I developed a bad case of perfectionism-procrastination after working for a toxic boss.
It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack, dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app took 3 seconds to load and show fresh data from his hotel WiFi, or it could be as simple as the UI not matching some directive he gave to the UI designers who failed to update the designs or tell us about the change. He would rant about how disappointing we were. At his worst, he fired some people on the spot for a problem that wasn't even their fault.
I quickly learned that the only way to avoid that pain was to not ship anything. The people he liked most were the ones who were operating in hypotheticals: The people who made UI designs in Figma, or the architects who drew nice diagrams about how things would work, or the people who wrote long design documents to hand to other teams. They never shipped anything for him to critique, so he thought they were the geniuses of the company. As long as they could avoid having to actually implement anything, they continued to be favorites.
It took me longer than I like to admit to shake that habit when I finally escaped. I found myself delaying shipment, pivoting from design doc to design doc, and trying to operate in that hypothetical space as long as I could. Fortunately I learned to get over it, but it was scary how much that single job could shape a large part of my personality.
You put into words something I've had a hard time understanding for a long time. Some people really do have a clear preference for people who don't ship.
Out of curiosity, what kind of background did your toxic boss have? Is it technical or business side?
I have a couple hunches for why this happens:
1. These people are dreamers and dislike people who bring them back down to reality, even if they need those people to actually build things.
2. They feel superior to people on the ground doing the building. Like they're above getting their hands dirty.
> 1. These people are dreamers and dislike people who bring them back down to reality, even if they need those people to actually build things.
I worked for a non-toxic-personality friendly boss of this type. Took me a long time to figure out how to manage upward in that case. Everything that had worked with previous "builder"-type bosses seemed to backfire and I wasn't sure why.
Because the personality was good it was especially frustrating. Deliver stuff on time without bugs or surprises, but still fail to change his mind about ambitious-yet-unrealistic goals, or put a dent in his confidence in (and preference for) the "idea people" feeding him similar goals in hypothetical-land. "But really, if you'd just build [vague idea], we'd be golden!"
Even bullies can be lazy in their metier - it's quicker and easier to find a tangible target for abuse in a finished product, and, perhaps more importantly, it doesn't risk an ego brusing when a critique of an abstract proves to be incorrect.
I've certainly seen my fair share of these types - too busy (ie. lazy) to really get stuck into detail during a project even when invited to do so, but very quick to point out an issue after a few minutes of expressly looking for one when it's too late.
They seem to see it as demonstrating their experience and superiority over others ie. "I only need a few minutes to find an issue". In my experiences, they also tend to insist on saying "everything needs to go through me", but never make time to follow through - out of laziness. This gives a high ROI on effort expended to stress created.
The best times I had with these people (when I was beyond caring) was laying low and doing launches semi covertly, so that there was time for clients to provide positive feedback and praise first. Then play dumb and deliver news about launch and feedback as a package.
Is this true? Are bullies indiscriminate and swing in all directions or do they focus on where the power dynamic benefits them? I feel like I've seen both.
Yes it could. The boss seems to show strong tendencies of narcissism. Narcissists gather so called “flying monkeys” around them which fuel their sense of superiority and they bind them through various techniques to them (until they are also discarded). In this case the narcissist the PowerPoint-mockup people are these flying monkeys, feeding the narcissist all the grandiose ideas and it gives the narcissist a high for going towards that idea - similar how somebody just announcing they will do a hard task, e.g. stop smoking will make somebody feel good immediately before even reaching that goal.
Then, the people to whom the actual task of implementing it was left can’t deliver the grandiose perfectionist idea, and the narcissistic boss can and actually wants to fiercely abuse their power over them in order to feed on the high of superiority and control over them. It’s the perfect position for this kind of person, they can feel high all the time (eventually the tolerance will kick in and the boss must leave though but this can take some time).
Organization-wise it’s a bad boss really. It’s the job of the creatives to come up with great ideas, then the boss should moderate that working together with the feedback from the implementers. Instead the boss is due to personal weakness too suggestible against the creatives and puts the damage of his own making on to the team with bullying.
Thank you for bringing narcissism to the table and explaining the flying monkeys so well!
Especially in this two staged process of designing and implementing it's easy to pick up the utopian ideas and see the realistic implementation and/or timetable on which one can blame the inperfect people not reaching the high (unreachable) goals.
This so accurately describes my own experience a couple years ago, down to the specific anecdotes, that I had to double check the username to make sure it wasn’t something I drunkenly wrote last night.
Not a toxic boss, but reading this is making me realize that I developed exactly this due to the trauma of being disabled by severe chronic fatigue, ADHD, and eventually worsening cognitive decline.
I used to enthusiastically throw myself into projects and other endeavors, but over the years, as it became impossible to think, focus, motivate myself... for nearly a decade, things have only been "possible" until I attempt them, find myself unable to, and end up crying in my bed for the five-thousandth time in my life.
To a point where even when I'm a bit better, I'm perpetually trapped in this "hypothetical space", never trying to do anything for real. Using my energy to dream about a better life and life goals in lieu of as much as lifting a finger to do any of them.
I have recognized at some point that I had something similar, but originating in my childhood. Most of the time I would be told to do something vague (e.g. clean your room), and no matter how much did I do, the feedback was usually negative (e.g. "You call this done?"), following with me getting grounded. Eventually, I've developed a mindset that told me that there's no point in trying, because it's impossible to do things properly. This has spread out into personal interests as well - I would give up quickly, because what's the point?
Aurornis really hit the nail on the head about how a toxic boss can twist your work habits into a loop of perfectionism and procrastination. It's wild how avoiding criticism can lead to playing it safe in the land of hypotheticals, instead of actually getting stuff done. And hats off to the_cat_kittles and neon_electro for recognizing the struggle and the learning curve that comes with such experiences.
Be proud of yourself for surviving that toxic environment and eventually recognizing and overcoming the negative effects it had on your own performance and behavior. You’re a survivor!
