The Pursuit of Perfect

Tal Ben-Shahar: Well, perfectionism can be defined in the following way. First, it is about the rejection of painful emotions; in other words, it's the desire to experience positive emotions, a constant high. Second, it is the rejection of failure, not accepting that life has its ups and downs. And third, and surprisingly, it is also the rejection of success. Why rejection of success? Because nothing is good enough, so every success is immediately dismissed because it is not perfect, because something more can be attained.

Rachel Salaman: Those all sound like quite negative things, whereas one thinks of perfectionism as a quest for positive outcomes. How does that work?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Well, psychologists talk about adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism. Adaptive perfectionism is striving for higher and higher standards; it's working hard, it's making sure things are done and done well, so that's healthy in most situations. The maladaptive perfectionism, the unhealthy perfectionism, is about the rejection of success, of failure and painful emotions. So it is a fear of failure that is debilitating, and a fear of failure that doesn't allow us to try, to take risks, to explore, to meander.

Rachel Salaman: Well you talk about perfectionism in the book as if it's an addiction. I expect you're focusing on the maladaptive perfectionism there. How often is perfectionism the negative type like that?

Tal Ben-Shahar: In most situations when people talk about perfectionism, they do talk about the maladaptive type, which is what my book focuses on. In contrast to the maladaptive, the adaptive perfectionism is something that I call optimalism, because it's about finding the optimal outcome, and it's finding the optimal path, given the constraints of reality, given the fact that we sometimes fail, given the fact that painful emotions are an inevitable part of being human.

Rachel Salaman: So, just to be clear for people listening, it's not a bad thing for people to strive for the best possible outcome.

Tal Ben-Shahar: I think it's a wonderful thing to be ambitious, to want more, and it's not even a question of being good or bad. Most people want to achieve more, and that is fine. The problem is that people very often mix up wanting more, and nothing being enough for them. So it's okay for me to aspire for, you know, a raise at work, to aspire to be happier, to aspire to have more positive emotions, that's perfectly fine. What's not perfectly fine is the fact that many people are never satisfied with what they have, and they don't learn to appreciate, to enjoy, what they have.

Rachel Salaman: So how do you know if you're a perfectionist or an optimalist?

Tal Ben-Shahar: The way we know when we're on the optimalist or the perfectionist side is through the printouts of the soul, as I call them, which are the emotions. So if I constantly experience a sense of fear, or trepidation, if I constantly experience unhappiness, then I'm more likely to be on the perfectionism side. If, on the other hand, I strive for higher goals, I try to improve, I do improve, and I enjoy the process of striving, then I'm most likely being an optimalist.

Rachel Salaman: And how big a problem is perfectionism in society? I would have thought that low standards and a lack of motivation was far worse, and far more common.

Tal Ben-Shahar: Well, perfectionism is as big of a problem as the opposite, which is having no motivation and low striving, and paradoxically they often go hand-in-hand, because a perfectionist is so afraid of failure that that may lead to procrastination, to putting things off, to not trying, which, when looked at from the outside, looks like low levels of motivation. With the optimalist, the motivation is intrinsic, because there is enjoyment, because there is pleasure, because there is satisfaction along the way, people are much more likely to work hard because they enjoy the journey, they enjoy the process, so they can be two sides of the same coin.

Having said that, perfectionism is a very serious problem because of its consequences. There are more and more psychological ailments; mental health problems that researchers are finding are associated with perfectionism. It could be, for example, eating disorders. Why? Because we have one perfect standard, which we want to attain, and anything below it constitutes a problem, an assault on my sense of self. So I either look like a supermodel, or I am obese. It also is associated with interpersonal problems because perfectionists very often are defensive. In other words, whenever there is a disagreement, they immediately interpret it as an assault on who they are, on their scheme, on their mental picture, as someone who is perfect, infallible. Perfectionism is also associated with low levels of self-esteem and unhappiness because we constantly have this voice inside us telling us, "You're not enough." We have this voice telling us that, "You have just failed" or "You are a failure." And when we hear this voice over and over again, then that has consequences where our self-esteem and happiness are concerned.

