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Ask HN: Help with Perfectionism

6 points by imperfectionist ↗ HN
There's no excuse for not delivering my projects. I have the time, and I have the expertise and the capability. When I start a new project though, I have a huge issue with making sure everything is perfect and obviously never get very far.

I know what the problem is, but I can't push past it. I've tried setting deadlines but then I just watch them pass and get into depressed-like states.

I've tried starting with extremely small projects, I was going to do a simple Electron app but I spent the first 8 hours on the icon (no joke, it was a dozen icons and I'm still not satisfied enough to move on).

To give you some background, I worked at a government contractor for a long time, and really judged/hated the code mess I had to deal with, I think that may be causing it.

I'm looking to listen to any books or talks on the subject that discusses the problem more. Has anyone received psychiatric help for this type of issue? I feel it's reached that level of severity.

Or, do I just need to always have someone manage that aspect of my life? I definitely produced a bunch of stuff when I had someone above me, but I always hated my time there because I thought I could do things better. Should I learn to accept that unhappiness?

6 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 22.2 ms ] thread
heardtheword
This is something I've personally struggled with as well. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all solution but here's what helped me. Maybe it will apply to your situation.

Shipping a complete project is perhaps one of the best ways that helped me get past the "It has to be perfect" thought. In my case it was doing a few ludum dare competitions and forcing myself to submit whatever I finished after the weekend was over. After a few times of doing that it got a little easier to forgive some of the atrocious code I had written. Coding Horror has a good post on this, http://blog.codinghorror.com/version-1-sucks-but-ship-it-any....

Another thing for me was getting involved in open source projects and maintaining my own. The first project I open sourced was a port so once it was in working condition I made it available for others to use. That lead to other projects that I could finally finish even though they weren't "perfect".

I wish you the best and hope you can find a way to cope with it.

imperfectionist
Thanks, I really appreciate it. I've read a LOT of things based on "shipping is a deadline" and I think I have the type of perfectionism that doesn't want anything imperfect tied to my name. I even used a throwaway for this. As far as open source goes I sometimes held on to even pushing forks to github...

I really like the idea about mini-competitions with deadlines, I have participated in some in the past but I don't know why I didn't return to them. Thanks!

heardtheword
I should have also mentioned that I was forced into shipping a personal project at one point because I almost went broke. So perhaps finding a friend that can push (i.e. nicely force) you to finish something would be helpful? It may also add unnecessary stress to the situation so take that advice with a grain of salt.

I'm also guessing you edited your post several times (or maybe that's just me) just to make sure it was perfect, right? So you've figured out how to "ship" your words, now you just have to figure out how to do that with projects. ;)

[dead] Ayietim1
No, don't accept unhappiness, rather, you should choose to be happy no matter what. It's good to go for perfection but it's better to accept the outcome when you have put in your best. From the start, realize that, no single human being can attain perfection because what may be considered perfect by one would become imperfect when another finds a fault in or with it. Always set your goals, draw up your plans and your strategies, stay focused, be disciplined, give it your best shot and accept the outcome in good faith. However, keep striving to improve on your previous achievements, but refused to be frustrated by failure, instead, be inspired to start all over again and don't fail to make room for margin of error. http://ayietim.wordpress.com
andersthue
I strongly believe that "perfectionism" is the most deadly way of procrastinate.

The cure is two sided, first you must work with acceptance of your inner resistance/monkey mind - books like the war of art, the dip and do the work can help you here.

Secondly you must work on shipping your product/code/content often and full of errors, this will help you accept that not perfect is okay - my biggest inspiration for this is Seth Godin's blog.

I can also reccomend the letting go book from http://zenhabits.net/lg

imperfectionist
I definitely get what you're saying. Thank you, I think reading is going to help me the most, I'll check out those resources and here's links for anyone else:

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1936891026

Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way by Steven Pressfield et al. Link: http://amzn.com/1936891379

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin Link: http://amzn.com/1591841666