, is motivating.

One way to utilize this powerful method of motivation is to reinforce to yourself how you are ahead. Whatever the task at focus, likelihood has it that you are ahead from a number of perspectives.

This could be from the perspective of millions of humans throughout history.

Or a possible version of yourself, had you gone down a less helpful path (like many others in similar positions, likely will have).

You can reinforce to yourself how you are Superior in your ability and ressielicne to successfully have overcome hurdles and reached where you are today, although others facing the same obstructing and lack of facilitating factors would have not gotten anywhere close to where you are today. You might have prospered in the face of systems stacked against you, the absence of mentors to guide you, or loved ones you had to provide for.

Identify three perspectives from which you are ahead and note them to yourself.

🔓 Dichotomy of Control

Since the perfectionist’s subconscious dread has been shown to be linked to a fear of not being in control of themselves to the extent needed to achieve their goals, Epictetus’ dichotomy of control is especially relevant.

In a nutshell, it focuses on reinforcing to yourself what is in your control and embracing what is out of your control. Its general aim is to manage mental turmoils in order to operate with certainty and efficiency.

The idea is simplified in the following wording:

Are you facing a struggle?

NO→ then don’t agonize and carry on. YES↓

Can you do something about it?

YES→ then don’t agonize and do something about it. NO→ then don’t agonize and carry on.

Specifically, use it to embrace a solution-focused way of thinking, where you avoid creating opportunity cost by agonizing about factors not contributing to your core priorities such as the opinions of persons you do not value.

Use this to create SMART goals.

🏁 SMART Goal

In order to increase the likelihood of goal attainment, create a durable goal.

Studies show, in order to make goal attainment likely it is effective to create short-term goals (e.g. daily) leading up to then longer-term goals (e.g. monthly)2. This also makes it much easier for someone starting out to reprogram their behavior.

Adapt or check your goal with each step.

🔸 S – Specific: Narrow the goal down.

🔸 M – Measurable: Make it provable.

🔸 A – Attainable: Keep it within your means.

🔸 R – Relevant: Aligned with your values and priorates.

🔸 T- Time- bound: Set end date.

Example: instead of ‘be more physically fit’ ➡ ‘Run 10m 5 days/week’

✂️ Divide Task Into Chunks

An easy way to trigger perfectionism procrastination is – to feel overwhelmed.

It is the outlook of primarily unrewarding tasks in the foreseeable future, and no fixed time for completion. This is the ideal breeding ground for overfocusing on related but not important task (indirectly procrastinating) or directly procrastinating by finding excuses to postpone progress.

This could be compared to a pupil spending an excessive amount of time on a redundant illustration in their notebook in order to push off writing the accompanying essay.

Now imagine, that pupil was told they only had to write 4 more sentences and they would be finished. The likelihood that the pupil would continue to overfocus on the redundant illustration is unlikely. They would be more likely to abandon the illustration and efficiently write the remaining 4 sentences.

An effective way to counter an ‘overwhelmed’ or maybe better descibed, ‘demotivating long’ outlook completing low reward tasks, is to divide the task at focus into smaller chunks.

👤 Calvin

For creating chunks that are likely to be completed consistently, here is a mental image to think back to:

Imagine that you find it in your interest to employ your associate’s kid Calvin, at your company.

Calvin, however, is overly distractable, lazy, undermotivated, and takes every opportunity to waste time.

There is no question that you can get him to do what you need him to do, it is only a matter of motivation.

When facing a task, think, how could I get Calvin to get this done?

You are Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde/ Boss and Calvin.

Although it might be possible for you to complete an obscene amount of progress a few times, even with willpower, the likelihood that you will do this consistently is low.

If the size of your chunks makes it likely that you will miss even a day, it is worth it to cut the chunk in half.

As discussed earlier, falling behind is demotivating and makes it even more difficult to continue progress and get back on track, making the risk cost of missing one chunk even higher.

Think of it this way, if you design the chunks for Calvin and you consistently compete the progress chunks 95% of the time for a month you will have likely made significantly more progress than had you designed the chunks for the will powered boss and completed them an optimistic 30% of the time.

Creating chunks for Calvin increases the likelihood of progress as well as making your life experience significantly more positive.

Your best bet is to create all the chunks so that Calvin can complete them.

Also - don’t let your perfectionism procrastination overfocus on creating an ‘exceptional’ chunks schedule and indirectly procrastinate on actually completing the chunks.

An easy way to chunk is to use a time limit for which you are ‘allowed’ to continue progress e.g. 2 hrs/ day.

🥕 Sufficient Post Chunk Dopamine Hit (Motivate Calvin)

After having created bitesize chunks that are reasonable for Calving to consistently complete, create sufficient motivation for Calvin.

You can come up with variations for dopamine carrots on a stick, and test which one(s) successfully get you to complete chunks.

For example, you can set a rule where you pick a movie you are only allowed to watch after completing the chunk.

You can also use supervision in the form of an accountability buddy.

Accountability to another person is one of the most effective ways to motivate someone to get something done.

Just look at the way barristers work to keep a station clean that isn’t even theirs. It is unlikely that barristers clean their home kitchens as thoroughly as their boss’s one, even though one might argue they have more reason to.

To utilize this, let another person in on your past struggles and make an agreement with them where you regularly inform them of your intended progress, and they check on you at agreed times.

🖍 Aim to Create a ‘Draft’ (Make Calvin Work Effectively)

Remembering that ‘Calvin’ is prone to waste time and overfocus on less important parts of a task in order to postpone progress, reduce this by aiming to create a rough draft of the task first. Once the draft has been created, it is much easier to efficiently create a finished product. It is easier to fill in the blanks than to create a new picture.

One’s attitude should be adjusted. Instead of viewing tasks as a final assessment of undevelopable abilities, the goal should be to complete the at hand task as a draft.

The intention should be to use the completed task as a stepping stone on the road to improving one’s ability to perform this task. The focus should be on completing the task and revising the result in order to get better at this task.

One helpful thing to consider is that it is a lot easier to turn a bad thing into a great thing than to create a great thing from scratch.

The draft uses the motivating ahead perspective, furthermore, increasing the likelihood that Calvin will work more effectively.

Utilizing this strategy, a number of times will create positive reaffirming experiences of successfully realizing aspirations, making it easier to set and reach goals in the future and debunking the fear of not being able to apply oneself the way one could.

Related: ‘Advantages’ and ‘Disadvantages’ of Perfectionism

References:

  1. (Kim, 2019) https://www.dbpia.co.kr/Journal/articleDetail?nodeId=NODE09283231 Jump back up to sentence in which this source was referenced: ↩︎

  2. (Locke & Latham, 1985) https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jsep/7/3/article-p205.xml Jump back up to sentence in which this source was referenced: ↩︎