Rachel Salaman: So how much control do people have over whether or not they're a perfectionist? Is it something that some people are born with, or can we actually control that?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Well, some perfectionism is outside of our control, so there is a genetic component, which is associated with our natural levels, god-given or gene-given levels of anxiety. It's also associated with our early experiences. However, there is also a great deal that we can choose, that we can change throughout our lives, whether it's when we're ten years old, 20, or when we're 80, so this is something that is malleable, that can be changed, and interestingly, the fact that we believe that it can be changed makes it more likely to change. If we believe that perfectionism is something that we were just born with and we will die with as a result, then it's much less likely to change. In other words the mindset we're in, the change or growth mindset versus the fixed or immutable mindset, makes a difference. If we're in the change mindset, if we believe that we can change, that is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rachel Salaman: So optimalism is something that perfectionists should aim for, but also presumably people with low motivation and low standards should also be aiming for optimalism. Is that right?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Yes, so what optimalism is essentially is a healthy striving for success, for growth, for happiness and wellbeing, and the way to strive for it is, first of all, to accept emotions and that is all emotions, as natural, as part of who we are. It is to accept success as well as failure as part of who we are, and essentially it is about accepting reality. It's about accepting the reality of human nature; it is about accepting the reality of success as well as failure, and when we accept reality that's when we're best able to deal with it.

There is a parallel here to a scientist, for example, or an engineer. An engineer who wants to create a good airplane needs to take into consideration the laws of nature, to take into consideration reality, and then he or she is able to create a flying machine. Similarly with living a good life: If we want to live a good life, we first have to accept reality. Reality that constitutes failures and successes, emotional highs, emotional lows and everything in-between, and when we accept reality, when we accept nature for what it is, that's when we enjoy higher levels of motivation, happiness and, in the long term, success.

Rachel Salaman: Now I'm sure it's hard to generalize, but what challenges do people encounter when they're aiming for that optimalism?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Well one of the challenges is the understanding that people have of a happy life. Let me share with you a quick story that led me to thinking about the pervasiveness and seriousness of perfectionism. So when I first taught the class on positive psychology, a student came to me and asked me whether he could join me for lunch. And we had lunch together, and then he said, "Tal, I hear you're teaching a class on happiness," and I said, "Yes, that's right," and he said, "You know, my roommates are taking your class," and I said, "That's wonderful," and then he said to me, "Tal, but you've got to watch out now," and I said, "Why?" And he said, "Tal, you've got to be careful now," and I asked him, "Why?" And he said, "Because if I see you unhappy I'll tell them." Now, he was half joking and half serious, but what he captures here is a misunderstanding of what a happy life means. The next day I told my students. I said, "The last thing in the world I want you to think is that I experience a constant high or that you, by the end of the year, will experience this constant high. There are two kinds of people who don't experience painful emotions: unhappiness, sadness, envy, anger, disappointment, two kinds of people who don't experience these painful emotions, and these are the psychopaths and the dead. Other than that everyone has these emotional highs and lows.

The problem is that most people, and therefore most people fall under the category of perfectionism, most people think that a happy life is a life that is devoid of these painful emotions, and we pay a very high price for rejecting these painful emotions when in fact there is everything right with us when we experience these. So this pervasive belief regarding what happiness is, or what a happy life is, actually leads people on the road to perfectionism and as a result, to unhappiness and beyond.

