Why Nothing You Do Ever Feels Good Enough | Episode #177

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People say things like, well, I just care too much.
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But the reality is, in the real world, that actually ends up being like, well, I often misallocate my effort.
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Caring too much sounds flattering.
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Misallocating effort sounds not flattering.
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They're both true.
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And so if you're a perfectionist, you have to realize, I can do better than this.
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Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for the Making Progress channel.
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Perfectionism is killing your productivity, and we're going to help you solve that.
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In some sense, it's true to say that excellence says make this thing that you're doing work very well.
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Perfectionism says a darker version of that.
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It says, I cannot accept anything that might be wrong with this thing that I'm working on.
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very well and perfect, are miles apart.
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And in many cases, people who exhibit perfectionistic tendencies that end up hurting them, their identities get stapled into the result.
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I made a mistake turns into I am inadequate.
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You're basing your self-worth on a spreadsheet, basically.
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A lot of people who have perfectionistic tendencies end up having a moving goalpost of how good they're supposed to be at something.
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You do something excellently yesterday, you get patted on the back for it.
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Today, that becomes your minimum requirement.
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I've seen this happen to people in sports.
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They're really good at, let's say, grappling.
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And they go through a tournament and submit everyone in their division.
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Amazing.
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But they're perfectionists.
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That becomes their standard.
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In the next tournament with tougher people and more weight classes and bigger people, they win the whole tournament.
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But they dominate everybody on points.
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And they don't submit everyone.
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They only submit two-thirds of the people.
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A third they can't submit, but they just win on points like crazy.
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These people will walk away from that tournament and consider it a failure because they didn't sub everybody.
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They're not.
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That's awfully strange to tell to people who you just took the gold medal away from because you beat them 16 to 2.
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That is sheer dominance.
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But to a perfectionist, it doesn't feel like dominance anymore because the best thing they've ever done becomes tomorrow the standard minimum of what they should do.
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Folks, that is insanity.
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You do not ascend in your abilities like a Dragon Ball Z character.
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So when you do an amazing thing...
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The probability that you'll repeat that thing dependably is low.
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That's how we define amazing.
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It's even out of character for you to do that well.
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And your minimum standard can rise a little bit at the very bottom end when you do amazing things consistently, but it shouldn't take the minimum standard and go, this is the best I've ever done.
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Here's now the minimum standard.
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You are coding yourself for disappointment, plain and simple.
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Another thing that perfectionists do really, really poorly that is to their detriment is polishing up something that's already really amazing and never asking the question, is this extra hours spent on polishing this thing giving me a meaningfully better result or does it give me some kind of ASMR relief from the feeling that it is somehow imperfect?
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That's a big, big deal.
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And ambition and a harmful pattern in perfectionism are two very different things.
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Perfectionistic striving can benefit performance from literally the actual psychological literature.
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Trying to be your best is not perfectionism.
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expecting yourself to always be your best and hating yourself for not being your best and doing way crazy shit to put that extra little fine point in it when it was hours late to the actual submission of the assignment, that's perfectionism.
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A lot of people say, oh, I'm a perfectionist.
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They take pride in it.
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You do not take pride in something as a failure mode.
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Wanting perfection and expecting perfection in the real world are two radically different things.
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And perfectionism has real downsides, net downsides on productivity, which is why I'm screaming at you guys about it today.
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in many ways.
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Some of them are counterintuitive.
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Let's take a look at a few.
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First of all, being a perfectionist, holding the standard of everything I make must be perfect, can stop you from even starting the thing.
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Because starting something, you model out how it's going to go.
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You assess it's probably going to be imperfect, and then it can feel threatening because you're going to make an imperfect thing.
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And then you want to avoid it because that becomes tempting because you're like, you're not going to do a perfect job at it anyway.
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Why even bother?
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Perfectionistic concerns are associated with more procrastination.
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If I have a big job to do and I'm sitting on a train, I'm taking a train from New Jersey to New York.
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I don't have my whole workstation with me.
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I can't do the best job.
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But I do have my phone and I can make some to-do lists, splitting up what kind of job I'll have to do and put a few bullet points under each to-do list.
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They might not even be complete thoughts.
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Then later at night at the hotel room, I fill in some of the rest of the bullet points.
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That's two 45 minute, really whatever weird work sessions.
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When I bring those bullet points and that architecture to my actual deep workstation back home in Metro Detroit, I sit down and I can be a perfectionist all fucking day, but then I have something to work with.
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If you're perfectionistic enough,
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Even if you're not lazy, you just want to take a nice, easy train ride or a nice, easy evening in a hotel, you can tell yourself like, well, I could start this project and brainstorming for it.
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But no, no, no, I need my ideal setup.
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Otherwise, I won't go to it.
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You got to be real careful with shit like that.
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You'd be missing out a lot of value.
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This is a crazy one, but perfectionism can also stop you from finishing.
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Some people get so in on the details of whatever job they want to submit, it takes them 10 times longer to submit the job than it normally would.
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A 97% amazing thing delivered on time is infinitely better than a 99.9% amazing thing delivered three weeks later.
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But perfectionists really struggle with making that cutoff of, you know what, this is good enough.
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There's a serious misallocation of effort with perfectionism.
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Perfectionism means you write one paragraph out of three for your essay, and then you polish the fuck out of it.
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You don't even write the next two, and it's a task that takes you three times longer.
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What you could have done is written all three paragraphs, done a cycle of editing, done another cycle of editing, and finished the whole shit in half the time.
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Perfection is something that you feel deeply has to be done, and it's pulling you irrationally towards it.
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It is a disorder of thinking.
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It is not extra order.
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Perfectionism can delay learning.
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You never submit your work to outside review because you want it to be flawless before you ever release it.
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You can't learn from outside feedback how to make it better.
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I know people...
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that have delayed competing in powerlifting for years because their perfectionistic tendencies made them think they weren't strong enough or had not good enough technique to compete.
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But meanwhile, me, at the time of powerlifting coach, I would watch them lift and be like, dude, you're a fucking stud.
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They're like, I have a long way to go.
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You're like, to what?
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To being the best powerlifter ever?
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Yes, agreed.
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to probably like doing really well in a competition locally, you were there six months ago.
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You're for sure there now.
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But to them, it's not good enough because all they see is their flaws.
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They don't benefit from that at all.
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One of the nastiest ways that perfectionism really bites is if you're working in groups and you're in charge, you are often unable to delegate responsibility.
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Right?
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If the only thing that's good enough is your exact way of doing things with your exact method to your exact under believable, ridiculous standards, then everyone else work is total shit to you.
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You can't depend on anyone because they're not insane like you.
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And if you cannot delegate your work, you're done.
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I meet regularly.
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on surprisingly not often occasion with my engineering team at RP Strength, my software guys.
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And we agree what the next sprint is going to be to do what feature, what underlying work, and then they do it.
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I don't watch their backs.
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I don't watch over their shoulders when they do it at all.
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And sometimes, oftentimes, what they make isn't exactly what I had in mind.
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But it's close.
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And it's good.
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It's so fucking good.
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But it's not exactly what I had in mind.
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Never am I, like, scrap all the shit and build it to spec.
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Ever.
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Always.
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We ship that.
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Take notes on what could be better.
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And then when there's time, we update or upgrade the features.
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If I was a perfectionist like I really want to be, I'd be like, I have to learn how to code because I can't trust these guys to do anything.
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But that's insane.
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They do A-plus work.
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But like humans, it's almost never 100% work.
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If you cannot delegate, you are limiting yourself in how much effectiveness, money, prestige, and impact on the world you're going to have.
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And don't fucking pat yourself on the back for it.
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I can't let anyone do any part of my work because I have too high of standards.
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Great, you're mentally ill.
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Slow clap, everyone.
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The insane person over there said something.
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I'm kidding, but holy crap, you guys.
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Because perfectionists really like to pat themselves on the back.
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Sometimes they should.
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Sometimes not really.
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It is a problem, not a solution.
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A lot of times perfectionists get so burrowed into the details, the actual work they output is not super impressive on how much of it they do because they take so much time and irrelevant shit.
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And you can go so far as to optimize a small detail while sabotaging the mission as a whole.
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That's a real big problem in perfectionism.
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Now, if you tend towards perfectionism, and sometimes many of us do, how do you mitigate those tendencies?
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Here's a couple tips.
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First, define what is finished before you start.
