The “invisibly obvious” is something that everyone overlooks until it is pointed out to them. However, once known, it becomes so obvious you can’t believe that others would have ever missed it, like an elephant sitting on your sofa. The link between perfection and procrastination is an invisibly obvious one. In 40 years of study on psychology, motivation, philosophy, epistemology, new age, occultism, and self-help, very few authors talk about the connection between procrastination and perfectionism, and when it is discussed it is only a foot note or a side point.
These past three chapters may have been hard to read as they expose many ugly little tricks your mind uses to keep you in a state of procrastination. Personally, I was terribly embarrassed to discover these patterns exist inside myself. I was surprised to find that they were common in many of my students who suffered from chronic procrastination. Don’t feel bad if you have used some form of perfectionism before. The purpose of the past three chapters is awareness. For awareness of a problem is required before we can do anything about fixing it.
This chapter is a summary of the previous three and gives some more general strategies for dealing with perfectionism.
Review of the Three Forms
Perfectionism in all its forms stem from unrealistic expectations. Understanding that perfectionism is an internal distortion of reality, allows you to start unhinging yourself from it. By relaxing your need to be perfect on any one try, you free yourself to try more often. The more you try, the more you fail, the more opportunities you have to learn. This leads to more corrections and the quality of your results improve. Increasing the number of attempts only happens when you drop the idea you have to be perfect on every attempt. In a nutshell this is one of the great keys to mastery.
The “One-shot Wonder” is the fantasy of a novice. It is the unrealistic expectation that success comes from the perfect execution of a technique. It downplays the idea that we develop skills by learning from our failures.
The attitude towards failure, not success, is key here. A person who sees failure as a reason why they can’t do something, will become increasingly annoyed and frustrated. People with this outlook never become an expert at anything, because they give up too soon. A person who will become a master, values all failure as a teacher. Failure guides them to their next success and higher levels of performance.
“Hard at Work” is an unrealistic expectation relating to how many chances you have to “get it right.” A procedure can only be evaluated after you run it to completion, meaning you get a measurable result. If you believe there is only have one chance, you’re prone to second-guessing yourself and continually changing the procedure while running it. This leads to anxiety, stress, and loads of redundant work. “Hard at Workers” are busy like a hamster in a wheel. Lots of work, no results and no ability to evaluate how you are doing. This is not procrastination on engaging in work, it is procrastination on coming to a result.
Many fear results because they believe poor performance reflects badly on their character. We talked about the importance of separating your ego from your results. Results, good or bad, depend only on the procedure. “You” never fail, only your procedure fails. If you keep trying different things and refuse to give up, you will eventually find something that works.
“Perfect Time to Start” addresses unrealistic expectations about work conditions. Many feel they have to wait for the environment to be ideal before they can start doing anything. There are some situations where the environment makes it absolutely impossible to do the job; these are absolute limiters. Yet most environments present a range of conditions, which we called variable limiters. The line between an ideal condition, a hard condition and an absolutely impossible condition depends on one’s internal interpretations. People who sit on their ass and complain can be blocked by the smallest obstacle. People who get shit done figure out a way to do something, even when everything is stacked against them. Nine times out of ten, attitude trumps environment.
The Ultimate Answer
I am intimately aware of these forms of perfectionism, having lived them through an unproductive youth. Upon reflection between my past with chronic procrastination and my present state of hyper productivity, I have come across a simple yet profound inspiration. It hit me like a ton of bricks, radical, ridiculously easy, and so very invisibly obvious… It is:
“Perfect” does not exist.
Let it go.
God Isn’t Perfect
Perfection is an absolute idea that exists outside of reality. It is like an infinite line; you can have it in mathematics, but there is no such thing as infinite in the real universe. Nothing in physical reality is perfect… Not even God. Now I understand how amazingly arrogant that statement is. How can you possibly know God and how can you know he/she isn’t perfect? Well believe it or not; science, math and a little logical induction can tell us a lot about the divine.
1) Science vs Scientific Mythology
“Science” is a philosophy of how to explore and understand the physical world. “Scientific Mythology” is a belief in a physical world without being scientific. The vast majority of the people parrot scientific-like assumptions, yet are completely ignorant of the process of investigation which is core to being scientific.