Rachel Salaman: When people are aiming for optimalism in, let's say, their work life, how can they know when it's right to, for example, put a project aside and say, "Enough. That's as good as it's going to be." How can they actually know what that point is?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Right, unfortunately there are no clear-cut rules as to when enough is enough. However, trial and error, as in most things in life, whether it's we learn how to walk, whether we learn how to draw, trial and error is the way to go. So I remember when I was in school and realized what perfectionism – what effect it was having on my life I played around, and I remember one class, for example, I said, "Alright, I've studied enough, I'm not going to put any more work into it," and I just about failed in that class, and then I realized that I need to go slightly toward the other extreme, or to even out my levels of effort. So the same with work, to try things, and if we realize that we haven't done enough and then next time to do a little bit more.

The thing is that most people today know whether or not they're perfectionists, and they know if they take a step back when they're putting in too much or too little time. The key here is to take that step back. I think most people in our culture today live life on autopilot without thinking, without thinking, when is it enough? When am I putting too much? What are my priorities, because ultimately that's what it's about? If I'm putting a lot of work into one area it means, given that time is a zero-sum game, it means that I'm necessarily putting less time into another area. And then to ask myself, what are my priorities? What is most important to me? Is this report really going to make or break this project versus is having an extra hour to discuss the project with my co-workers maybe more productive and more beneficial?

Rachel Salaman: So it's about listening to yourself, and making a balanced judgment?

Tal Ben-Shahar: It's about taking a step back and then listening to your inner voice, yes.

Rachel Salaman: Now in the book you talk about the 80/20 rule, which can be quite helpful in those kind of situations. Can you explain that?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Yes. The 80/20 rule is actually taken from economics. Pareto, who was an Italian economist, noticed that, for example, 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth or 20% of the clients of a business generate 80% of its income, and he noticed this 20/80 rule in different areas. People who've done work on time management have noticed this 20/80 rule in the way we lead our lives. For example, in 20% of the time I can get 80% of this project done, so I can do just about most of it, when it's good enough, within an hour, but to make it perfect, to take it from 80 to 100% I would need to put, say, four more hours. And it also applies to our day-to-day energy levels in that in 20% of the day we usually get 80% of the work done. And the challenge is to identify within each project what's the 20% that will yield the 80% in terms of our day-to-day work? What are the 20%, what are the three hours during the day when I can get most of the work done? Is it early in the morning? Is it late at night, or anywhere in-between? And identifying the highly productive 20%, whether it's in terms of the time, when we spent our time, when we work, or in terms of what we engage it, what we invest in, that can make a big difference in our day, in our productivity, creativity and overall happiness.

If I can give you a personal example: when I was in college, which is when I first started thinking about perfectionism, I did all the reading that the professors assigned. I did every assignment perfectly, and I ended up doing relatively well, however, it took up all of my time and left nothing for the other things that I wanted to do in my life. When I heard about the 20/80 rule I said, "Okay, where can I invest less?" Now, my grades initially went down slightly. However, after a while I became more effective at knowing exactly what to read, what I could skim, what papers I needed to invest that – the extra three hours, go the extra mile and what papers I could just do an okay or good enough job, and I started to have more time for other things. Moreover, I realized that my productive hours were early in the morning and then I shifted my day so that I did my work in the morning rather than late at night, as most other students did. And these two changes, investing where I thought I would get the most bang for the buck in terms of what I worked on and what time I worked on it made a big difference in my experience. I do the same today when I'm working, so most of my work is done early in the morning and in the afternoon I have time for other things. I get 80% of the work done in the three hours that I set aside, quiet time, in the morning.

Rachel Salaman: So if people are trying to find what kind of 80/20 works for them, again, is it a case of trial and error?

Tal Ben-Shahar: It's a case of trial and error and it's a case of just asking oneself, when am I most productive? Most people know whether they're morning people or night people. You know, for me at 9pm at night, it's very difficult for me to think a coherent thought; early in the morning, much easier. I also know that, for example, when I write I do want to read and reread, in other words go the extra mile when I go over my material, when I write. However, when I'm reading material then I know that it's okay at times to just skim it and I don't need to read it word-for-word perfectly, in which case the 20% yields the 80% benefit.