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Specify required outcomes, acceptable imperfections, degrees of how good this thing is going to be, and a deadline.
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Not whenever I finally feel completely satisfied, which because you're not so great with perfectionism maybe never or maybe weeks later.
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Assign perfect to things that are checkboxes and can be measured.
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If I get this much done and I get this much text, then it answers the basic core questions even though it's not exactly how I'd love to have answered them and I'd like to think for about another three hours on each sub-question.
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If I could just get that done, I can consider it done and can ease my mind and turn it in.
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You got to do that beforehand.
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You can't swag it because if you're a perfectionist, you swag on your way towards building the system, you're going to have a bad time.
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You're going to spend way too much time in it.
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You're not going to get it in.
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Here's another tip that I think is awesome.
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Calibrate your perfectionism to the necessity of the task at hand.
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Match your standards to the consequences.
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If you have to send a routine email, is the email clear?
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Is it accurate?
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Hit send.
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There's this really cool thing, Dylan.
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I don't know if you've heard of it nowadays.
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A lot of people on Twitter and a lot of people in work communications and Slack will do no punctuation and no capitalization because then people know it's not their LLM that's writing.
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Oh, yeah.
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I've seen this.
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No M dash is also.
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Yeah.
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So I don't even know what an M dash was until like a year and a half ago.
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Likewise.
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Frankly, I could give a fuck.
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Yeah.
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I hate it because the way I write naturally is more like an LLM writes, straight up.
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Or just like, that's high talk.
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And when I write emails, I like to have good grammar.
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And so when the Google grammar review automatically flags the shit and be like, do you want me to write it for you?
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I'm like, yeah, that's fucking great.
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But now that we have AI, this makes this even easier.
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Just bullet point into the AI what you think should be said, and it'll do the rest.
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You don't have to be perfect with grammar.
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It'll do that for you.
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Or now that everyone's cool with people doing bad grammar because it shows that you're a genuine person or whatever the hell, then just like bullet point it.
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Get some typos in there.
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No big deal.
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Guys, I communicate in email with literal billionaires regularly.
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They don't type check their shit.
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They don't give a fuck.
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They type like people who send texts to their eighth grade like friends because they don't got time for any of that crap.
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They don't have anything to prove either.
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So if you're a perfectionist and you're looking at an email and you're like, I have to punctuate this email exactly and there's three iterations of how I could say this but I need to pick the one that's optimal.
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Let me run this through an LLM to make, don't do any of that shit.
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Is the message clear?
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Is the message accurate?
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Send the email.
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Period.
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You're done.
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Zero perfectionism required.
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Bare bones.
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And look, if somebody didn't understand the email, that motherfucker can get back to you and ask.
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On the other hand, if you have a safety-critical calculation you're doing for work because you're sending rockets into the moon or space satellites, or you work in the medical field and you have to get an exact titration of medication to the gram, yeah, man, unleash the beast.
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Perfectionism time, for sure, because then it matters, and the extra amount of effort will actually pay off.
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So a big part about working within your perfectionistic tendencies is to know when to unleash the Kraken and when to put the Kraken back in whatever lives underground in a rock.
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Dylan, do you know about the Kraken?
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I don't.
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Have you ever seen the movie Clash of the Titans?
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No.
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I'm somewhat cultured.
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You and I are going to get high and watch Clash of the Titans.
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That sounds great to me.
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That sounds great to me.
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It's not really a question.
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It's an assignment for both of us.
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Anyway, I was going to ask.
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I was going to ask where the Kraken's like this undersea monster, Dylan, and he comes out and like shits on people.
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But I was just wondering like what he does when he's not doing that.
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Like does he live in a cave?
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Does he get lonely?
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Probably.
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Probably feels misunderstood.
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I just want to maim and kill and destroy, but people think I'm this bad guy.
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And his psychiatrist is like, yeah.
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We'll take that next time.
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We're just out of time.
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Sorry, Mr. Kraken.
223
00:15:54.966 --> 00:15:56.187
Talk to the secretary on your way out.
224
00:15:56.207 --> 00:15:56.587
Pay your bill.
225
00:15:59.167 --> 00:15:59.748
Here's another one.
226
00:16:02.908 --> 00:16:04.209
Budget your polishing.
227
00:16:05.509 --> 00:16:08.810
You want to finish the thing and then you want to polish because you're insane and a perfectionist.
228
00:16:08.830 --> 00:16:09.150
I get it.
229
00:16:09.170 --> 00:16:10.130
I have the same tendencies.
230
00:16:11.311 --> 00:16:12.951
Once you're done, look at the total time.
231
00:16:12.971 --> 00:16:13.932
There's an hour left of work.
232
00:16:13.972 --> 00:16:14.212
Cool.
233
00:16:14.532 --> 00:16:16.032
Give yourself half an hour to polish.
234
00:16:16.312 --> 00:16:19.033
After half an hour is done, you're done polishing.
235
00:16:20.452 --> 00:16:23.233
If you want to polish more, you're being insane.
236
00:16:23.313 --> 00:16:23.853
Remember that.
237
00:16:24.613 --> 00:16:25.714
Stop polishing at some point.
238
00:16:26.254 --> 00:16:26.694
Here's the thing.
239
00:16:28.154 --> 00:16:31.195
People will find your work and find errors in it.
240
00:16:31.916 --> 00:16:35.497
They might even do it from a dissertation you wrote 13 to 14 years ago.
241
00:16:39.114 --> 00:16:43.737
It might be a bad look if you make mistakes, but everybody makes mistakes.
242
00:16:44.537 --> 00:16:45.798
It's not a big deal at all.
243
00:16:46.098 --> 00:16:58.244
You do your best and you cut off because the probability that you'll find every mistake or every way someone else could have read the thing you're making and misinterpreted it, it'll take a thousand years.
244
00:16:58.444 --> 00:16:59.985
It might be an impossible task.
245
00:17:00.646 --> 00:17:02.347
At some point, you got to put a stop loss on it.
246
00:17:03.587 --> 00:17:08.330
Probably a little more time and more effort to make it less messy than I did my son of my shit.
247
00:17:09.274 --> 00:17:11.055
But there is a trade-off, 100%.
248
00:17:11.976 --> 00:17:14.437
You can't just give yourself hours and hours to polish something.
249
00:17:14.617 --> 00:17:16.038
There's 99% of the way there.
250
00:17:18.660 --> 00:17:19.300
Here's another one.
251
00:17:20.501 --> 00:17:21.562
This is huge.
252
00:17:21.582 --> 00:17:22.442
You guys, this is huge.
253
00:17:23.823 --> 00:17:26.445
Separate creation from optimization.
254
00:17:29.047 --> 00:17:37.552
Instead of writing a paper all at once over the course of three hours, split it into two one-and-a-half-hour segments with like a five-minute break in between.
255
00:17:39.223 --> 00:17:41.424
First hour and a half, write.
256
00:17:42.305 --> 00:17:43.366
Leave in typos.
257
00:17:44.166 --> 00:17:44.967
Leave in notes.
258
00:17:46.768 --> 00:17:49.169
Put in ideas you think, I could put this in there or I could not.
259
00:17:49.189 --> 00:17:50.950
Let me put it in there and maybe I can take it out later.
260
00:17:52.151 --> 00:17:52.912
Go, go, go.
261
00:17:52.992 --> 00:17:59.196
Create, generate the fruitful earth of your intellectual content.
262
00:17:59.516 --> 00:18:00.757
But it's raw shit.
263
00:18:01.717 --> 00:18:02.918
You'd never turn that in.
264
00:18:04.459 --> 00:18:05.940
And then take an hour and a half.
265
00:18:09.153 --> 00:18:10.938
to sit with that document.
266
00:18:11.519 --> 00:18:14.768
And you're not doing any more idea creation unless something really brilliant comes to you.
267
00:18:15.169 --> 00:18:15.951
You're just...
268
00:18:17.283 --> 00:18:23.084
Crossing out the stuff that's dumb, reformulating the stuff that's good, restructuring everything to make sure it fits.
269
00:18:23.705 --> 00:18:29.266
And then after that hour and a half, you have a thing that's incredibly inspired and very, very diligently curated.
270
00:18:29.446 --> 00:18:30.066
And now you're ready.
271
00:18:31.006 --> 00:18:34.347
The mistake you don't want to make is to do it all in one.
272
00:18:34.747 --> 00:18:37.248
And after each sentence, you try to clean up that sentence.
