313: Rethinking Perfectionism at Work

Aoife O’Brien [00:00:10]:

I was watching a podcast on YouTube the other day, and the host said something that really stuck with me. She said something about perfectionism being her fuel, and it kind of challenged what I normally think about in relation to perfectionism. I call myself a recovering perfectionist, as I think a lot of people do, and it made me rethink my own perfectionism, and maybe that can be seen as more of a blessing. And by the way, if you’re listening to this podcast episode rather than watching, just want to let you know that it is available on YouTube as well. Happier at Work HQ this is the Happier at Work podcast. I’m your host, Aoife o’, Brien, and today’s episode is all about, you guessed it, perfectionism. I suppose the main point here is that I really want to challenge the thought that perfectionism is bad. I think it gets bad pr, I think it gets bad rap.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:02]:

We’re told done is better than perfect. And I think that’s true in some cases. But as I’ll take you through, I think there are some specific examples where it can actually be quite beneficial. And this is maybe for some of you who’ve been wrestling with that idea of perfectionism and you kind of still want to hold on to it or despite being told, just ship it, stop overthinking. Actually, you feel maybe there is something more going on here. And I kind of like that perfectionism. I like that part of myself. Now, as part of my research for this episode, I was thinking, there are obviously specific professions where perfectionism can be really beneficial.

Aoife O’Brien [00:01:45]:

So editing books is one. I’ll come back to that kind of idea in a second. But like surgeons, pilots, accountants, researchers, perfectionism is kind of important. You don’t want someone to say, when it comes to surgery, you know, done is better than perfect. You want it to go really well. You want it to actually be successful. And in my own case, when it came to publishing the book, so Thriving Talent came out in March 2026, and when it came to writing that, obviously there’s an entire process with it. So there’s the writing, then there’s making the edits, and then when it goes into all of these other different formats, you also need to check it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:02:26]:

So I was part of checking when it had been put into how it was going to appear in the book. It’s the interior layout of the book, essentially. So for some reason, some errors came up during that process, and it had been checked by someone else maybe a couple of times. And when I looked at it, and I honestly don’t know how I did this, but I was able to find more errors as I went through just kind of skipping through. I was like, there’s, there’s something that is bold there or there’s something that needs to change there or something looked off basically, or maybe there was an apostrophe missing. There were all these little things that I was able to find. Now obviously it’s better to find those things before the book goes to publication rather than after thousands of copies are printed and then you find the typo. So I managed to find those.

Aoife O’Brien [00:03:17]:

And to me it was really important to do that because I want the book to look really professional. I don’t want it to come across as, you know, sloppy in any way. So all of that to say, what we can say is that perfectionism, you can think of it as being neither good nor bad, but it’s really context dependent. Sometimes we need perfectionism and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes perfectionism is not what’s called for. All of this kind of reminds me and I always think back to this because it’s a really solid example and I’m a big fan. So David Allen talks about this idea of when do you know your work is done? And like to me that just hit me right in the feels because he’s so right. When do we ever sit down to define what done actually looks like? Never mind what good or good enough or perfect or excellent look like.

Aoife O’Brien [00:04:12]:

When do we actually clearly define when our work is finished? How do I know when something is actually done? And I think it’s really important to define those things. So if you think about what does done look like, think about, well, what does good look like? What does good enough look like? What does excellent look like in this scenario? And I think having that clarity is really important. So we know when it’s time to move on so we don’t spend hours tweaking. And if I think back to my own corporate days, that kind of tweaking was things like adding animations to a presentation, for example. So we’re delivering a client presentation, so yeah, fine, if we’re checking for typos, that’s fine. But things like adding animations, how does that add anything? And you could spend hours doing it, but actually what value is in that work that we’re actually adding to ourselves? Maybe no one has asked us to do it, but we’re doing that ourselves. I think one of the biggest challenges here is that we apply those same perfectionists standards across the board. So if you’re sending an email Then you don’t have to do the same quality standard as if you’re checking for typos in a manuscript, for example.

Aoife O’Brien [00:05:26]:

They require different things. And sometimes it’s the procrastination, it’s the fear of rejection or whatever’s going on the. That stops us from pressing send. You can think of this as judgment and it’s a kind of a capability that you can build in yourself and in other people as well. So think about again. I love this idea of expectations and setting clear expectations. Tying in and going back with this idea of what David Allen talks about by defining what does it mean when work is done or what does done actually look like. But setting clear expectations for ourselves and for other people with really helps with this.