For example people dismiss ghosts, UFOs, and psychic phenomena because they sound “unscientific.” The reason they dismiss these concepts is not because they have proof, nor have they even bothered to do any investigation. They simply don’t like the idea of ghosts in their concrete, physical world. This is not science any more than an ostrich burying its head in the sand. A true scientist never believes nor denies anything. They have the courage to say “I don’t know.”
Let’s face it guys… finding a haunted house on the Internet… not very hard. Arranging for a ghost walk in your city, not hard. Making arrangements to sleep in a haunted room… little more tricky, but possible. If you really want to go and find a ghost, you can. Saying you don’t believe because you don’t like the idea; well that isn’t even slightly scientific.
2) Evolution is Not Random
First of all I’m not going to argue about whether evolution happens or doesn’t. It is 2019 at the time of writing and evolution is a fact. Not only does evolution happen, but the fact that we can breed animals for specific traits, means we can exercise some control over this process for human benefit. Yet the process of evolution is surrounded in scientific mythology.
It is a popular belief that evolution occurs through random chance. As DNA replicates, combination errors happen from time to time. These “errors” cause mutations in the next generation, providing them with a greater survival or reproductive advantage over other members of that species. If this trait is adaptive, then it becomes enhanced in subsequent generations. Except “random mutation” for positive traits is a mathematical impossibility.
One day, I decided to challenge the concept that of “random evolution.” If you know the number of pairing points on a DNA helix, the number of DNA strands in an organism and take that to the power of 4 (there are 4 different type of pairing molecules in carbon based life) then you should be able to calculate the number of different combinations. No problem… So I thought.
Regular calculators throw up error messages when asked to calculate numbers this large. So I used an engineering calculator. Designed for extreme accuracy an engineering calculator can process numbers out to 100 digits. These too couldn’t deal with what I was asking.
Undeterred, I found a large number calculators online. These are online calculators accurate to hundreds of thousands of decibel places and are mostly used for security encryption applications. Even these systems, threw up errors when asked to calculate the number of variations in an organism as complex as a human.
To simplify things, I changed my parameter to discover how many variations can happen on a single chromosomal strand of DNA.
Appreciating how big “big” can Get
Working with a large number calculator, one starts to appreciate how ridiculously large a large number can get. Human beings generally are familiar with numbers like hundreds and thousands. Hundreds are expressed using three digits (like 542), thousands are expressed using four digits (like 5894). A million is seven digits long, a billion is ten, and a trillion is thirteen. These digits represent orders of magnitude.
A million is a huge number, the price of a good sized house, a trillion is the price of a million such houses (or the value of all the houses in a country). One in a million is a tiny chance, like winning the state lottery, but one in a trillion is like winning the state lottery a million times. As massive as a trillion is, it can be expressed using 13 digits. A quadrillion is a thousand fold larger than a trillion and is beyond the imagination of most people. This can be expressed using 16 digits. The largest number we have a name for are is a “Goggle” which is 100 digits long. It is purely a mathematical abstraction and has no real use except when calculating the number of atoms in the known universe.
The number of different combinations possible on a single DNA chromosome is well beyond inconceivably massive. Assuming you print 3000 digits per page, you are looking at a number 63 pages long. And that is only for one chromosome strand; humans have 46.
If we were looking at a biological population of a trillion individuals that had only one chromosome and reproduced every year we should expect a single positive mutation to occur by chance, once every 30 billion years. If you don’t believe me try the calculations yourself.
To believe evolution is random, is like placing all the components of your computer in a dryer and running it. How long do you think it will take for all the components to “randomly” fall into place and a working computer pops out? This particular scenario is highly biased in favour of the computer. There is limited space, increasing the number of chances per second that things can just “randomly” fall together, also the components are already in a highly finished state before being tossed in the dryer… all it has to do is fall together in the right order. Let’s say you had enough quarters to run that dryer into infinity. How long would it take for a computer to spontaneously assemble itself under these conditions? A year, a hundred, a thousand, a million years?
After an unlimited number of chances to fall into place over an unlimited amount of time… what do you think would really happen… are you going to come out with a working computer or a fine powder of sand like substance? Computers, and all inanimate objects are subject to entropy. They do not have the ability to assemble themselves. So why are there computers in the world? We built them. Intelligence is a force that acts against entropy.