273
00:18:37.608 --> 00:18:38.868
Next sentence, clean up the sentence.
274
00:18:38.908 --> 00:18:39.669
Next sentence, clean up.
275
00:18:39.709 --> 00:18:40.109
Don't do that.
276
00:18:40.749 --> 00:18:42.189
Sentence, sentence, sentence, sentence, sentence.
277
00:18:42.429 --> 00:18:43.290
Most of it will make sense.
278
00:18:44.550 --> 00:18:45.150
Cleanups later.
279
00:18:46.602 --> 00:18:47.242
Every single time.
280
00:18:47.722 --> 00:19:01.667
Splitting those up really nabs your perfectionism because it makes the idea generation super rapid, super fluid, and then it gives you all the time in the world that you need to actually do the very task of vetting.
281
00:19:01.887 --> 00:19:12.831
Because the problem is idea generation and idea vetting are so different than each other in how your brain works that they end up being a context switch, and that slows you down and makes you worse at both of them.
282
00:19:15.846 --> 00:19:22.708
I used to be in meetings for work where we tried to do idea generation and idea criticism at the same time.
283
00:19:22.868 --> 00:19:24.569
It was a disaster failure.
284
00:19:26.150 --> 00:19:36.193
The best way to do this is to have an idea generating session and everybody who's talking is either writing stuff down, suggesting ideas or shutting the fuck up.
285
00:19:37.193 --> 00:19:42.215
Don't you ever let an idea generating session, don't you ever let a piece of criticism come out of your mouth.
286
00:19:44.024 --> 00:19:52.506
And then later, in that same session where we're done generating ideas or a different session, you switch into criticism mode and then you can prune anything you want.
287
00:19:53.047 --> 00:19:58.508
Whatever's left that survives both generation and critique is gonna be some golden shit.
288
00:19:59.488 --> 00:20:02.549
But if you try to do these at the same time, you're making a giant mistake.
289
00:20:05.690 --> 00:20:08.331
Here's one if you really, really need help with perfectionism.
290
00:20:08.711 --> 00:20:11.412
You can practice low stakes imperfection.
291
00:20:13.684 --> 00:20:15.645
Typically, you review your emails two or three times.
292
00:20:16.105 --> 00:20:22.069
If it's like a low-scope email to a friend, clear the email, just send it once after one review, and then see what happens.
293
00:20:22.929 --> 00:20:26.211
You'll start to learn over time that, like, basically nothing bad happens.
294
00:20:27.592 --> 00:20:28.312
You're going to be fine.
295
00:20:28.392 --> 00:20:31.214
And then you're like, actually, you know, most emails I just send willy-nilly.
296
00:20:32.175 --> 00:20:35.296
Super important ones I'll take more time with.
297
00:20:35.316 --> 00:20:39.639
Another thing to do is to measure useful output, not how many hours you suffered for a thing.
298
00:20:40.559 --> 00:20:41.460
Track what you finished.
299
00:20:42.040 --> 00:20:42.941
Track who had helped.
300
00:20:44.020 --> 00:20:48.861
And which improvements genuinely actually change the outcome, not like, oh, I took eight hours to do this.
301
00:20:49.281 --> 00:20:49.861
Sounds good.
302
00:20:50.042 --> 00:20:50.442
What is it?
303
00:20:51.182 --> 00:20:57.223
Like, oh, it's incredibly well-organized piece of almost no content at all because you spent most of the time organizing and not idea generating.
304
00:20:57.743 --> 00:20:58.124
Solid.
305
00:20:59.324 --> 00:21:01.664
But if you actually have useful output, it's amazing.
306
00:21:01.684 --> 00:21:03.805
Let me give you an example.
307
00:21:05.521 --> 00:21:22.885
A bunch of the books I wrote, all of the books I wrote that were published through RP, Scientific Principles of Strength Training, Rattleson's Diet 1 and 2, Scientific Principles of Aperture Training, How Much Should I Train, the volume book, Understanding Healthy Eating, are riddled with mistakes and errors of all kinds.
308
00:21:24.405 --> 00:21:24.725
Riddled.
309
00:21:27.286 --> 00:21:27.926
That's a true thing.
310
00:21:30.106 --> 00:21:32.327
What is the net value of these books?
311
00:21:33.503 --> 00:21:48.887
Well, ask most of the people that have read scientific principles of strength and hypertrophy training, and they'll tell you, like, this is a real, unbelievably helpful document that isn't perfect, but is insanely helpful.
312
00:21:50.590 --> 00:21:53.532
It did not take me a long time to write any of those books.
313
00:21:53.852 --> 00:22:03.859
They were written very, very quickly and reviewed by not me, by our in-house ad hoc editing team, who also didn't take a shitload of time to review it.
314
00:22:03.939 --> 00:22:04.239
Why?
315
00:22:04.760 --> 00:22:14.406
Because we wanted to put these books out to people ASAP and be great and start helping people ASAP, and they never needed to be perfect for that.
316
00:22:17.452 --> 00:22:20.775
So when I see the books, I read them myself, I'm like, fuck me, that's a misstatement.
317
00:22:21.175 --> 00:22:22.136
Does it bother me?
318
00:22:22.216 --> 00:22:23.196
Yes, of course.
319
00:22:25.298 --> 00:22:29.121
Does that mean I should have spent 10 times the amount of time on the book?
320
00:22:29.521 --> 00:22:30.642
No, God, no.
321
00:22:31.342 --> 00:22:33.424
If we're launching satellites into space, yeah.
322
00:22:33.824 --> 00:22:37.047
Recommending how to train with this reps versus that reps, nah.
323
00:22:38.628 --> 00:22:41.370
And so if you measure on output, those books are unbelievable.
324
00:22:41.910 --> 00:22:44.252
If you measure on suffering time, not so impressive.
325
00:22:44.272 --> 00:22:44.372
Okay.
326
00:22:47.148 --> 00:23:00.453
Now, if you have perfectionism to a point where it seriously interferes with your life, I am here to tell you as a non-specialist that cognitive behavioral therapy and a variety of interactive techniques with a therapist can help reduce your perfectionism.
327
00:23:00.913 --> 00:23:03.194
I'll tell you this though, I'll tell you this, this is a real big thing.
328
00:23:04.194 --> 00:23:07.095
Self-punishment is not a treatment plan.
329
00:23:08.776 --> 00:23:12.417
Perfectionists tend to be real good at being mean to themselves in their own head.
330
00:23:14.318 --> 00:23:14.838
It doesn't help.
331
00:23:15.549 --> 00:23:19.411
You're just using the same hammer you have to try to fix the hammer.
332
00:23:20.592 --> 00:23:21.052
Not wise.
333
00:23:21.692 --> 00:23:22.733
Be gentle with yourself.
334
00:23:23.193 --> 00:23:24.213
And if you need it, get help.
335
00:23:27.515 --> 00:23:42.663
When, if you have very intense perfectionistic tendencies, you're looking for the kind of work you want to be involved in, I can tell you and will just shortly what kinds of work is probably going to be more suited to you.
336
00:23:44.017 --> 00:23:50.361
And what kinds of work is probably some work that like you'd have to become way less perfectionistic to actually be able to be good at and enjoy.
337
00:23:51.122 --> 00:23:53.383
So we'll start with that latter category.
338
00:23:54.664 --> 00:24:07.772
Start with a category of if you have really high perfectionistic tendencies that you're still working on, but you know truthfully you're like still in the top five percentile of perfectionists, you need to reconsider approaching these jobs that I'm going to tell you.
339
00:24:08.453 --> 00:24:10.014
First, Dylan, you ready for this one?
340
00:24:10.674 --> 00:24:11.635
Kindergarten teacher.
341
00:24:14.007 --> 00:24:15.808
Yeah, that's got to be a real challenge.
342
00:24:15.928 --> 00:24:16.629
Oh, my God.
343
00:24:17.149 --> 00:24:21.311
Nothing remotely close to perfect happens whatsoever in a kindergarten.
344
00:24:21.391 --> 00:24:22.392
It is an impossibility.
345
00:24:23.172 --> 00:24:26.474
So if you're a perfectionist, do not get into teaching young children.
346
00:24:26.654 --> 00:24:27.275
Just don't do it.
347
00:24:28.775 --> 00:24:31.857
Another one is early stage startup founder.
348
00:24:33.018 --> 00:24:36.480
You need to test imperfect ideas rapidly.