The introduction of Tacitus' Agricola is about survivorship, and it is not positive. "Few of us are left, survivors even of ourselves, with so many years of our lives gone missing." (translation from memory)
im still thinking about this because its so fundamental. it applies in almost everything. think about how many times people have called professional athletes stupid or bad. it happens all the time because the mistakes are unambiguous. but the coaches have a much longer grace period before people generally decide they are bad. when a musician messes up a piece everyone cringes and lots of people probably think that person is a failure even though they are playing at a level less than a tenth of one percent of people reach. in any discipline that can be (more or less) directly measured, lots of people perceive the people doing those disciplines to be more incompetent because their mistakes are more easily visible.
when someone who is like your old boss (i think a huge percentage of people are) finds themselves in a situation where their mistakes are unambiguous and obvious they panic and have an identity crisis. most people do not live with the accountability of their mistakes like people who make and do things with unambiguous results. it would be great if more people did, but in a way, thats the whole point of those "ideas" / bullshit jobs, to insulate you from your mistakes.
Your boss displayed the opposite behaviors most all the creativity literature says are barriers to creative expression: close-mindedness, evaluation, etc - that is, creating environments that have no psychological safety where people don’t feel comfortable expressing their ideas. Wild that this boss was involved with product development and crazy how people like this come into positions of power and just ruin shit left and right.
1. Use a issue tracker to report issues. If a ticket doesn't exist, create it.
2. Stick to the facts: what happened, and what should have happened instead? Remove all the noise such as blame, emotional reactions, etc. Less drama, more clarity.
3. If the root cause is something dumb such as the hotel WiFi, close the ticket as "can't reproduce" and add an explanation.
You can avoid reading the text, then use a LLM prompt such as: "Can you rephrase this removing all emotional reactions and extracting only the parts that relate to reproduction steps".
Do not waste energy on toxic people. You are not a therapist, an emotional support animal, a sandbag or a doormat. You are a software engineer.
Unless you are getting rich you should avoid working there.
Hmm, that is an interesting idea. I bet someone could write an app that rephrased incoming messages through an LLM to match some metric you chose. You'd definitely need the ability to read the original message and there's about a million and a half ways out could go wrong but it's interesting nonetheless. Just evaporate toxicity from all communications before they even reach your brain.
I probably have a whole personal blog of my own on the topic, dear as it is to my soul.
My two main pieces of advice: The bar is very very low, and share your burden quickly.
99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly.
I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a "this is great" that now I frequently just send over pseudocode, whiteboard sketches, and bullet point design docs to just get going on the feedback loop. Nobody has ever said "this is so bad we can't use any of it."
I also realized I do much better finishing other people's work than starting my own .. and so does almost everyone else. Bringing other people in overcomes "the boredom paradox" of a looming deadline - working with other people has its own challenges, but it is definitely not boring!
One specific thing I did that helped a few years ago at my precious company was I told my team, wrote in my email signature, ran a small study group, etc. On grit, procrastination, and "growth mindset" and just made a very intentional effort to tell people how I struggled with this problem.
So many people shared the problem! It really gave us a nice community and helped us (and management) recognize some of these issues, lesrn some new techniques, and get better at coaching, setting expectations, and ultimately managing the work.
So maybe last piece of advice is be open if you have these issues.
> 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly.
Agree with this. Shipping is the most important quality. The faster you ship the faster you would be enjoying anything
There is something to be said for the good old days when we modified PHP files in an editor over FTP :)
Never done it professionally. But developing in production would make me ship faster, and using php would probably limit my tendency to make gold plated solutions.
In my C# days, before CI/CD was fashionable, the pinnacle for me was using the "Deploy" button that would compile, run some tests and then deploy. Got a bug? Fix in 5 minutes. Got a typo? Seconds.
Code and software quality was surprisingly better than it is today.
Today? In a process heavy company with Jira, PMs and QA it can become a week-long affair, unless I (the lead developer) bypass parts of the process.
The perfectionism is in the process, but the outcome is not quality. Come to think of it, perfectionism never really leads to anything of quality.
> Come to think of it, perfectionism never really leads to anything of quality.
TeX stood the test of time and it was released as close to perfection as it gets in non-life-critical software. (One could argue it wasn’t perfectionism at work, but sound top-down design.)
Definitely right!
Three improvements of 70% quality is much more Outcome as a single improvement with 95% quality in the same time. (Let's be honest, 100% isn't reachable even for the perfect perfectionist).
It even leads to more different changes and more ground to improve upon again.
That's roughly what I did. I often do side projects with two goals: there's something I want to exist, and something I want to learn. And I'll learn that thing by using it to build something I want.
At one point, the thing I wanted to learn was "call something done". So I did that, and because it was a side project with learning as an explicit goal, I was able to actually do that - it was literally impossible to ship something imperfect, as shipping would already mean I'd perfectly reached my goal.
But that turned out to be enough faking it to make it - the feeling of shipping it felt good, and gave me the confidence to spend a small amount of time to polish my side projects up enough for shipping, rather than a large amount of time to do everything I want. And it's way more fun now to be able to occasionally pull up an old side project of mine that's still usable, because I got it to a usable state in the first place.
The best I’ve been able to do is: if perfection == high quality, then shipping smaller iterations faster is the most cost-effective means of improving quality.
I did that too :) I learned that sometimes, I'd ship the perfect wrong thing. And to avoid that I'd ship earlier versions faster and get back to it after feedback.
Basically I want TDD(make it run!). I want something runs and everyone can see it. Ship faster, get it run faster, get feedback faster, improve faster, iterate faster.
>I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a "this is great"
Great if this feedback is from users; not great if it's from somebody who's just been waiting for you to finish it so that they can sell it. Unfortunately in a big-company environment like the one I work in, the initial and dominant feedback is usually from the latter.
I guess I'm just not as cynical as that, or maybe I'm more clear eyed about my role in the chain of GTM, but I don't see what's so "unfortunate" about the scenario you described.
It's so relatable, especially after learning that I might have an ADHD condition. I also learned that it's linked to perfectionism and procrastination, traits that have defined me all my life.