Rachel Salaman: Now you've mentioned a couple of times the importance of accepting failure. Now failure is almost a dirty word, and it's quite hard for people to get their head round the idea that they need to accept it. What can you tell us that will make us feel a bit better about accepting failure?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Well, there's a lot of research on failure. For example, Dean Simonton from the University of California, Davis, has done historical research on the leading artists and the leading scientists in history, so it's the Da Vincis, it's the Edisons, and it's the Michelangelos, it's the Marie Curie, the great scientists and artists throughout history, and what he has found, time and again, is that these scientists and these artists are also the ones who have had the most failures, so it's the most failed experiments or the most unsuccessful paintings or sculptures, and it's no coincidence. It's no coincidence that the most successful people throughout history are also the people who have failed the most times. You see it also in business. Thomas Watson, the legendary CEO of IBM, said, "If you want to increase your success rate, first double your failure rate." Thomas Edison said, "I failed my way to success." You see it with every successful business person, and you see it with every successful artist, scientist, or athlete.

Rachel Salaman: And it's not something that people focus on though, is it, that? But of course, it's a very important part of their success.

Tal Ben-Shahar: Well the problem is that what we see when we see successful people is the outcome; we don't see the process. But it would be just like seeing people who can walk and ignoring the fact that they had to fall down hundreds or thousands of times before they learnt how to walk. There is no other way. One of the sentences that I repeat to myself, to my students that I write about, is, "Learn to fail or fail to learn. Learn to fail or fail to learn," because there is no other way. I wish there were, but there isn't.

Rachel Salaman: Now, you also astutely point out that perfectionists are not only unable to accept failure they also can't accept success, so how does that work?

Tal Ben-Shahar: When a perfectionist succeeds he or she always thinks of the next step. What is not yet complete? Where do I need to go? Where can I go now? He or she won't take time for appreciation, and if we don't appreciate something, if we take it for granted or ignore it or dismiss it, then it is as if this thing did not happen. And in this way, even if we do succeed, we're rejecting it as perfectionists.

Rachel Salaman: Now the quality of work, the standards that people have, makes a huge impact on how a workplace functions and the success of organizations. How damaging can perfectionism be in a work environment specifically?

Tal Ben-Shahar: There's been a lot of research on perfectionism in the workplace, and it's damaging when it comes from the leader or the manager, and it's also damaging when it comes from the ground employees. The reason that it's damaging is that it doesn't allow for experimentation, it doesn't allow for risk taking, it doesn't allow for trial and error, and hence it doesn't allow for growth and learning. There is no other way to learn. We need to allow for experimentation, and we need to allow for failure as well.

Amy Edmondson, who is a psychologist at the Harvard Business School, talks about the concept of psychological safety. The psychological safety is the feeling that key members in a group have, that they're allowed to take risks; that it's okay falling down; that it's okay making a mistake. And when members of an organization have that psychological safety – again not having a blank check for failure – but knowing that it's okay to try and it's okay to fall down, they're much more creative, much more productive, not to mention the fact that they're a lot happier in the workplace. But also in terms of pure bottom line, in terms of the profit and the growth and the sustainability of the organization, providing psychological safety, providing the permission to be human, and part of the permission to be human is the permission to fail, that contributes a great deal to the bottom line of the organization. This is especially important in our world today where creativity is so critical. So maybe 200 years ago one could go to work and you'd move a lever from one side to the other and do that 3,726 times a day and that person did their job well; today that's not enough. Today people have to think outside the box in order to remain competitive. Today people have to learn constantly in order to survive, let alone thrive.

Rachel Salaman: So if you're a manager with perfectionist tendencies leading people who don't have those tendencies, what should you be focusing on so that you're all as happy and productive as possible? Are there one or two tips that you can give?