349
00:24:38.861 --> 00:24:40.222
RP is a startup founder.
350
00:24:43.082 --> 00:24:55.628
So when we wrote our Excel sheet guides that are PDF guides, we wrote all of our books, we wrote all of our templates, we made all the apps, every single product we have ever made is radically imperfect.
351
00:24:58.589 --> 00:24:59.449
The alternative is what?
352
00:25:00.210 --> 00:25:01.150
Not making any products?
353
00:25:01.490 --> 00:25:01.830
I'm good.
354
00:25:03.011 --> 00:25:05.532
On net, our products helped millions of people.
355
00:25:06.485 --> 00:25:06.985
Fuck yeah.
356
00:25:07.506 --> 00:25:14.530
This video right now that you're watching, if you notice, read between the lines or see between the cuts, you don't do a lot of editing on these videos.
357
00:25:14.570 --> 00:25:15.951
Mostly I just one shot all of this.
358
00:25:17.412 --> 00:25:18.513
Could I have rewritten?
359
00:25:19.173 --> 00:25:20.734
And by the way, I'm not even reading off a script.
360
00:25:20.754 --> 00:25:24.677
I'm reading off like a to-do list with reminders of what to say, like little quick words.
361
00:25:26.738 --> 00:25:28.279
Have I read off of a script?
362
00:25:28.479 --> 00:25:28.780
Yes.
363
00:25:30.060 --> 00:25:31.902
Script reading gave us a more...
364
00:25:32.873 --> 00:25:41.577
sterile look, a more sterile feel to the videos, but it definitely let us hit some riffs and jokes and really good insights that I would otherwise miss off of bullet point.
365
00:25:42.277 --> 00:25:48.780
Script reading also takes, or script writing, takes like five times as long as bullet point architecture writing.
366
00:25:49.901 --> 00:25:51.301
And so is it worth it?
367
00:25:51.341 --> 00:25:52.862
To us, we said the answer was no.
368
00:25:52.882 --> 00:25:56.223
This is an experiment we did across RP and progress just very recently.
369
00:25:57.224 --> 00:25:59.305
That doesn't mean that script reading is a bad idea.
370
00:26:00.441 --> 00:26:05.024
It just means that in our line of work, a more laissez-faire style was good.
371
00:26:06.665 --> 00:26:12.469
When you're a startup founder, it's laissez-faire style all the way through until you sell to a big company and then they need standards and practices.
372
00:26:13.850 --> 00:26:15.671
Real tough for a perfectionist to hack.
373
00:26:18.153 --> 00:26:24.657
Another one is, and this is like a nightmare to me for my perfectionistic tendencies, Dylan, live event coordinator.
374
00:26:25.962 --> 00:26:31.207
I have unbelievable amounts of respect for live event coordinators that can just adapt on the fly.
375
00:26:31.227 --> 00:26:32.509
Like, hey, the catering never came in.
376
00:26:32.549 --> 00:26:32.889
Don't worry.
377
00:26:32.909 --> 00:26:33.329
I'll call them.
378
00:26:33.349 --> 00:26:33.770
I'll handle it.
379
00:26:34.370 --> 00:26:34.611
What?
380
00:26:35.111 --> 00:26:36.953
I would unalive myself.
381
00:26:38.835 --> 00:26:42.479
But there's unexpected problems that come up and need workable solutions immediately.
382
00:26:42.759 --> 00:26:44.801
Not ideal solutions tomorrow.
383
00:26:44.941 --> 00:26:46.843
Workable solutions now.
384
00:26:48.731 --> 00:26:49.872
Hey, the napkins didn't come in.
385
00:26:50.032 --> 00:26:51.914
All we have is pink napkins, not white napkins.
386
00:26:51.954 --> 00:26:53.035
That throws off our vibe.
387
00:26:53.516 --> 00:26:53.816
Okay.
388
00:26:54.216 --> 00:26:59.261
Yeah, it throws off our vibe a little bit, but it's mostly pink and white anyway, and most people won't notice.
389
00:26:59.441 --> 00:27:00.082
Do the white ones.
390
00:27:00.202 --> 00:27:00.723
Are you sure?
391
00:27:00.843 --> 00:27:01.103
Yes.
392
00:27:01.383 --> 00:27:02.104
What's the alternative?
393
00:27:02.544 --> 00:27:03.866
You got pink napkins around?
394
00:27:03.926 --> 00:27:04.146
No.
395
00:27:04.426 --> 00:27:05.768
Can you go to the store fast enough to get them?
396
00:27:05.988 --> 00:27:06.228
No.
397
00:27:06.388 --> 00:27:07.389
The guests come in in five minutes.
398
00:27:07.649 --> 00:27:08.070
White it is.
399
00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:17.884
If you're attached to the idea that you were going to have this perfect business dinner set up, but now it's imperfect because there's white napkins instead of pink napkins, you are not a live event coordinator.
400
00:27:17.964 --> 00:27:19.565
You will not do well in that job.
401
00:27:20.145 --> 00:27:24.047
But if you're doing your best and when shit hits the fan, you're like, okay, what's the quick adaptation?
402
00:27:24.087 --> 00:27:24.587
Boom, we got it.
403
00:27:24.607 --> 00:27:27.889
We've all – no one will even notice 99% of the time.
404
00:27:27.969 --> 00:27:31.730
And if they do, they're weird perfectionist people that need to stay at home and have no friends.
405
00:27:31.790 --> 00:27:32.811
I'm kidding, but you know what I mean.
406
00:27:34.350 --> 00:27:35.851
Another one is sales representative.
407
00:27:35.991 --> 00:27:37.332
You have to outreach frequently.
408
00:27:37.672 --> 00:27:39.433
You have to handle rejection constantly.
409
00:27:43.075 --> 00:27:44.316
You have to adapt your pitch.
410
00:27:44.336 --> 00:27:46.197
You can't just have the perfect pitch to rehearse.
411
00:27:47.398 --> 00:27:52.421
If you have a time to do like that elevator pitch, oh my God, perfectionists can't do elevator pitches.
412
00:27:52.441 --> 00:27:54.522
They're like, I have to say everything about this project.
413
00:27:55.263 --> 00:27:57.004
Just give me the top three things about it that are great.
414
00:27:57.344 --> 00:27:58.585
Oh my God, real tough.
415
00:27:59.686 --> 00:28:04.228
And another one, and this is something that a lot of folks struggle with, is content creator.
416
00:28:06.429 --> 00:28:14.273
If you are a content creator, the number one way you're gonna succeed, especially early, is consistency and volume.
417
00:28:16.574 --> 00:28:25.458
People ask me a lot of times, why is XYZ person, like you, who seems entirely talentless and entirely random, crushing it on social media?
418
00:28:25.638 --> 00:28:27.118
I'll tell you exactly why, there's only one reason.
419
00:28:27.379 --> 00:28:28.219
They make content.
420
00:28:29.742 --> 00:28:43.606
And a lot of the people that ask me questions like that, no joke, this is a real thing that happens, are people who are wanting to get into social media but haven't made content yet because of their perfectionistic tendencies and because they've made a bunch of videos, they've recorded them, but they're like, I don't want to release this.
421
00:28:44.866 --> 00:28:47.227
I legitimately have people who send me full videos and they're like…
422
00:28:48.402 --> 00:28:48.802
What do you think?
423
00:28:48.822 --> 00:28:49.963
I'm like, this is amazing.
424
00:28:50.003 --> 00:28:51.863
They're like, I still need more practice.
425
00:28:51.883 --> 00:28:53.584
I'm like, are you fucking insane?
426
00:28:53.724 --> 00:28:54.844
The answer is yes, of course.
427
00:28:55.665 --> 00:29:04.848
But like, if you're a content creator, perfectionism is gonna crush you because then you'll make content once every two months, which in the YouTube algorithm, people forget you exist.
428
00:29:06.969 --> 00:29:12.011
And you may sundown videos that could have been bangers for you.
429
00:29:12.111 --> 00:29:14.192
You just, it's just not perfect enough.
430
00:29:14.272 --> 00:29:15.472
Let's just forget this project.
431
00:29:15.492 --> 00:29:16.753
Let's move on and do this other video.
432
00:29:18.220 --> 00:29:23.846
I would say the unifying feature of content creators is people just trying to do their best who don't care about overpolish.
433
00:29:24.307 --> 00:29:25.628
That's almost all content creators.