I'm still somewhat of a perfectionist, an old habit, but I'm now much more aware that a quick feedback loop and shipping things are far more valuable than perfect, over-optimized work. People may love such work, but it's often overkill and involves too many unnecessary hours of effort.
> One specific thing I did that helped a few years ago at my precious company was I told my team, wrote in my email signature, ran a small study group, etc. On grit, procrastination, and "growth mindset" and just made a very intentional effort to tell people how I struggled with this problem.
„ We need to think about failure differently. I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth.“
When in high school, I returned home after a ski weekend with friends. When I returned home, my relatives, who didn't ski, asked if I fell at all during the weekend. I remarked that I had, especially while navigating some expert trails. They consoled me saying "that's OK, maybe you'll do better next time."
I was confused at first until I realized that they thought of falling as a tragic outcome instead of a natural part of the learning process.
Probably mostly a function of them having no idea what skiing is like. If you never fall you either only use boring routes or ski very slowly - or you are professional skier and have such a breakneck speed you can’t fall (but even then it happens looking at Schumacher)
The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom.
This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally. Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will eventually crave some mental stimulation.
And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding and work on it with renewed interest and focus.
Of course, this requires some discipline and self-awareness. You have to resist the temptation of checking your phone, browsing the web, or doing anything else that distracts you from your boredom.
Maybe there is some psychological reason for it but I have found this technique to be very effective for overcoming procrastination and getting things done.
> The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom.
From my experience with young people, the worst procrastinators will often choose boredom over the task they're avoiding. Doing nothing at all is less painful to them than doing the work they're avoiding.
This is even more true for the perfectionist procrastinators: They are avoiding some exaggerated hypothetical pain that might come from failing at a task. If they never finish the task, they can't experience that disappointment. Some of them will happily do nothing at all, walk around, or daydream to avoid even engaging with their computer, because engaging with the computer would remind them that they're procrastinating, which would remind them that failure to deliver is also imperfection.
> Of course, this requires some discipline and self-awareness.
Unfortunately, the people with the worst procrastination problems are in their situation largely due to a lack of discipline and self-awareness in some variation.
Agree with this, from personal experience. The conventional idea of “boredom” doesn’t fit well, because we have everything we need and love already in our head, which makes leaving it painful and staring at a wall for hours a great time. Incidentally my “bad boss” was my father, who had two emotions; Preoccupied and angry.
This is further complicated by things like demand avoidance, ADHD, burnout (autistic people may have difficulty even recognizing that they are chronically stressed and anxious to the point of shutdown, until they just crash completely) or other executive function related pathologies, of which there are likely multiple involved if there is a noticeable problem.
The point is, I guess, the worst procrastinators don't choose boredom, they choose some mindless but not boring activity like endless scrolling through social media.
Thank you, that was my point but I should have been more precise.
I heard that some boredom may be "good" to "reset" dopamine systems and try to fix procrastination issues (especially since I have diagnosed ADHD.
So I tried to get bored. And I observed that being really bored is incredibly hard when you have a smartphone (or a laptop or …).
The point of my question is that I often physically looks like I’m bored but actually if i have a screen in front of me, I’m never bored. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the people that looks like they prefer boredom are really bored or a just look like they are.
For me, I procrastinate to get the reward of making progress without having to do the hard thing that I'm supposed to be doing. It is an emotional thing, almost entirely; I feel low (perhaps for unrelated reasons - I was bereaved of my mother 18 months ago) and so seek quick rewards through "work", just not the work I'm being paid for.
So, I got diverted from a difficult task and spent time doing a task that created a very useful and time-saving tool but which I want being paid for and which I know I can't share because I was doing something other than my job ... it was rewarding in the sense of 'I created something useful' and so made me feel better about myself until I reflected that I was further behind on the task I was getting assessed for.
I'd be curious how quickly neurochemical stimulation levels reset to baseline, on order-of-hours scale.
Given that afaik tasks seeming "hard" can be a consequence of bathing in hyper-stimulation from media/games, thereby raising the "much be this stimulating" minimum about what normal tasks provide, does 30 minutes or an hour of boredom reset some of that?
An alternative to boredom is something else more important even less desirable that needs to be done, that drives progress on what is being procastrinated. Unfortunately, it only shifts the problem elsewhere.
I have seen it called "structured procrastination".
The idea is that instead of trying to focus on what's important, leaving out everything else, make a long task list, including things that are not that important, but still productive. So that you have plenty of things to do to avoid doing the top items.
To avoid shifting the problem, it suggests self-deception, so that you put items on top that appear important, but are not really. So that you do the really important ones in order to avoid doing the falsely important ones.
I call this procasti-working and it is absolutely my most productive space. I don't really see it as a problem though; I might be completing lower-priority tasks, but they would have later become high- or critical-priority tasks; it's ultimately a net win.
This does not solve the issue of procrastination at all. A common myth is that procrastinators are simply lazy people who don't do anything useful. This is not the case. Many procrastinators are super-efficient at working on what they need to do; it's just that they are procrastinating on another useful task/project that objectively should have a priority.
There are well known psychology experimental results to support your hunch. When the alternative is total lack of mental stimulation, people will perform all kinds of otherwise unattractive activities.
There is this study where they let people sit alone in a room with the option to shock themselves. Many shocked themselves. I thinks it’s this one [0].
The article hints at psychology and then fails to dive into it.
Perfectionism, only when intentionally and cognitively executed in an orderly fashion, is linked to extremely high consciousness and extremely high consciousness when not properly managed is highly correlated with anxiety. The slang for this is anal-retentive.
This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically concerned with high measures of neuroticism but a person can score extremely low in neuroticism and yet still suffer symptoms of anxiety from too high of consciousness when their concerns for orderliness prevents timely accomplishment of a task. That specific set of personalities defines obsessive-compulsive disorder in contrast to anxiety in general.