Aoife O’Brien [00:06:06]:

Knowing which level of effort is required for which kinds of tasks. And when you’re handing a task over to someone else, being really clear about what that expectation is. So what does good enough look like? Or what are you expecting someone to actually produce for you and to what standard as well? And you may say you can get this to 80% what you think is 80% of the way there’s. Then someone else looking at that might think, well, that’s actually finished, or send it at 80% knowing that there’s the opportunity to create iterations and to build on it so that you’re not spending time by yourself tweaking and tweaking everything within an inch of its life. When we don’t have those clear expectations, we fill in the blanks either for ourselves. So if we haven’t set clear expectations for ourselves or for other people, and if we haven’t set those clear expectations, they fill in the blanks and they assume that things need to be at 100% and so they’ll tweak and they’ll make something really good. And it didn’t really require the level of effort that someone has gone to to produce it. So something to bear in mind when you’re sharing those expectations with other people, clearly define what does that actually look like.

Aoife O’Brien [00:07:19]:

If it’s not something that you’ve done before, maybe then they get involved a little bit earlier in the project. Try and understand where your thinking is going and where you need support with it. I wanted to share something a little bit more personal and where perfectionism shows up for me. So it’s been like I say, it’s really useful in certain situations when I’m preparing a keynote, for example, when I’m carrying out research, when I’m editing my book manuscript or trying to pick out Some of the typos or the errors that I found in the final manuscript that came back to me. So things like that, it’s really useful. But where it weighs me down is I can spend hours doing stuff, busy work, you might say it is important, but it’s not moving the dial necessarily in my business. So I’ll spend hours tweaking a website or tweaking something that doesn’t really need the level of effort that I put into it. And if I’m being honest, it’s because I’m avoiding the kind of stuff where this fear shows up.

Aoife O’Brien [00:08:21]:

So it could be fear, fear of rejection. It could be I’m not good enough. It could be all, any number of things. But it’s the fear and it’s the avoidance of doing those things, rather than having that growth mindset and looking for opportunities to grow by doing things like cold outreach to people to grow my business by doing those kinds of sales activities that I know will increase the bottom line in my business. And so those are the kinds of things that I avoid because I’m such a perfectionist and because I’m afraid of those fears of rejection. So you might say that perfectionism can sometimes make us feel like we’re being really productive, but actually we’re procrastinating on the thing that feels uncomfortable, that will cause us to grow. And so being aware of those things helps us to move past it helps us to move on and work on those areas of growth, rather than tweaking and tweaking the things that are not really going to make a difference, that don’t have the impact that we would like to have, that don’t have the value to the business or to the team or to your own objectives. Another area of perfectionism that I wanted to share, and again, some personal stories with this as well, is the post mortem.

Aoife O’Brien [00:09:35]:

So I have just come off a call where I interviewed someone for the podcast. And really great episode, by the way. And I made loads of notes before I recorded and I had a ton of notes and there was so much that I wanted to say. And I came off the call and I was kind of thinking, I’m not sure if I asked everything that I wanted to ask. I better go and check my notes to make sure. Now, as a perfectionist, yes, I think you can relate. That was my inherent desire to go back and check and do a postmortem and berate myself for all of the things that I didn’t ask, that I didn’t say during that podcast episode. I stopped myself from doing it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:10:19]:

But it also reminded me back about seven years ago. It was very early in my public speaking career. So I had spoken, but more internally for organizations prior to that, but in my public speaking career. And I spoke about imposter syndrome, and I stood up and I prepared really well for it. And when I came down from the stage, I thought I actually did quite a good job there. Where up until that point, I would have thought, here’s what I got wrong, here’s what I forgot to say, here’s how the audience reacted and, you know, perceiving it to be negative if people are checking their phones or whatever it might be. But that was the first time I ever thought, do you know what? Actually did kind of a good job? And here are the things that I did well. Here’s one area that I could improve for next time.

Aoife O’Brien [00:11:12]:

And that in itself caused such a shift in how I perceive myself, especially when it comes to speaking. I look for ways to improve, obviously, because I always think that there are ways that we can improve. But it’s very different than just berating yourself for everything that you got wrong. There are ways to make yourself feel better and focus on the things that you did well. This still comes up for me. I’m very, very hard on myself, but I try and focus on the things that I do well, especially when I get really positive feedback for the work that I do. So maybe for you, you want to answer these questions for yourself. If you’re a perfectionist or a recovering perfectionist or however you want to call, maybe you won’t call yourself a recovering perfectionist anymore, but maybe you’ll wear it with a badge of honor and use it.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:06]:

Deploy it in the way that it needs to be deployed, but know when not to use it as well. So three questions to ask. What works really well, what surprised me, and what’s one thing I’ll improve next time? Improvement doesn’t have to mean that you’re punishing yourself. You’re not berating yourself. It’s just looking for ways to do something better, just one thing better the next time. So maybe it’s about being more intentional about how you use your natural perfectionism. So you’re not deploying it on absolutely everything that you’re doing, but you’re thinking strategically about, where can I use this to the best of my abilities, because it is a superpower. If you use it in that way, think of it like this capability is not about producing excellent work all the time.

Aoife O’Brien [00:12:51]:

It’s about knowing when excellence is actually required.