434
00:29:29.272 --> 00:29:31.514
Now, what is the opposite of that?
435
00:29:31.554 --> 00:29:40.624
What roles and careers could you have as a near perfectionist in which you can bask in your perfectionism the most and if you curtail it a little bit and point in the right direction could really help you?
436
00:29:44.147 --> 00:29:58.792
What you want to do is look for the right kinds of tasks, tasks that are measurable in their correctness, tasks in which the errors are very consequential and tasks which give you lots of time allocated for verification.
437
00:30:01.573 --> 00:30:02.394
That's a big deal.
438
00:30:02.734 --> 00:30:05.174
That starts to look like a pretty good deal for a perfectionist.
439
00:30:06.175 --> 00:30:12.057
Let's say you're doing precision engineering, like you're working on one of those ASML machines that makes microchips.
440
00:30:13.638 --> 00:30:18.040
precision optics, precision mechanisms, tons of really intricate measurement systems.
441
00:30:19.301 --> 00:30:26.205
In this world, microscopic differences really can live or die with the product, make or break.
442
00:30:26.945 --> 00:30:30.547
You want some perfectionists in that space for sure.
443
00:30:30.927 --> 00:30:36.750
People that know how to do deadlines, but people that really give a shit about very, very fine-tuned specifics.
444
00:30:39.072 --> 00:30:52.678
This extends to all things that have safety-critical engineering and verification components, aerospace systems, mechanical devices, mechanical devices that go inside human bodies, critical software that if the software is down, the dam opens up and starts flooding things.
445
00:30:53.879 --> 00:31:00.582
Direct meticulousness towards demonstrating essential requirements are met is huge in that, and if you're perfectionistic, you're going to be damn good at that.
446
00:31:02.253 --> 00:31:09.595
Another way to do this is work that is proof heavy, that once you have completed it, you know for a mathematical fact it's complete and done.
447
00:31:11.475 --> 00:31:15.877
Formal math, formal software verification, data validation.
448
00:31:18.377 --> 00:31:20.258
You can just get rid of the vibes.
449
00:31:20.498 --> 00:31:21.378
Oh, it looks convincing.
450
00:31:21.418 --> 00:31:22.098
You don't care about that.
451
00:31:22.118 --> 00:31:22.858
You're a perfectionist.
452
00:31:23.399 --> 00:31:27.260
You need the reasoning is completely green.
453
00:31:27.800 --> 00:31:28.700
It holds back to front.
454
00:31:29.950 --> 00:31:35.711
I used to love doing proofs in geometry because as soon as you've done the proof, you look up and down, you go, yep, that's true.
455
00:31:36.291 --> 00:31:37.952
And someone could be like, really, you're going to turn that in?
456
00:31:37.972 --> 00:31:38.532
Like, uh-huh.
457
00:31:38.752 --> 00:31:39.632
So what do you think you got?
458
00:31:40.092 --> 00:31:42.833
People used to ask, what did you get on the last geometry test that you just turned in?
459
00:31:42.853 --> 00:31:43.293
What do you think?
460
00:31:43.333 --> 00:31:45.633
I'm like, I got every single question correct.
461
00:31:46.073 --> 00:31:47.053
They're like, dude, you're nuts.
462
00:31:47.793 --> 00:31:50.134
I know for a fact I got it correct because I back-checked all the proofs.
463
00:31:50.594 --> 00:31:51.434
And then I got it correct.
464
00:31:51.914 --> 00:31:53.615
The teacher comes back and goes, it's 100%.
465
00:31:53.775 --> 00:31:54.075
Thank you.
466
00:31:54.595 --> 00:31:54.955
How?
467
00:31:55.895 --> 00:31:56.175
How?
468
00:31:56.215 --> 00:31:59.618
Mike and the girls, of course, started lining up trying to give me a head and I was like, ladies, we're at school.
469
00:31:59.638 --> 00:31:59.898
Stop.
470
00:32:01.359 --> 00:32:02.821
But people would be like, how do you know that?
471
00:32:02.861 --> 00:32:08.605
Like, well, that's the definition of a proof is you can like as soon as you make a proof and as soon as you validate the proof, then you know it's right.
472
00:32:10.387 --> 00:32:10.827
Big deal.
473
00:32:11.287 --> 00:32:11.708
Big deal.
474
00:32:12.088 --> 00:32:15.150
Work like that really favors perfectionistic tendency people.
475
00:32:16.351 --> 00:32:20.955
Another way perfectionists can do a real good job is auditing and technical review.
476
00:32:22.377 --> 00:32:27.860
There are people on the internet that go through a lot of my work and find small errors and large errors in it and talk about how terrible they are.
477
00:32:28.160 --> 00:32:28.621
That's great.
478
00:32:29.121 --> 00:32:32.183
That is such a match for what they're doing because that's not for everyone to do.
479
00:32:32.203 --> 00:32:33.964
Most people are just bored to tears doing that shit.
480
00:32:33.984 --> 00:32:39.527
But it's awesome that we have people vetting every single claim that anyone's ever made and exposing where they're right and where they're wrong.
481
00:32:39.807 --> 00:32:40.588
That's amazing.
482
00:32:42.289 --> 00:32:44.410
Because some of those people are perfectionistic.
483
00:32:44.430 --> 00:32:48.893
They're amazing at examining reconciliations, specifications, and supporting evidence.
484
00:32:50.153 --> 00:32:56.238
They're really sensitive to detail and into detecting consequential discrepancies.
485
00:32:56.758 --> 00:32:59.840
And if you do work that is auditing and technical review, you will.
486
00:33:00.141 --> 00:33:03.303
I'll tell you this, where we really need people like this, the law.
487
00:33:03.703 --> 00:33:04.304
Holy shit.
488
00:33:05.249 --> 00:33:07.190
I've worked with tons of lawyers over my career.
489
00:33:07.490 --> 00:33:08.691
Some of them are really good at this.
490
00:33:09.171 --> 00:33:10.512
Some of them are surprisingly not.
491
00:33:11.212 --> 00:33:16.715
And my internal team has reviewed a lot of legal documents we have people draft up and be like, there's eight things wrong in this document.
492
00:33:16.755 --> 00:33:17.876
How do you miss this?
493
00:33:18.196 --> 00:33:20.277
Your only job is to be technically correct.
494
00:33:21.177 --> 00:33:23.479
So perfectionists are very welcome in that regard.
495
00:33:23.779 --> 00:33:25.960
Again, in the context that they're not overdoing it.
496
00:33:27.457 --> 00:33:33.641
Another one is precision craftsmanship, watchmaking, instrument making, restoring old pieces.
497
00:33:34.041 --> 00:33:37.463
Dylan, you want a perfectionist restoring the Mona Lisa or a guy who vibes the shit?
498
00:33:38.303 --> 00:33:38.703
Oh, yeah.
499
00:33:38.723 --> 00:33:39.964
Turn into an abstract painting?
500
00:33:40.144 --> 00:33:44.767
He just like spray paints over it and gives her a little smiley face and you're like, yeah.
501
00:33:44.787 --> 00:33:46.428
Maybe a little button or something on there too.
502
00:33:46.508 --> 00:33:46.988
Yeah.
503
00:33:47.288 --> 00:33:48.209
So he's like adding stuff.
504
00:33:49.624 --> 00:33:50.384
That's a big deal.
505
00:33:50.625 --> 00:33:52.846
If I'm going and buying, I don't know, what do rich people do?
506
00:33:52.926 --> 00:33:54.487
Diamonds or watches or something.
507
00:33:54.507 --> 00:33:55.347
I don't do any of that stuff.
508
00:33:57.629 --> 00:33:59.270
I don't have any friends that don't buy anything.
509
00:34:00.130 --> 00:34:01.111
What?
510
00:34:01.231 --> 00:34:12.177
When people buy like a fine timepiece, which is what they call a watch, they better hope the person running that shop is a perfectionist insane person because that thing better be have all the components in it from 1888.
511
00:34:12.317 --> 00:34:13.778
That's what the fuck I'm paying for.
512
00:34:14.298 --> 00:34:15.379
And they better all work too.
513
00:34:15.399 --> 00:34:17.440
And somebody better have checked out three goddamn times.
514
00:34:20.252 --> 00:34:32.317
The other thing is this, in all of these lines of work, and in any line of work that you do, the big thing we already talked about, but I have to reiterate here, is you have to know where to point your perfectionism and where to not point it.