The solution to this is to learn to accept and contribute a wrong outcome, as opposed to taking no action at all, which requires a tremendous amount of careful practice. The ability to accept that solution is even culturally reinforced as identified in one of the Hofstede cultural indexes: uncertainty avoidance.
> This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically concerned with high measures of neuroticism but a person can score extremely low in neuroticism and yet still suffer symptoms of anxiety from too high of consciousness when their concerns for orderliness prevents timely accomplishment of a task. That specific set of personalities defines obsessive-compulsive disorder in contrast to anxiety in general.
Just to clarify, you're still referring specifically to "perfectionist" personality types? Because last time I checked anxiety is _not_ correlated specifically with any personality traits but rather spans a broad spectrum of personality types.
The solution is to understand that no amount of guilt/regret is going to change the past and that no amount of internal anxiety is going to help the future.
Fear of losing control (and the thought of everything blowing up) => Perfectionism => „Let me be 1000% prepared before I start doing it“ => Prepares endlessly => external pressure rises above threshold => fear of consequences creates panick => starts doing the job => creates a reference experience („this was traumatic; next time I need to be prepared to avoid this kind of stress“) => until next „important“ task lands on desk.
I tend to think that mostly people with a lot of capacity for creating mental images (who can freak themselves out) are prone to procrastination.
Edit: Apparently it is more complex than that. I believe that self-worth also plays a role (fear of not delivering as good as one would like to), also ADHS (jumping to a thousand other things and losing focus). Generally fear plays a role. Meditation helps. Anything that helps to relax (running, breathing exercises).
Two tiny hacks changed my lifelong procrastination and people-pleasing nature.
1. Instead of “what will they think?” always ask yourself the alternative question, “what do I want?”. This saves you a lot of time and trouble. Do what you like to see what people will say. Make it a fun game.
2. If something takes less than 2 minutes, just go do it. Make it your “kick”. After few weeks, work your way to turn 2 minutes to 5 then 10 minutes. You will get so much done because of the inertia.
For me, what help a lot is reframing feedback, whatever it is, as opportunity for learning, and not something you need to fear, ashamed, or get rid of(to keep face) Embrace it. See it with the eyes of curiosity, and not fear.
Still do your best, yes, but not overly anxious about things you can't control, e.g. what people think.
In recent years the increase in launching products and updates without in-depth checks and with unfinished features is becoming routine... as if achieving the introduction of low quality products in the market were the goal, under the "productivity" shield.
"Productivity", the abstract word that looks as if it were invented by the "flat-earthers" to sell books. Just a drug for to make the clients to pay for being alpha-testers, without remorse.
Not easy to talk about perfectionism. In the last decade the threshold changed much, unfortunately. The main problem with this is in the retro-feeding, low quality here, there, affect the time needed for to advance in better products because there are more issues to solve, that of course will be "un-productive" to solve, in loop. Enjoy.
Nailed it. With a small caveat. It’s more a matter of executive functioning [1], less one of (strictly speaking) motivation (although that is how it often feels, so I understand why that’s used as a kind of shorthand). I can very easily feel and be motivated to accomplish some task, but still fail to make any progress (or even begin) until it’s deadline time. Then comes feelings of guilt and self-loathing because I just can’t seem to get my shit together (despite knowing that that’s a wildly wrong way of framing it).
It is horrible. But it’s manageable on most days (and yes, I’m medicated and have been since early adulthood). And honestly, having people in your life who understand your condition and can help pick you up sometimes [2], is a huge part of coping.
[2] I do not mean do stuff for you. For me, when I’m in that place where I’m so frustrated that the only options are either to primally scream or to sit in the corner and cry, a simple fucking hug is like a miracle drug.
FYI, the Russel Barkley video from the grandparent comment is a controversial figure. He presents a lot of his own pet ADHD theories as if they were facts.
He's one of the OG internet ADHD influencers, back when ADHD was still commonly stigmatized. Someone I know joked that if you watched enough Russel Barkley videos, anyone could convince themselves they had ADHD.
ADHD has totally ruined so many aspects of my life. It's a straight-up disability for me. It stops mattering how "gifted" I am when the ability to use that gift is constantly revoked whenever I find something new to use it on. It's like my brain is constantly trying to patch an exploit, like it never wants me to actually use any of my potential.
Meds helped for only a few months. Then my brain patched that exploit too. :/
Procrastination is not a new thing. And ADHD is a pretty rare condition - just look at the diagnosis rate from country to country. The US has the highest one because doctors here are basically legal Speed drug dealers - for children.
The author of the Search Engine pod just had a two-parter about his "ADHD":
(The history of regulating Speed in the US is actually fascinating).
I could focus just fine all my life, then suddenly I couldn't. I've talked to other adults who are experiencing the same.
And it's funny how people get super torqued when you say something like this. There is a lot of room between "I have legit ADHD" and "I am addicted to my phone".
Sometimes I could not start a project at work for weeks - then I got off Twitter.
Just remember adults here are also dealing with being diagnosed for the first time, and all of the stigma around how this affects kids affects adults, too.
My personal family experience had been that today in the US it's very hard to get an ADHD diagnosis, at least if the patient is smart and manages to achieve decent school grades.
The speed for children scare mongering is pathetic and ignorant and betrays your lack of experience with children with this and related condition.
Lots of kids have behavioral and impulse control problems. If you give them amphetamines you see exactly the same problems, but with the boundless energy amphetamines give you. When you give amphetamines to ADHD children they visibly and noticeably become calmer, quieter, and more focused. If you did not come into it with the predetermined idea that this drug is "speed" you would certainly not arrive there from watching the behavior of medicated children with ADHD.
You were addicted to twitter good for you for solving your problems. Don't extrapolate that experience out to kids though. ADHD is fucked up, life ruining stuff. Look at the rates for drug abuse, car crashes and incarceration for adults with untreated ADHD. This sort of scare mongering makes it less likely for children to access effective treatment when it can be most impactful on their lives. It is harmful and you should be ashamed.
