Perfectionism isn’t a quality.
There’s a classical question people ask at interviews: ‘what is your worst quality?’.
It has become a cliché to answer ‘I’m a perfectionist’ and pretend that even your worst trait is something good.
Well, I’m a perfectionist.
That doesn’t mean that I have incredible attention to details or that everything I do is perfect. That means that I’m constantly suffering because I fear that nothing I do is good enough.
When I’m complimented, I always think the person didn’t know better or was trying to make me feel good. If they say ‘nice work’ I’ll assume they didn’t like what I’ve done, or they would have said ‘great work’.
I always thought that being a perfectionist wasn’t a bad thing; after all, it makes me try harder and seek my best.
But it is exhausting. The fear of making a mistake is always greater than the mistake itself.
Luckily I’ve been able to notice that I have this behaviour and monitor myself to remind me that advertising is not an exact science and creativity depends on having the space to make mistakes.
I also try to avoid at all costs that my team feels they’re not good enough or that they can’t make mistakes. I had an over-perfectionist boss once, and it was challenging and frustrating.
No matter what I did, it was not good enough. Not even what my boss did was good enough. We were constantly working and always feeling that we were going to fail. To mitigate the fear of failing my boss would make us work a thousand times more, going way beyond what the client asked for, seeking to please them just in case the work they did ask for wasn’t good enough.
For sure clients and accounts loved it. Going that extra-extra-extra mile every time is obviously appreciated but at what cost?
The feeling of insecurity that I had with my own work was so overwhelming that I wouldn’t think anymore, I just wanted to replicate what my boss wanted to do, using the exact words, the exact data and building the exact slides requested. I was a mere operator, not adding any value to the project. None of the work I did back then I’m proud of, ironically, they weren’t good enough, they were just a lot.
But that experience with this boss made me assimilate that I don’t want to be like that. Point of view is a big part of what we do, and obviously, sometimes we are wrong.
We can’t be afraid of making mistakes; otherwise, we’ll never come up with creative and original thinking. We don’t have to be right all the time, discussing ideas and communication paths with the client is incredibly productive and maximises our chances of success.
Aiming for perfection is exhausting and most of the time, ineffective. We have to allow our team and ourselves to make mistakes and to know when to stop. More is not always better, and it comes at the cost of your team’s (and your own) mental health.
Let’s not be perfect nor perfectionists. Let’s normalize trying and failing and being open to the idea of imperfection.