One chance in a hundred (three digits) is small. One chance in a million (seven digits) is extremely small. One chance in a number that is 63 pages long is effectively impossible.
Logically we must conclude that there is some sort of process which is drastically skewing probability against random mutation. This process seems to be making intelligent choices in the design of each organism.
3) The Hit and Miss of Evolutionary Design
I know the above sounds like an argument for intelligent design. Some will want to jump to the conclusion that the “intelligence” is the same as “God.” The word “God” is loaded with emotional and cultural baggage; everyone thinks they know God, it is all powerful, all seeing, all knowing, and quintessentially perfect in every way.
There is mathematical evidence to support an intelligent system which guides evolution. However, this system is definitely not Omni-everything. How do I know that? Observation.
To understand the difference between random chance, intelligent guidance, and divine perfection, imagine a guy throwing darts at a dart board. “Random chance” is like a fellow in a pitch black room throwing darts randomly in all directions. He is likely to miss most of the time, but even when he hits a bull’s eye (once in a million) it wouldn’t change the next throw after that. Random systems do not learn from past mistakes. On the other hand “Divine Perfection” also doesn’t learn from mistakes, it would get a perfect bulls-eye on every single throw.
Neither of these systems seem to be what is going on with evolution. “Intelligent guidance” is like a person who clearly sees a well illuminated dart board and tosses darts at it, adjusting his aim with each shot. The aim may or may not be perfect on every throw, but the chances are far better of producing a bulls-eye than not knowing where the dart board is, yet far less perfect than divine accuracy. This seems to be a more accurate model of what is happening with the evolution of life on our planet.
Rabbits in the north have evolved the ability to change the colour of their fur from white in the winter to brown in the summer. This gives the bunny better camouflage against predators. If this were the product of “random” evolution, we should see a rainbow of different coloured bunnies (pink, red, orange, blue, purple) also they should be changing at all different times of the year. The people who believe in “random” evolution would say the red bunnies would get eaten by predators being maladaptive. But have you ever seen a pink, red or light blue bunny ever? Where is the evidence of the random darts hitting targets wildly off the mark? Why are we not seeing wild variations in other creatures?
At the same time the intelligence isn’t perfect. If an omniscient God wanted colour changing bunnies, why didn’t he just evolve all of them at the same time? What is the point of a testing and iteration process if it were truly “all knowing?” Creatures would just be created in their final perfect form and we wouldn’t see any evolution at all. If God were perfect why would it create creatures with maladaptive mutations?
The answer is: it doesn’t have perfect aim. It seems to know what it wants, and it keeps on tossing darts at genetic markers until it gets the result it is looking for. Sometimes it hits (Awesome! New and improved for the next gen), sometimes it gets close, sometimes it misses the board altogether creating a maladaptive mutation which dies early on. Sometimes the dart hits a different board, and the creature becomes adapted to a new way of life. Genetic variation is a bit of a crap shoot. However, this intelligence had been throwing darts for the last 4 billion years. With some creatures (like bacterium) it may toss darts as often as once every 4 hours… that’s a lot of darts. Despite the vast number of throws, hundreds of thousands of trillions (a 17 digit number), they are dwarfed by the enormous magnitude of possible variations (a number so large it takes 63 pages to write out in full). It is a good shot, but not perfect.
4) Why Do You Have To Be Perfect?
If this divine intelligent process which guides all life on earth doesn’t need to be perfect… what makes you think you have to be? The purpose of this section isn’t to convince you that “God” exists, it is to suggest that evolution doesn’t depend on perfection in one shot, it has many tries to get it right… just like you.
“Perfect” doesn’t exist, let it go.
Finding Perfection through Imperfection
“Teacher? Are you saying we should be careless? Are you saying that we should do a slapstick, crappy job?”
Whenever I suggest the concept of not trying to be perfect to a class, the students look at me with flabbergasted expressions. They seem not to understand what I am saying. For their whole life, they were taught that perfectionism is good, noble and something to aspired to. Now their teacher was suggesting the opposite. That’s crazy! Some students look at me as if I had lost my mind. Others look at my artwork (around the class) and notice careful attention to detail; they thought I was lying. How can you produce high quality work, yet endorse non-perfection?