Thanks for your comment. I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult late (after 4 x 2 hours sessions with extensive questionnaires and iq test). Originally I was really worried that I'd be incorrectly diagnosed with ADHD despite not having it so was reassured by how serious the process was.
One thing that jumped out at me though with regards to your comment about medicine. I started taking concerta and quickly noticed that if I'm the slightest bit sleep deprived, concerta doesn't amp me, it doesn't make me have more energy but instead it makes me sleepy. With it, I'm visibly calmer and quieter and I also have a lot less craving for chocolates (which I'd keep eating non-stop during the day). It's quite magical actually.
I have a suspicion the high rate of ADHD may be related to the low rate of employment in kinaesthetic jobs (eg construction, farming, even to a great degree historical militaries) and high rates of high-attention-demand work - which yes, I'll include most fast food industry.
That said ADHD runs through my family like a (mad) bull in a china shop, and yes, hence very much voting this comment up. Lots of individual things can help - getting enough sleep for one, enough exercise ... but at the end of the day, one has to be reasonable and accept that medicines help.
An aside : children under a certain age, one can't (safely) detect ADHD because the symptoms are "ordinary behaviour". This is why I suspect there are lifestyle components too...
Counterpoint: ADHD diagnoses are a hot topic among kids and junior devs right now. Many of them self-diagnose based on Reddit, Twitter, or TikTok information that tells them that ADHD explains away all of their perceived shortcomings: It's the reason they're not motivated, it's the reason they didn't attend an Ivy League school, it's the reason they don't earn as much as their peers, it's the reason their last significant other broke up with them, and so on (these are all real examples from conversations I've had with mentees since ADHD started trending on social media during COVID)
One of the most concerning patterns I've seen is that these people go out and find a doctor who will prescribe them stimulants (during COVID it was as easy as following ads on TikTok, filling out a form, and having a <5 minute virtual visit with a doctor, believe it or not) and then many of them get worse.
By this I mean the stimulant medication supercharges their actual underlying problem: The anxious procrastinators become even more anxious. The perfectionist procrastinators become even more obsessed with perfecting things. The video game procrastinators now game for harder and longer with stimulants in their system. The hobby/side project procrastinators are now putting in more hours on their side project and have even less time for the work or studies they're supposed to be doing.
I'm not saying that ADHD isn't real, because it's definitely real and debilitating. I'm saying that we have a real problem with the current trend of "ADHD explains everything". Social media has supercharged this trend by bombarding people with videos that position ADHD as a perfect excuse and explanation for their frustrations. They are frighteningly good at finding a video or TikTok or Reddit post that tells them exactly what they want to hear, and they're also good at skipping past any content that doesn't confirm their beliefs.
I have extended family who are in grade school education, and the trend goes all the way into 5th and 6th grade from what they tell me: Kids using "I have ADHD" as an excuse for everything and then trying to show their teacher a TikTok that explains why they shouldn't be held accountable for late homework, low grades, or behavioral problems. They're not alone, it's a common topic in /r/teachers on Reddit too ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/12cfdj3/i_have_ad... )
>> It's generally a sign of progress when diagnoses that were once whispered in shameful secrecy enter our everyday vocabulary and shed their stigma. But especially online, where therapy "influencers" flood social media feeds with content about trauma, panic attacks and personality disorders, greater awareness of mental health problems risks encouraging self-diagnosis and the pathologizing of commonplace emotions what Dr. Foulkes calls "problems of living." When teenagers gravitate toward such content on their social media feeds, algorithms serve them more of it, intensifying the feedback loop.
Nope, I don’t have any of the typical ADHD symptoms (inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity — rather the opposite), but still procrastinate to problematic levels due to perfectionism.
Procrastination due to perfectionism (instead of working on the thing you want to do perfectly) is also due to emotional discomfort avoidance (because the procrastination takes your mind off the imperfections associated with what you ought to be working on).
I’ve long held the belief that procrastination is the rational response in a low return on investment (ROI) situation. This seems to fit nicely into that framework: if significant investment is required, you only value perfect output and are doubtful it can be achieved, then the expected ROI is pretty low.
Perfectionism is too positive a word for this (“my greatest weakness? I am a perfectionist.) Fear of failure feels more apt. I hesitate starting/taking the next action because I am not confident I can land the goal all the way. IE - I fear trying to do X and not nailing it more than I fear not even trying it in the first place.
Like many fears it is usually inappropriate and unhelpful. In reality you are almost always further ahead in life if you try even if you don’t get to the outcome you envisioned.
I just saw a simple differentiation between daydreaming (creative/analytic) and detailed planning and execution (productive).
Seen that way you'd need to take care to not fall back into that creative-only daydream mode when you actually need/want to be productive. So you would need to steadily remind you to actually continue with concrete execution planning instead of mentally optimizing models (which of course itself is - and feels - productive and maybe even more important/urgent, but not in the ouput-oriented way you'd like/need to achieve in that actual production task).
Not sure if it actually helps, but besides that perfectionism and "just do it" issue/solution pair it might be a useful perspective and concrete criterion to keep one focused on the task of finishing. I'll try to include it in the repertoire at least.
I had an instructor for a seminar that I took, keep repeating the phrase “We need to know what 'done' looks like.”
Another manager I worked with, said “The #1 feature of this product is 'Ship'.”
In the app we’re about to release, we don’t have any schedule pressure. We can release when we want.
I found that the rest of the team was in “Perma-Tweak” mode. Lots of “Just one more thing.”
I realized that it was never going to ship, so I set an arbitrary date of … today.
In true software development tradition, we’ll be late, but not by much. Also, we have a great excuse. The CEO had a baby (ahead of schedule, but the deadline was quite firm).
A true perfectionist such as myself must go through every social media feed before doing more demanding work. Those unclicked links, notifications and red dots must be cleanced.
If you are into the psychological aspects of procrastination, I've found the book Procrastination by Burka and Yuen [1] an amazing read. Perfectionism is one of the themes but apparently there can be multiple, independent sources.
I have a pet peeve about the term perfectionism - it assumes the target of the idealized 'perfect' state is something other than the absolutely guaranteed limited resource in the world - time.