Tal Ben-Shahar: The first thing to do is to really remind oneself of the nature of success and what success looks like, to remind oneself that there are no shortcuts, unfortunately. One of the most effective ways of doing it is to look at past positive experiences, so for example, to look at a project that was well run in the organization and ask oneself why what is – why was it well run? What have I learnt from past failures that led to the success? And time and again, what these managers will see is that failure was an inevitable part of it. Another very useful technique is to read biographies of successful people; honest biographies don't just give the five steps to thriving. They don't just talk about the three secrets of success. They show what was actually done along the way, which means where the failures came, where the difficulties came, and they show the entire picture, and when one sees the entire pictures, one learns to appreciate it a lot more, and hence apply it in one's life.

Rachel Salaman: And thinking more generally now, for people who might be aiming for optimalism in all parts of their life, do you have one or two top tips that will help them?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Yes, sure. So the first thing to do is to identify the areas, the places in one's life, when one is intrinsically motivated: the passions, the things that one enjoys, because usually in these areas are the places where we're most likely to find ourselves at our optimal behavior. So ask oneself, what do I really enjoy doing? What is important to me? What is significant to me? What is meaningful to me? And then pursuing that. Second, it's also to go to the areas where one plays. So is it when I play tennis that I enjoy a sense of intrinsic motivation? Is it when I play backgammon? For each person it's a different place, and the more we practice in these areas, the more we get used to functioning as an optimalist.

One of the problems in today's culture is that people don't take the time to play, and everything becomes serious, everything becomes associated with work, and everything poses a threat, a threat to our sense of who we are. So if we can find something new in our life, or something old in our life, where we're playing and engaging it more, that can contribute to optimalism.

And the other thing is to take advantage of the relationship between attitudes and behaviors. So we all know that if we have a certain attitude that will influence our behavior, and if I have a positive attitude toward psychology, I'm more likely to study; if I have a negative attitude toward mathematics, I'm less likely to study it. In other words, attitudes affect behavior, but behaviors also affect attitude. In other words, if I see myself behaving in a certain way, my attitude over a time will change. For instance, when it comes to optimism, if I see myself taking risks, if I see myself asking for feedback from people, hence being the opposite of defensive, rather than being open, when I do that that's when over time I change my attitude from being a perfectionist to an optimalist.

One of the things that I did, that I introduced in my life, was soliciting feedback from people because I had to deal with my defensiveness, which of course harmed my relationships. So the more I became open, and the more questions I asked the more – initially I had difficulty dealing with it because of my defensiveness, but over time my behavior changed my attitude. So putting ourselves on the line, taking the risks, asking for feedback, asking for criticism, over time will make us more optimalist, even though at the beginning it would mean getting out of our comfort zone; it would mean taking a risk. And another lesson about becoming an optimalist, which I learnt from the British philosopher Samuel Coleridge, was that – he was a self-declared perfectionist, and he wrote back in the 18th century, and couldn't really get down to write and he would procrastinate and he would experience incredible anxiety before putting pen to paper. So what he did at one point was say to himself, "Okay, I'm going to write my magnum opus, my best work, toward the end of my life. Until that time everything else is a rough draft." That liberated him. That goal freed him to enjoy the process because he didn't yet have to write his perfect work. Now he never got to write his perfect work, his magnum opus, but he did get to write hundreds and thousands of beautiful prose. Why? Because it liberated him; it no longer needed to be perfect.

And finally, what I would recommend is treating ourselves as we would treat others. So a perfectionist usually does not treat others as harshly as he or she would treat him or herself. In other words, would we be very harsh on a person if they stumbled in a speech? Would we be extremely hard on a person if they didn't get it right the first time? Of course not, so why treat ourselves using different standards? People talk about the golden rule, 'Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto yourself.' I would add the platinum rule, 'Do not do unto yourself as you would not have done unto others'.

Rachel Salaman: Tal Ben-Shahar, thank you very much for joining me.

Tal Ben-Shahar: Thank you.

Rachel Salaman: There's more about Tal and his work at his website www.talbenshahar.com. The name of his book again is The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks with another Expert Interview. Do join me then. Goodbye.