515
00:34:33.218 --> 00:34:39.120
If you're a kindergarten teacher, child safety needs to be perfectionistic.
516
00:34:39.380 --> 00:34:47.664
Anything that kids are doing that could remotely really screw them up, no, no, you gotta be a laser hawk about that and go, boom, no.
517
00:34:49.925 --> 00:34:52.972
but you can be flexible about a lot of other stuff.
518
00:34:54.137 --> 00:35:01.419
Timmy's macaroni giraffe does not need semiconductor tolerances, though it's always awesome when kids make really systematized looking things.
519
00:35:01.759 --> 00:35:05.220
You ever see Dylan, you know, give six-year-olds like a macaroni painting job?
520
00:35:05.560 --> 00:35:11.782
Some of them make something that looks coherent, surprisingly so, but some of them make something that looks like nothing and you're like, ah.
521
00:35:13.563 --> 00:35:15.043
That one's going on in the fridge.
522
00:35:15.063 --> 00:35:21.605
Have you seen that family guy where they put Stewie's picture on the fridge and then they start laughing when he leaves the room?
523
00:35:22.665 --> 00:35:23.005
Oh, my God.
524
00:35:23.025 --> 00:35:23.705
That's so family.
525
00:35:23.765 --> 00:35:24.165
I haven't.
526
00:35:24.185 --> 00:35:24.966
That's hilarious.
527
00:35:25.086 --> 00:35:25.306
Sorry.
528
00:35:25.926 --> 00:35:27.306
You did such a good job, buddy.
529
00:35:27.326 --> 00:35:29.386
This is the worst thing I've ever seen.
530
00:35:29.647 --> 00:35:30.267
Oh, my God.
531
00:35:30.547 --> 00:35:31.127
It's terrible.
532
00:35:31.187 --> 00:35:31.467
Yeah.
533
00:35:31.547 --> 00:35:34.348
I mean, we all grew up at different rates is what I'm trying to say.
534
00:35:34.448 --> 00:35:44.630
But if you're a kindergarten teacher and you're really lackadaisical about safety, but you're really like super demanding that the kids make macaroni paintings that are really super, super fine-tuned, you're doing it backwards.
535
00:35:44.950 --> 00:35:47.290
So there's a time to point your perfectionism and time to not.
536
00:35:50.451 --> 00:35:50.671
Now –
537
00:35:52.155 --> 00:35:58.884
In the context of doing your job, let's say you have a job that's well-suited for perfectionism.
538
00:35:59.224 --> 00:36:04.511
How do you deploy your perfectionism sanely and within limits so that it's a net benefit?
539
00:36:04.531 --> 00:36:05.292
Here's a couple tips.
540
00:36:05.312 --> 00:36:07.735
First, let's say you have a job that's well-suited for perfectionism.
541
00:36:08.214 --> 00:36:21.961
Replace perfect, which doesn't exist, by the way, with specifications, required performances, tolerances, tests, and criteria of acceptance that give you a precision destination.
542
00:36:22.642 --> 00:36:28.105
Once I've tuned all the knobs and everything's reading out like I want, it is, for my intents and purposes, perfect.
543
00:36:28.893 --> 00:36:31.374
That doesn't mean it's platonically perfect.
544
00:36:31.674 --> 00:36:38.078
That doesn't mean if I took my, you know, like, let's say it counts, some kind of system counts every second.
545
00:36:38.198 --> 00:36:42.700
If I measured every fraction of a second, it would be off count, but we don't care.
546
00:36:42.880 --> 00:36:43.801
For this purpose, we don't care.
547
00:36:43.901 --> 00:36:45.301
Every second counts, we're good to go.
548
00:36:46.342 --> 00:36:52.025
Once you have specifications, perfectionism is a dream because you just meet all your specs and then you're done and you feel really good.
549
00:36:53.065 --> 00:36:57.287
But don't you dare take your perfectionism and go, okay, I met the specs, but nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
550
00:36:57.508 --> 00:36:58.288
That's a bad idea.
551
00:36:59.578 --> 00:37:02.841
Next, huge, huge, huge thing.
552
00:37:03.241 --> 00:37:07.685
Distinguish mandatory requirements for the task instead of optional improvements.
553
00:37:08.566 --> 00:37:09.807
Safety is non-negotiable.
554
00:37:10.908 --> 00:37:17.855
Your favorite formatting convention or your favorite aesthetic style are definitely like, that's a question for you to decide.
555
00:37:18.976 --> 00:37:25.342
And so what I like to do is when I'm doing my work, I hit every single mandatory requirement.
556
00:37:26.407 --> 00:37:31.710
And if I have some time, I can fiddle with it and optionally improve and pet that little perfectionistic animal inside my head.
557
00:37:33.271 --> 00:37:41.457
But if I don't have time for it, I just, you know, throw him a water bottle and a piece of dog food and close the cage and turn off the lab and go home.
558
00:37:41.557 --> 00:37:42.117
Motherfucker.
559
00:37:43.038 --> 00:37:43.258
Kidding.
560
00:37:43.278 --> 00:37:43.898
That was so mean.
561
00:37:43.978 --> 00:37:47.781
Perfectionist animal.
562
00:37:47.801 --> 00:37:48.481
Here's another thing.
563
00:37:49.862 --> 00:37:51.943
You're going to want to check your work if you're a perfectionist.
564
00:37:52.124 --> 00:37:54.125
Make it a process instead of a feeling.
565
00:37:55.387 --> 00:38:00.350
vibing your work and be like, ooh, do I feel good about this paragraph or whatever, about this tool that I made?
566
00:38:00.890 --> 00:38:01.330
That ain't it.
567
00:38:01.791 --> 00:38:04.512
Because you're a perfectionist, and the answer is going to be you never feel good about it.
568
00:38:05.393 --> 00:38:09.095
So if you have a checklist to go in and be like, does this paragraph have three topic sentences?
569
00:38:09.115 --> 00:38:10.756
Does it have a structure that conveys meaning?
570
00:38:11.096 --> 00:38:12.717
Does it have a beginning and a concrete end?
571
00:38:12.737 --> 00:38:15.298
And is it stated in a way that I can understand it when I read it again?
572
00:38:15.338 --> 00:38:17.439
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, we're done, next.
573
00:38:17.720 --> 00:38:18.020
That's it.
574
00:38:19.901 --> 00:38:23.203
And a lot of times what really helps is independent review.
575
00:38:24.045 --> 00:38:30.648
When I do a lot of my book writing and stuff like that, I finish my book and I just give it to the editors and whatever, like they'll reword it and shit.
576
00:38:30.668 --> 00:38:31.308
I don't give a fuck.
577
00:38:31.328 --> 00:38:32.128
That's not my job.
578
00:38:33.229 --> 00:38:35.590
And then when it comes out the other end, like people probably like it.
579
00:38:35.750 --> 00:38:37.150
Some people will find some use for it.
580
00:38:37.571 --> 00:38:40.572
I'm distancing myself from the project as soon as I've done my part.
581
00:38:41.012 --> 00:38:43.473
If I was a perfectionist, oh my God, the editing would never end.
582
00:38:48.755 --> 00:38:49.416
Here's another thing.
583
00:38:50.236 --> 00:38:52.897
Have a prototyping phase and a finalization phase.
584
00:38:54.035 --> 00:39:00.398
You can make very imperfect things that have a lot of real interesting insight before you have to prepare them for the release.
585
00:39:00.898 --> 00:39:08.862
So you might make three prototypes of some device you're working on or some kind of piece of literature you're working on or some idea you're working on or even a video.
586
00:39:08.902 --> 00:39:10.202
You learn a lot from all three.
587
00:39:11.283 --> 00:39:14.224
The second one is probably the best, but you take a little bit from the third.
588
00:39:14.244 --> 00:39:15.845
You redo the second to have that.
589
00:39:16.465 --> 00:39:19.366
Then the second is the thing you're for sure going to be submitting.
590
00:39:19.907 --> 00:39:22.748
Take another section of time to clean up that second one.
591
00:39:24.548 --> 00:39:28.310
It's very similar to the idea of brainstorming phase, critique phase.
592
00:39:29.471 --> 00:39:37.735
Prototype phase, finalization to make sure the prototype not just has the core features, but is up to standard on real world deployment, safety, all that other stuff.
593
00:39:39.396 --> 00:39:44.258
Another one is to set review budgets and escalation rules, two things at a time.