Every self-proclaimed perfectionist should start caring about time as much as they do about the object they are obsessing over. They'll then see the tradeoff in being less of a ^perfectionist^ in that thing and being more ^perfectionist^ about time.
I've struggled with perfectionism procrastination. For example, I've tried in the past to start a weekly newsletter for my blog but was never consistent with it.
In the middle of November, I started a daily (M-F) newsletter on topics related to DevOps. I've been consistent with it ever since.
The strategies the article outlines that have helped me the most are breaking things down into small pieces and starting small.
Also, by making my newsletter daily, it took a lot of pressure off me. I didn't feel like I had to have a "hit" every article like with weekly or monthly cadences. If the article sucked, then tomorrow is a new day with a new article.
As a public open source (yep, open source can be private) programmer (currently x86_64 assembly), and I am very aware of this pitfall.
It is very important to move forward in code, because you cannot predict how will actually end up a complex program: you need to have all the (sane) features in to actually know. Since code is all about trade-offs, there is "no perfect".
You have to be carefull at avoiding falling into a mental spinning loop about this.
Once you have a reasonable minimum of usable features in, publish it. It help breaking such mental loop.
For instance, currently writing a printf implementation, and printf specs are already brain damaged by themselves, so I am not looking for perfection, far from it. I did set myself a minimal set of features (full format decoding, hexadecimal and byte strings) before publishing it. Until it does not require the complexity of a compiler, does a good enough job, I'll be happy.
Sometimes it is not about perfectionism, but a question of resourses required to achieve something reasonably working: you have a montain to deal with just to get something minimaly working, and you are given a spoon... when you are lucky.
As I said in my post, I did not release it yet, and it will be very incomplete. But I am not alone, and some did assembly written printf like functions (gogol).
The actual real way to work around the inappropriate complexity of that function is to remove it and switch to a brutal "put string" with string conversion functions (with space allocated on the stack). In the end it would be not that much more work in most cases, then in the end I may not even use my assembly code, but lower some printf function usage to what I said.
Isn't assembly programming already a form of perfectionism in itself. Compilers do the job well enough 99.9% of the times. If you are in the 0.1% where writing assembly is justified, you are probably also expected to put many, many times more effort on details most programmers don't care or even don't know about.
Yes, I think it's even less than 0.1%. Assembly should mostly be written as a target for a compiler backend or to inline a hotspot only when it is proven that the compiler can't do it for you. Very few are in either of these two situations outside of artificial environments like a class.
Just to be independent from those grotesquely and absurdely massive and complex compilers(gcc|clang/llvm), justify the additional amount of work for myself.
Not to mention that from the perspective of the life cycle of tons of system software components out there, the actual coding is not that much.
I'm guessing it's referring to the "corporate open source" ecosystem where Google and similar companies make code public but everything else is closed. There is no collaboration, no public roadmaps, no influence given to the community and such. Not sure it's a vital distinction, for me both are as public/private as the other, but that's the only meaning I could try to extract from that...
> For example, perfectionistic students might be so critical of themselves for making mistakes in school assignments, that they will postpone doing homework to avoid dealing with the associated negative emotions.
From the very beginning, I skimmed the rest. Surely, this can be reduced to
> Avoid dealing with the associated negative emotions.
Do have any advice for how to deal with the associated negative emotions?
They seem kind of endless, and I'm not really sure what to do with them. I've tried things like mindfulness, meditation, journaling, talking about them and so on. But they just keep coming back, it's like they can't be resolved. It's quite painful, and I'm at a loss.
Fantastic article, I’m perfectionist to the bones, and as the article states, it does cause procrastination for the “personal” tasks I have (one time it took me 3months to perfect a resume, and the same reason why my personal site is not yet complete), however, for work related, I do not procrastinate but I ended up overworking extra hours from my personal time to perfect the little details about whatever I’m doing, mostly details no one notices except me!
> Forgive yourself for past procrastination
And this is an important point too, for the personal tasks and especially when some time passes due to procrastination without doing the task, it gets even harder to get back into the tasks simply thinking “if I didn’t procrastinate I would have done by now..” and it demoralizes me more and never start that said task..
In my experience, perfectionism is crafted post-procrastination. It probably makes no sense, but the mind often does this convoluted thing in order to protect procrastination.
Life is harsh, sure, but "perfectionism," is a terrible and over-freighted word for someone stuck in a double bind and suffering as the result of it. Consider the situations from which someone might acquire a pathological fear of some kinds criticism. A huge likelihood is that as the result of submitting to uncertainty they have been:
- personally abused and shamed
- made the object of sadism or cruelty
- humiliated to their peers
- had important things taken from them
- been isolated
- lost an important relationship
If you know someone suffering from a bind like that, find a way to tell them that "this is not that," and you can have a big impact on their life.
I don't understand the purpose of taking a good word "perfectionism" for a pathological fear of criticism and rejection, and replacing it with a random incomplete list of things that might have caused a pathological fear of criticism and rejection.
If you consider what the perfectionism is the effect of, it's easier to unwind than just saying, "oh, you're in a hole, you should stop being in a hole."
Describing anything as an 'ism' is a thought terminating judgment of it, and not a meaningful abstraction for it that yields information about what it might be caused by.
Apparently there was a job interview "trick" a while back that said that perfectionism was a great option to answer a question for your weakness with a strength.
I never understood who would think this. A core problem of real world economy is that you never have enough time and need to manage it accordingly. The sad truth is, if you dont compensate you will never finish your task as a perfectionist. You will always get half backed solutions that your boss needs to tear away from your very protesting hands. It requires working on yourself to not do that.
A lack of problem appropriate resource management is very much a weakness you need to overcome.
you cannot turn mammals into efficient obedient workers and expect them to have a sane mental health.
we're mammals with inflated brains, anxiety and depression, and it's too soon since we were hunter gatherers living in caves, we barely started working in cubicles and that's a small sample of the population.