I was teaching a higher level ESL class on writing. This involved the composition of a short essay during class time. Left to their own devices, it is depressing how little production happens. Some students would write something, be unsatisfied with it and get stuck in a loop of correcting it over and over again. Others would sit there for 40 minutes with writer’s block and write nothing at all; waiting for inspiration to happen. After an hour of “writing” it was common to see a group of adults produce 4 coherent sentences each and never commit to any clear ideas.
As a teacher, I knew that students could do much more. The next day I taught the students a technique called free writing. It meant they were to write any thought in their mind down on as fast as they could. They were not allowed pocket dictionaries, erasers, or even be allowed to edit, and they only had 5 minutes. Whatever they wrote, good or bad, they had to keep their pen moving nonstop for the full five minutes.
In the same class that managed to write 4 sentences in an hour, we saw students producing 1 or 2 pages of text within 5 minutes. The students were stunned at the phenomenal (like 1000 to 2000%) difference in their own productivity. But what about quality? Would you expect the quality of the 4 sentences produced in an hour to be closer to perfection than a page produced in 5 minutes? In practice students made the sort of mistakes in four sentences as they did in the full page version. Except with more text it was far easier to see a pattern and provide much more useful feedback to the student. Even more counter intuitive, the content and flow of ideas were far easier to read in the free flow exercise than it was in the short essay.
So how do you explain this a 1000% improvement over one day? The concept of not being perfect was as alien to my students as it may be to you. Being perfect on each try means you’ll have fewer tries because you’re spending too much time attempting to be perfect. If you give up the concept of perfection, then you try more often. If you try more often, you’ll get more results. If you get more results, you’ll get more feedback on what works and what doesn’t. With more feedback you can change your procedures and improve future attempts.
Am I endorsing carelessness? Not at all! Do a good job, in fact do the best job you can, but let go of the idea that any one attempt has to be “perfect.”
After a two or three sessions using free writing, the students started to realize that letting go of perfectionism allowed them to get more work done, in less time, and with less effort. Some of my colleagues mentioned how well some of my former students were doing as they progressed into different levels. Giving up on the shackles of perfectionism allowed them an unfair productive advantage over students still bound to being perfect and gave them super star status.
Consider the following:
Which is better?
A good job now,
or a perfect job never.
Good Enough is Good for Now!
Whenever I pose this statement to a class, I usually get a student who attempts to add a clever, yet unoriginal, “How about a perfect job now?” (aka the “One Shot Wonder”) I sigh and shake my head. Perfectionism is such an ingrained cultural belief, most seem unable to give up on the idea.
I believed in perfectionism for most of my life; even after I discovered it was wrong, I had a hard time letting go. A perfect job takes forever to do, and it is never really perfect as there is always something else you could have done to improve it. If you give up the idea of doing a perfect job and just do a good job, you can do it quickly and easily. After that refine it, do a second quick and easy pass. Most people stuck on perfection don’t realize that you can do four or five iterations of a job in the same time that a perfectionist obsesses to do the job once. With each iteration, the performance improves. Going for a “Good” really is far better than trying to be “Perfect.”
Integrating the philosophy of ‘non-perfection’ into my way of life was a game changer. Everything I did reflected this philosophy, from teaching, writing, washing the dishes, artistic works and spiritual practices. I still attempt to do the best job I know how, but I am completely free from the pressure of having to do a perfect job. I no longer get stuck sitting around forever considering which path to take, just choose the best procedure and see where it leads. If it doesn’t come to the desired result, try something else. I never assume that working conditions will be ideal, but my plans never assume the best-case scenarios. I never assume that the first plan will work as expected. If it does, I am shocked it was that easy.
If you have the choice, why would you want to be the student who waits till one week before the due date to write your 20 page term paper and pray that nothing goes wrong? By assuming non-perfection, you automatically budget extra time for revisions, fuck ups and unforeseen obstacles. If everything goes perfectly, then you will have a great gob of free time you didn’t account for, which is way better than being in the crunch-zone.
Free time is like a condom… it is better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