594
00:39:44.779 --> 00:39:45.639
One, review budget.
595
00:39:46.059 --> 00:39:47.920
You have an hour and a half to review this project.
596
00:39:48.100 --> 00:39:49.041
After that, it's done.
597
00:39:50.476 --> 00:39:52.718
Tell yourself that ahead of time that makes things very simple.
598
00:39:53.598 --> 00:39:54.619
And escalation rules.
599
00:39:55.200 --> 00:40:03.626
If while editing a certain project or a certain task, something stands out that meets one of the rules, okay, if I see this kind of thing, I have to fix it, cool.
600
00:40:04.667 --> 00:40:09.711
If vibes-wise, it just doesn't feel 100% right, but it doesn't meet any escalation rules, it's dead in the water.
601
00:40:09.751 --> 00:40:10.211
It's done.
602
00:40:10.231 --> 00:40:17.156
Because if you're really a perfectionist, you guys, as many of you know this, everything looks like it needs revision all the time.
603
00:40:17.837 --> 00:40:19.438
That is no good.
604
00:40:21.853 --> 00:40:29.339
When you're done with review, your budget is over, and there's no reason to escalate into more review, you release the thing.
605
00:40:29.399 --> 00:40:29.679
That's it.
606
00:40:29.699 --> 00:40:30.219
You're done with it.
607
00:40:33.261 --> 00:40:36.404
Another thing is to welcome correction without humiliation.
608
00:40:36.424 --> 00:40:42.608
A lot of people who are perfectionistic tend to be deeply humiliated when people find errors with their work.
609
00:40:44.430 --> 00:40:49.593
You want teammates to reveal defects early, not protect your preferred image of a flawless project.
610
00:40:49.713 --> 00:40:50.314
In fact…
611
00:40:51.614 --> 00:40:59.899
Passing your version onto a trusted teammate or the head of the department or the project can spare you from worrying about the final outcome.
612
00:41:00.240 --> 00:41:01.280
You did your best.
613
00:41:01.981 --> 00:41:03.402
You guarantee nothing.
614
00:41:03.742 --> 00:41:07.004
The verification is on them, or you flip it.
615
00:41:07.645 --> 00:41:14.549
Somebody else generates the prototype, and your perfectionistic ass verifies and vets the thing down until you're like, wow, this is great.
616
00:41:15.049 --> 00:41:19.753
You're not so attached to the specific ideas because they're not your ideas, but you're going to make them their best, most polished version.
617
00:41:20.593 --> 00:41:23.256
People who are book editors do this unbelievably well.
618
00:41:23.276 --> 00:41:26.539
They're perfectionistic, insane people, but goddamn, they're good at what they do.
619
00:41:26.879 --> 00:41:28.261
They don't really generate a lot of ideas.
620
00:41:28.281 --> 00:41:30.683
That's not what they do, but they sure shit vet them really well.
621
00:41:33.365 --> 00:41:39.131
If you're such a perfectionist that you want to generate and vet your own ideas and you never seek criticism, it's going to be a bad time.
622
00:41:43.335 --> 00:41:44.656
And, of course...
623
00:41:45.384 --> 00:41:52.489
The way you judge projects doesn't just involve how well you did, but involves safety, cost, and delivery.
624
00:41:55.511 --> 00:42:05.357
Yeah, you did a great job, and the project's real safe after you finish it, but it costs three times more than anticipated, and it was delivered two weeks after.
625
00:42:06.438 --> 00:42:09.980
You're not really a perfectionist, because if you were, you'd be real pissed about those two things.
626
00:42:11.166 --> 00:42:20.534
So sometimes being a perfectionist means opening up your mind to being like, okay, what is actually the overall net tradeoff of good and I can't be perfect at anything?
627
00:42:20.834 --> 00:42:23.196
Okay, well, that's a real question you have to answer.
628
00:42:28.841 --> 00:42:32.304
Perfectionism isn't good.
629
00:42:33.765 --> 00:42:37.088
We need to stop treating it like a protected class of behaviors.
630
00:42:37.208 --> 00:42:37.949
It's toxic.
631
00:42:39.732 --> 00:42:46.255
You either reel in your perfectionism and make sure that it's focused or you're going to pay a ton of downsides.
632
00:42:47.095 --> 00:42:49.676
Lots of humble bragging about it doesn't do it any good.
633
00:42:49.696 --> 00:42:51.597
People are like, oh, I'm such a perfectionist.
634
00:42:51.657 --> 00:42:52.697
Like, oh, that sucks.
635
00:42:53.578 --> 00:42:54.058
What do you mean?
636
00:42:54.078 --> 00:42:54.778
That's a good thing.
637
00:42:54.798 --> 00:42:55.979
Like, it's not a good thing.
638
00:42:56.199 --> 00:42:57.019
It's not a good thing.
639
00:42:58.660 --> 00:43:02.181
Very finely tuned, it can be a good thing in context.
640
00:43:02.281 --> 00:43:04.182
Otherwise, it's literally a bad thing.
641
00:43:07.143 --> 00:43:11.584
And if you say that's just how I am, that's a description and not a permanent exemption.
642
00:43:11.604 --> 00:43:13.105
So people are like, I'm a perfectionist.
643
00:43:13.145 --> 00:43:14.405
I have to think things have to be perfect.
644
00:43:14.425 --> 00:43:18.606
Like, yes, I know you want that, but you're going to have to not want that.
645
00:43:19.127 --> 00:43:24.048
So it's okay for you to admit you have perfectionistic tendencies and leverage them as much as possible.
646
00:43:24.088 --> 00:43:30.650
But you're also going to have to fight them off because I'm a perfectionist doesn't like get you out of like doing a decent job on time.
647
00:43:32.847 --> 00:43:34.668
People say things like, well, I just care too much.
648
00:43:35.228 --> 00:43:40.931
But the reality is in the real world, that actually ends up being like, well, I often misallocate my effort.
649
00:43:41.811 --> 00:43:43.272
Caring too much sounds flattering.
650
00:43:43.852 --> 00:43:46.273
Misallocating effort sounds not flattering.
651
00:43:46.573 --> 00:43:47.533
They're both true.
652
00:43:48.314 --> 00:43:51.535
And so if you're a perfectionist, you have to realize I can do better than this.
653
00:43:52.135 --> 00:43:53.256
How's that for perfectionism?
654
00:43:55.894 --> 00:43:58.636
And past success doesn't mean that every habit helped.
655
00:43:58.676 --> 00:44:08.902
You could be ultra-talented and a perfectionist and be incredibly successful, but not nearly as successful as an alternate version of you could have been had they not been as perfectionistic.
656
00:44:10.442 --> 00:44:14.445
My career, let's take my output on just YouTube and podcasts.
657
00:44:16.746 --> 00:44:19.508
Had a talk with my head of engineering at RP about this lately.
658
00:44:22.429 --> 00:44:25.291
My assessment is that I say that
659
00:44:26.516 --> 00:44:35.219
something like 85% really good shit, real, correct, actionable information that helps people.
660
00:44:35.359 --> 00:44:39.881
10% is a gray area of like, maybe bit off more than he could chew, maybe he's out of his depth.
661
00:44:41.221 --> 00:44:44.983
Call that 30%, I don't give a fuck, some smaller than the help part.
662
00:44:46.343 --> 00:44:54.066
And then 5% is just embarrassing, outright wrong, super backwards that wish you could delete off the internet kind of takes, for sure, for sure.
663
00:44:54.972 --> 00:45:06.875
Now, let's say I wanted to change this ratio to 99% only accurate good stuff, half a percent of questionable stuff, and half a percent of stuff that was despicable and should have never seen the light of day.
664
00:45:09.836 --> 00:45:12.337
That's laudable as a goal.
665
00:45:14.878 --> 00:45:19.079
And if I impose that level of standard on myself, two things would happen.
666
00:45:20.692 --> 00:45:30.120
The amount of content I would make that has serious errors in it would precipitously decline, and I would start to look like I was a person who never made mistakes or almost ever made mistakes.
667
00:45:30.640 --> 00:45:30.880
Dope.
668
00:45:32.942 --> 00:45:49.496
The total volume of that 60 to 80 or 5%, whatever you want to call it, of my content that's pretty goddamn good, that total volume, because of this perfectionism, would fall possibly by an order of magnitude.