I agree, procrastination to me seems like an emotional problem, it's not a time management problem. I see a lot of young people these days seem to think they need the right app or secret system to fix there issues, I see them asking questions on reddit blaming the todo list app they are using for not getting things done.
The thing to me seems, that doing anything has a high cost, that the mind wants to protect us from that, doing nothing is safer, I think it's that system that comes in to protect us.
If we do something, it might be disappointing, it might not be as we expect. Even small things, order something from amazon, you have to wait in to get it, the delivery might get messed up, it might be the wrong thing, it might not work etc, doing something requires more doing, it increases the changes of frustration/annoying things to happen, when doing noting often seems like it doesn't cause much issue. This is perhaps why even the smaller tasks are an issue, because the downsides of not doing it are less apparent. It's no wonder we want to procrastinate.
The trick I think is to meditate on the idea of momento mori, as the stoics did, remember your time here is limited and also reflect on the negative of not having done or achieved things, because the mind automatically considers the negative of doing something and wants to protect you from that.
The site is full of good information, but I agree it feels too search-engine optimized. It's not well structured for a large portion of the target audience (ADD/ADHD people). Articles are too wordy, there are no article or section summaries, and the number of internal links does not help people focus on the article they read.
“Nearly done” is sometimes a hidden euphemism for “I feel bad about not having finished this yet, and I fear that others may accordingly look upon me unkindly, so I try to verbally minimize the unfinishedness, and I may yet get lucky and be able to finish it reasonably quickly, so it’s not an outright lie”.
It's also easy to conflate perfectionism with excellence to rationalize shit work. Excellence is ships good shit but doesn't waste time on unreasonable shit or analysis paralysis. Experimentation, learning, and multiple iterations allow improvements to eventually reach a satisficing threshold good enough to ship.
One thing that made this worse for me is that it actually worked for the first 18 years or so of my life. School work was easy enough that I could be a perfectionist and actually get rewarded for it. But now that the work piles up it's a recipe for anxiety and failure.
I feel like the term perfectionism should be changed. Most people use it as a crutch. Friend - “I don’t do things bad because I’m a perfectionist. “ when in fact he didn’t do things because he was a “perfectionist”. Just call them non-risk takers.
There is truth that at times procrastination is tied to perfectionism, but I'd wager that the cause of procrastination 9/10 times is that we choose to do something that is more enjoyable to us over something that is less.
I don't know if I'm in the minority or the majority, but I can say my experience definitely doesn't match the view you're invoking.
When I procrastinate due to my perfectionism, I pretty much never do something enjoyable instead. Rather, I frequently lament that I don't have enough time for fun activities.
When I'm procrastinating in a WFH setup I could easily play video games, watch a show/movie, read a book instead, but don't. It's almost as like a punishment, rather than a reward.
Seems like it. I don't think the correlation described is false.
What you're saying about people procrastinating for other reasons, is the difference between the phrase "one reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism" and the phrase "the only reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism".
As in, people can procrastinate for any of multiple reasons, and perfectionism is one of those reasons.
I'm similar and I get what you mean, but I'm not sure it's a positive. Some times I waste a lot of time trying to find the perfect solution, can't find it, give up and just do the best I know how to do. Almost always, while doing that, I discover better ways to do things and often this is nå iterative process where I pretty much start over multiple times until I'm happy with the result.
I don't think the procrastination is useful. I think it's better to just get started and do anything. That way you learn and make progress.
Uhm... I didn't read. And, I'll comment anyway. Sorry if I miss a point or two. I did read the whole thread, though (116 comments as per now).
Reason was not "Too long" as I never even clicked the link. It was due to the link title "solvingprocrastination", as that name framed procrastination as a thing that needed to be "solved" somehow.
I'm sure that for some, sometimes that is the case. For me, not much so.
See, procrastination is a tool. It allows my subconscious to review and analyse a problem field while I keep my conscious self engaged with something else. Preferably solving some other issue. Rarely entertainment. I guess the situations where I'd want to peruse entertainment are not that often situations where I have important stuff to do, but I don't know. (I'm thinking mostly @job here, not leisure time)
What I do when faced with a problem that needs a solution, but for some reason or other I have no obvious "attack vector" (just to make a poor pun on the HN site name) it this: I do nothing. That is, I do something of course, especially if it's at $job: I do something else. Go solve some other task. While I do that the part of me that excels in solving really complicated stuff does what it does best.
This will not bring me the perfect solution. Most of the time it will not even bring me closer to the solution. All the while I'm doing something else entirely, so I don't even expect progress on the issue I put on the mental parking lot for a while.
But, somehow, when I start the task that I postponed, this happens: I really start it. I focus, I get going. Implement things, analyze and break down, and become productive. From square one. Thanks to, I believe, doing nothing for a while.
I’ve never really thought of my procrastination as coming from perfectionism as applied to the work I’m producing, but on reflection, I realized it often comes from self-disappointment (which is perhaps a form of perfectionism). Eg, I procrastinated on writing my research papers in grad school, but it was because I was disappointed in my ideas (or lack thereof), not because I feared not being able to make the current work sufficiently perfect.
Maybe it's paradoxical, but I think some combination of working on OSS broadly and using Nix in particular have helped me fight an inclination towards perfectionistic procrastination.
I still prefer to build a working prototype in private rather than flail in public, but the relative ease of integrating publicly-available sources means I get immediate leverage from ~publishing everything I depend on.
I've had less success extending that to writing, though.
The most effective antidote to procrastination for me is to get up at 5am.
I have literally nothing to do for 4 hours, and I'm awake, and I have loads of energy, and no one else is up, so I may as well just do that thing I've been putting off.
Also, literally just starting the task, regardless of how I feel. That works too.
I think I struggle with this as well. I was recently watching an episode of Adam Savage on YouTube and he said something that reasonated with me related to this. He said, it's not about getting it right it's about trying new things.
I think I struggle with this as well. I was recently watching an episode of Adam Savage and he said something that reasonated with me related to this. He said, it's not about getting it right it's about trying new things.
