Perfection issue

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Hi, I wanted to ask you a question about the need to achieve perfection. I am wondering what this is about and if somebody else knows it too maybe, because all my friends say it’s stupid.

I am a perfectionist and enjoy that quite a lot too, I love doing things the best I can in everyday life. But, I also just won’t do many, many things because I can think of how to do it perfectly in my mind, but know, at the same time, that I’ll probably make lots of mistakes by not paying enough attention by doing it rather than keeping thinking. Then, I don’t think it’s worth doing it at all, because then I’ll think my mind is quick enough and every practical work in the world is not fast enough nor accurate enough nor perfect enough to challenge my head and I’ll rather keep on thinking about it.

And then I just won’t do anything at all and rather sit and stare into the air. And that is really stupid and I don’t get on with my work either!

But I really don’t know why I do this, I mean, I can’t push myself to do something in such a case as that described above. Is this like an real issue or something? It’s doing me many harm in school and work and at home, actually every situation and I think it's beyond laziness.

Hi
I think it's a common trait of AS to have this perfectionist feeling.
You can often go the opposite way and become apathetic,avoiding
doing things to prevent disappointment.It's happened to me.
Perhaps we look at things in too much of a 'black & white' and
'all or nothing' way and the answer is just to resolve to do our best
regardless of how it compares to the performance of others.
It also helps to be motivated if you find something you are
genuinely interested in rather than only 'going through the motions'

_____________________________________
It's not the sail that moves the boat,but the unseen wind
-W McNeile Dixon

I have alienated a lot of people because of my perfectionist needs. In addition to needing to do everything right myself, I then expect perfection from everyone around me. Bosses don't like their grammar corrected.

Perfection does not come immediately, but over time and with a great deal of practice. I guarantee you that for every Olympic gymnast who pulls off a perfect routine, there was once a bumbling little kid who often fell off the balance beam. They didn't morph into an Olympic quality gymnast overnight, you know.

Just do the best you can, and try to get a little better each time.

If I dont get at least a B, I consider that I failed, the percent is irrelevent, as long as it says B or A on it im fine.

When it comes to some things I simply don't care enough to put forth anything but minimal effort. For example, I refuse to have old food sitting around and so forth, because plates of stuff sitting there moldering away is both unhealthy and disgusting. I bathe. I take out the trash, load the dishwasher, do the laundry, and clean the cat's litterbox.

However, my apartment might get dusted or vaccuumed once every couple months, if that. So there's dust on the tv stand. Do I give a damn? No. There's usually papers and books on the kitchen table, and the cat seems to like sleeping amidst it. Do I care? No. The cat enjoys running around on the kitchen counters, and since I always wipe it off before make yet another (generally ill-fated) attempt at cooking, I really don't care about that either.

It frees up time for stuff I consider a lot more important... like picking people's brains.

I've been reading all of your posts about perfectionism with great interest.

How did your parents deal with your perfectionism? For instance, if you were obsessive over doing everything perfectly, did your parents try to get you to relax? Did they try to let you know that trying hard was more important than getting all A's? Or is this an unrealistic view, if you are obsessive with perfectionism then you wouldn't listen to anyone telling you to "calm down" or be happy with a lesser grade or end result?

Conversely, were your parents always asking you to be perfect? Or were your parents trying to push you into doing things that you would never attempt because of a fear of failure?

My two boys (ages 20 and 10) don't seem to have the perfectionism streak, unless it has to do with NOT trying something because of a fear of failure. As their parents, we try to push them over the edge of that fear with some things, so that they can see that they can accomplish the thing that they fear (i.e. swimming). But we would never push them into something they just hate, like most athletics. To this day, I'm never really sure if what I'm doing as parent in "pushing" is right or not, but both the boys seem to be happy, which is the most important thing.

I'm highly perfectionistic, and it annoys those around me a lot. I won't do a lot of things, simply because I know I can't do them well. When I do something, I have to make sure I'm doing it absolutely right. Often I will check out stacks of books from the library before attempting something. I'm about to apply for Social Security, and it's been over a week since I started. I simply can't just fill out the forms without reading a pile of books and all the websites I can get my hands on first.

My one therapist told me I need to adopt more of a "...f**k it" attitude (his words). Yeah, I'll get right on that. As though I have some choice in the matter.

I'm that way too. I'm terribly afraid of making important decisions without a mountain of research and getting many second opinions from different people. I've tried just outsourcing, like for getting my taxes done, but then I find I have trouble deciding who to use for the job.

From what other people have said, you aren't the only one. Being a perfectionist tends to annoy other people really easily and it's not the best habit to get into for your own personal health and sanity, so I've been trying to stop.

You also have to be careful about the exact opposite happening, which would be becoming too apathetic and not doing anything... or doing everything really poorly. Accuracy and hard work are very important, but not achieving 100% is NOT the end of things.

i don't necessarily have a perfection mode unless it has to deal with the truth

The only thing I'm perfectionist at is drawing, and even then it's only going back over them. What I do is that I'll start off a drawing without any conception or fear of doing it wrong, and then once I'm done I'll come back to the drawing a few hours later and review how I did. Most often I'll say to myself "Oh, that head looks lumpy at the top", but instead of trying to fix it, I'll just try again with a new drawing, as fixing it usually stuffs up the drawing.

I'm also able to look back at past drawings and say "Geez, I thought that was good?" and have a good laugh about it. Anyone else able to do this?

Oh, I'm glad to learn there are more people feeling like this. I like the idea of doing things best and perfect, I just hope I can learn to push myself to doing something when I feel like that anyway. If I overcome that, I'll be comfortable with the stressing perfection issue.

About my family and how they dealt with that when I was younger. I don't think, lacking the understanding for my issues, they understood why I was like this. Most of the time, I was overlooked anyway because they were very busy when I was little, so they may as well missed the sense behind my attitude totally. I can only tell what it is like today. I still get either best or worst marks and my mother leaves it be. She does understand it somehow, she won't tell though, but she is different herself, not NT, not AS, I think.

I would imagine, maybe if I had children one day, that I would try to push them to a certain degree as well. It depends on the "why", why one fears to fail. Maybe many issues can be solved over time? Some I'd imagine, like swimming, just have to be solved rather quickly. Not being able to swin is very dangerous after all.