669
00:45:51.957 --> 00:45:58.604
And so the real question then becomes, how am I most valuable to the world?
670
00:46:00.005 --> 00:46:10.335
If you get information from me that you think is mostly pretty good, but you have it in the back of your head, like sometimes Israel tells us weird shit that doesn't make sense or he's just super wrong because he's passionate about it.
671
00:46:11.236 --> 00:46:15.260
How much value do you get out of that version of me producing information?
672
00:46:15.947 --> 00:46:31.712
five to 10 YouTube videos in some form or another per week for years, versus how much value would you get from the version of me that produced one video every two or three weeks, but that was very spick and span, still made mistakes, but rarely if ever made mistakes.
673
00:46:33.352 --> 00:46:34.893
I know the answer for me is,
674
00:46:36.028 --> 00:46:43.414
is to make more content and try to do my best, but it's all right if I'm not right all the time, especially in live interviews, I misspeak, whatever.
675
00:46:43.454 --> 00:46:50.219
Every time I'm on the Dr. Mike podcast, I say at least three or four things, I'm like, Isertel, it's wrong, why?
676
00:46:52.992 --> 00:46:58.976
But there's two and a half hours and two hours and 20 minutes of content is fucking amazing.
677
00:46:59.697 --> 00:47:01.498
And then 10 minutes of it is wrong and stupid.
678
00:47:01.798 --> 00:47:02.779
I'm good with that, bro.
679
00:47:03.559 --> 00:47:11.405
If you're not good with that and you don't like the fact that I put inaccurate content out there sometimes, you don't like my tradeoff, I respect the fuck out of your opinion.
680
00:47:12.065 --> 00:47:13.607
And I may come to your side.
681
00:47:15.228 --> 00:47:16.989
But it's all a tradeoff is what I'm trying to say.
682
00:47:18.750 --> 00:47:20.772
It's a big, big tradeoff.
683
00:47:21.629 --> 00:47:25.691
If you want to be perfectionistic, your amount of help that you can give the world is going to be way lower.
684
00:47:27.673 --> 00:47:33.116
And if you want to be less perfectionistic, you're going to make more mistakes, but the overall amount of good you do may be three or four times as high.
685
00:47:35.917 --> 00:47:37.878
It really does depend on what job you're doing.
686
00:47:38.859 --> 00:47:42.241
When we're deploying app features, we're perfectionistic at our peak.
687
00:47:43.932 --> 00:47:49.535
Way more than when I'm like, when I'm writing up a video, pretty perfectionistic, but I'll make some mistakes.
688
00:47:50.276 --> 00:47:57.399
When I'm talking on a podcast live, having a debate, shit, you know, I'm doing my best, but damn, it's live, it's dynamic, whatever, people make mistakes.
689
00:47:59.080 --> 00:48:00.681
And you can do the same thing in your own realm.
690
00:48:04.603 --> 00:48:09.246
As a perfectionist, what you also want to do is avoid poisoning everyone else with your standards.
691
00:48:09.926 --> 00:48:13.008
Your insanely high standards do not monopolize other people's time.
692
00:48:14.474 --> 00:48:21.137
making everyone wait for you to finish or making them redo their work until it's up to your standard is possibly a success story.
693
00:48:21.297 --> 00:48:24.178
It's probably not, especially if you're in leadership.
694
00:48:24.878 --> 00:48:29.500
So if you're a perfectionist, you gotta can that for yourself and accept that other people are gonna do their best job.
695
00:48:29.520 --> 00:48:32.781
You can make them better, but an infinity standard is not good.
696
00:48:35.663 --> 00:48:41.505
If your job is to deal with perfectionists and you are not one, my recommendation to you is to be firm
697
00:48:44.703 --> 00:48:48.266
with pushing back on the pattern, but kind to the person.
698
00:48:50.728 --> 00:48:54.391
So if they're turning in things days late, don't be like, you're an idiot.
699
00:48:54.411 --> 00:48:54.911
What are you doing?
700
00:48:54.931 --> 00:48:58.314
You got to be like, dude, I love the fact that this is flawless.
701
00:49:00.536 --> 00:49:02.617
But it's only useful to us if it's on time.
702
00:49:03.513 --> 00:49:07.174
So if it's 95% of the way there and you turn it in on time, that would be amazing.
703
00:49:07.254 --> 00:49:07.995
Does that make sense?
704
00:49:08.135 --> 00:49:08.415
Yes.
705
00:49:09.035 --> 00:49:10.356
You don't have to humiliate people.
706
00:49:10.376 --> 00:49:12.236
You don't have to talk about how they're perfectionistic.
707
00:49:12.777 --> 00:49:14.897
Just tell them the reality of what you need and when.
708
00:49:16.758 --> 00:49:20.119
You don't want to become perfectionistic about overcoming perfectionism.
709
00:49:21.080 --> 00:49:23.481
Catch the pattern, make the better trade-off, move on.
710
00:49:24.381 --> 00:49:26.922
You don't even have to self-roast if you're doing this yourself.
711
00:49:27.042 --> 00:49:30.804
If you're a perfectionist and you catch yourself being perfectionist, don't worry, man.
712
00:49:30.824 --> 00:49:31.724
We all do weird shit.
713
00:49:33.510 --> 00:49:34.170
Just do your best.
714
00:49:34.611 --> 00:49:35.271
Do a little better.
715
00:49:35.871 --> 00:49:39.954
And if doing your best isn't really your best today, do your best tomorrow.
716
00:49:40.314 --> 00:49:40.874
No big deal.
717
00:49:42.615 --> 00:49:45.917
The goal in all of this, if you're a perfectionist, is not to care less.
718
00:49:47.118 --> 00:49:49.820
It is to make your care more useful.
719
00:49:52.982 --> 00:50:01.707
So if you demand excellence as a perfectionist, demand it from your prioritization and demand it
720
00:50:03.408 --> 00:50:05.770
of not being too perfectionistic.
721
00:50:07.191 --> 00:50:10.993
An excellent worker is not a perfectionist.
722
00:50:12.454 --> 00:50:19.399
So if you aim for excellence, you're aiming away from perfection, in a sense.
723
00:50:20.340 --> 00:50:29.346
In a real sense, if you look at it as the end is here and the beginning is here of any work task, excellence lives right here.
724
00:50:30.347 --> 00:50:31.948
Perfectionism lives eons away.
725
00:50:33.527 --> 00:50:44.935
You can use your perfectionistic tendencies to aim for perfection, but have qualified, written down, pre-written checklists to when you're at excellent.
726
00:50:46.757 --> 00:50:54.602
As soon as you reach the bar of excellent for whatever you define, how you define it in your organization, in your workflow, I got a little tip for you, perfectionist.
727
00:50:55.143 --> 00:50:57.224
Do another five or 10 minutes of extra work.
728
00:50:57.264 --> 00:50:59.546
Just feed that animal.
729
00:50:59.566 --> 00:51:00.787
Just clean it up just a little more.
730
00:51:00.847 --> 00:51:02.068
Ooh, ooh, feels so good.
731
00:51:03.218 --> 00:51:03.778
and then stop.
732
00:51:05.139 --> 00:51:08.201
And then you've done three hours of work plus 10 minutes.
733
00:51:08.842 --> 00:51:09.442
You feel great.
734
00:51:09.462 --> 00:51:10.043
You turned it in.
735
00:51:10.063 --> 00:51:10.743
It's excellent.
736
00:51:12.004 --> 00:51:22.451
And you didn't do nine hours, the three of which hours are actual work, 10 minutes of really awesome polishing, and then almost six hours of total insanity where you second-guess every single decision and rewrite the project three times.
737
00:51:23.652 --> 00:51:24.292
That gets wacky.
738
00:51:24.813 --> 00:51:25.413
I've done it before.
739
00:51:25.593 --> 00:51:27.694
It's not worth it.
740
00:51:27.715 --> 00:51:32.758
Anyway, listen to this if you want to become an imperfect slob like me.
741
00:51:34.110 --> 00:51:41.077
And if you just want to see pictures of me in various positions, we have, oh, Dylan, we're all on to promote that site, are we?
742
00:51:41.718 --> 00:51:44.220
No, you two won't let us promote that site on here.
743
00:51:45.261 --> 00:51:48.664
Exclusively followers is what it means.
744
00:51:50.486 --> 00:51:51.447
You can use Google yourself.
745
00:51:51.467 --> 00:51:52.148
See you guys next time.