It's a correlation, not a causation, in my experience.
It's likely that the brain chooses the path of least resistance toward dopamine.
Sometimes, just choosing to not be lazy clears it because then not being lazy and doing the darn thing provides enough of a dopamine hit in itself.
It can be changed consciously.
There is also the fear of the unk own but one has to then know that no matter what, they will figure it out. That can be a self-confidence issue. Related to the first point still.
Also when only God is perfect and we are all sinners, this fights better procrastination than when the whole socio-culture is based on the human-god gnosis.
One of the best ways for me to avoid procrastinating on task X is to have some other task Y, and to procrastinate on Y by working on X.
Obviously this requires some mental gymnastics to eventually complete both X and Y, or to come up with some task Y that feels important but actually is not. But it works great.
The reason we fear shipping is that we know there is an absolute truth out there that nobody made any effort to find. ONLY if you ship that eternal fundamental solution have you made anything interesting.
Everything is shit, think before you act! It's better to do nothing, than to deliver more shit.
> It's better to do nothing, than to deliver more shit.
How are you supposed to get better at delivering anything if you won't deliver until you have something "perfect"?
Part of the process of getting better is to be shit for a while, while you figuring things out.
Common saying when making music is that probably your first 100 songs will be absolutely trash, so better get those out of the door ASAP, so you can get to the good stuff :) Practice is the only way to get better, and your output will probably suck for a while, but we all sucked at one point so it's OK.
I meant do mistakes that you don't ship. And think before you make mistakes you don't plan to ship...
I know that it's hard to build the intuition and sharp judgment without failing, but with time anyone can dismiss mistakes in their head. Only money makes you make mistakes because you are 1) pressed for time 2) greedy.
Money IS the problem, soon money will be the problem of the past though (energy is the final problem), so that wasted time (most of 4 billion man centuries) is lost forever in a puff of smoke.
Lots of tongue in cheek comments for such a very serious issue.
Please know that perfectionism is often fear-based and trauma-based. Learning to recognise the underlying fear and trauma, and working through them, will help with both perfectionism and procrastination. In my experience, there are very few quick wins, only long methodical work to get through the underlying issues.
The best way to do that is with the help of a mental health professional (should be first # in that article).
I’ve heard about the paradox of announcing plans before. It is intriguing.
In light of the need for community, talking about plans might be seen as a way to search for ideas that could have group buy-in and become something to undertake together. Failure to move forward on those plans would reflect that the group interest just wasn’t there. The mistake would have been in assuming you would have ever pursued the goal independently, the social impulse to share could have been the hint.
Shared interests between friends can help individual interests and goals become collective ones.
Ecclesiastes: one may be overcome (by the exhaustion of going to the gym), two can defend themselves (against lapsing on their New Year’s resolution). A three-ply cord is not easily broken.
That's interesting! Although I haven't invested any thought in it, I would've assumed that announcing plans would have the opposite effect because people are now watching and know what you're trying to achieve, so you'd be more motivated to avoid losing face. Thanks for the article — I'll have to check it out!
Personally, it would make me feel a burden of shame to have announced a goal and then had a setback, which would become a greater discouragement then just facing a setback if I had not made a big deal about it in the first place.
It doesn't though, as long as you're willing to throw yourself out there. Meetup groups is a great way to meet fellow nerds, especially if you share interests. You'll probably meet some shitty people sometime, just stay clear and keep trying, you'll eventually find at least one or two people who you fit with :)
Acquaintances perhaps, but I wouldn’t say actual friends. I could try it again though. I don’t/can’t use social media so when I got rid of that years ago, almost everyone I knew then went with it.
Friends are just acquaintances you know better than others. You start as acquaintances and as you develop the relationship, you'll eventually be friends.
Some people have so good relationships they even use the label "bestie", which is just a really good friend, who at the beginning surely was a acquaintance :)
Thanks for your input. Being honest, my situation has been like this for so long now I’ve given up hope and lost interest in it ever changing. Used to my own loneliness nowadays so it doesn’t really matter. Fine with being someone who is only ever in the background of other people’s day.
For the past eight years I’ve been telling myself that I was going to end my life if things didn’t improve by this year, and they only ever get worse and worse, so 2024 is my final one on earth. Currently in the process of wrapping up all my business and getting rid of all my stuff so there’s nothing left behind for anyone to deal with. Really not going to miss living or living the life I’ve lived. Eight billion other people on the planet who will get on fine without me.
Sorry to hear that. I’m not in a position to help you but there are many selfhelp support networks in your neighbourhood that can help(most likely, assuming you live in a city).
I’m really just not someone people enjoy the company of or want to get to know or have around. Kind of my conclusion after 40 years of living in cities. Have tried all kinds of groups and programmes. Have tried putting in the interest but everyone I know or meet fades out, either quickly or slowly. Don’t have any family either, or a significant other.
You need to start changing coefficients in your “life physics” and see what happens. Increasing the amount of new social contact is always a good starting point.
Also, I'm concerned that readers would judge my whole existence and the entire library of my life choices if any part of my (theoretical) comment fails to be... well, perfect.
It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack, dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app took 3 seconds to load and show fresh data from his hotel WiFi, or it could be as simple as the UI not matching some directive he gave to the UI designers who failed to update the designs or tell us about the change. He would rant about how disappointing we were. At his worst, he fired some people on the spot for a problem that wasn't even their fault.
I quickly learned that the only way to avoid that pain was to not ship anything. The people he liked most were the ones who were operating in hypotheticals: The people who made UI designs in Figma, or the architects who drew nice diagrams about how things would work, or the people who wrote long design documents to hand to other teams. They never shipped anything for him to critique, so he thought they were the geniuses of the company. As long as they could avoid having to actually implement anything, they continued to be favorites.
It took me longer than I like to admit to shake that habit when I finally escaped. I found myself delaying shipment, pivoting from design doc to design doc, and trying to operate in that hypothetical space as long as I could. Fortunately I learned to get over it, but it was scary how much that single job could shape a large part of my personality.