The 70% Rule

It’s the start of another week.  A week that is worryingly close to the impending deadline of my university assignments. Before Christmas all these assignments had been meticulously planned, and were on target to be written weeks in advance of the deadline, allowing both them and me some breathing space, and the luxury of editing and revising without time constraints.  But, annoyingly, being out of action with this bug that grabbed hold of me over Christmas and that seems determined to remain; I am no longer on schedule.

Worse than that, I am no longer in control.

The consequence of this disaster means that panic and doubt have taken over the leading reigns of theses projects that I have researched and plotted out carefully, knowing that time is crucial in allowing me to write and submit work that is done to the best of my abilities. 

But as we slide headlong towards the hand in date, these assignments can now only become rushed pieces of work, from a stressed and anxious perspective.

Each night I go to bed hoping that tomorrow will be the day when I wake up feeling better and so can begin the transition into this new energetic me, who is going to take the year 2010 by storm.  Instead, I arrive each morning to at my desk, dragging my feet.  I type words that feel stagnant and heavy.  I stare off into the distance.  Then I panic a bit more.  Drinking endless cups of coffee while I type out more words that feel so stiff they could snap. 

While my creativity and the flurry of words, which under normal circumstances swirl effortlessly through my mind, feel as congested as the pressure building in my sinuses.

And so, what I do is bounce between assignments.  I work ten minutes on my short story, and then half an hour on my screenplay.  Half a day dabbling at my Evacuee article, and then if I’m lucky, a couple of hours doing research; as I watch the snow falling through my office window, recognizing that I have now created another problem: I have allowed myself to become blocked.

Blocked by my need for perfection.

But at this late stage there is no time for me to regain control.  No, time is now short; and I no longer have the luxury of breathing space to allow my work to simmer. What’s needed now is enough focus to just get these pieces of work written, and to do that, I will have to work fast and efficiently. 

And so I sit and wait, attempting to form the perfect line for the opening of my short story in my head, before I begin typing it.

Nothing comes.

I wait.

Still nothing comes.

More panic: I’m wasting valuable time.

But every word, each sentence I mentally construct seems clumsy and overstated.

My thoughts and ideas, the words that need to urgently be delivered upon the page have become frozen within the icy, critical chambers of my own Perfectionism.

I struggle on, battling around in my thoughts for compelling lines of dialogue with which to begin the screenplay.

But I come up blank.

There’s nothing there.

Still, the deadlines are looming, the pressure is on, and I have to break out of this.

And then something happens: I remember the 70% Rule.

Finally, I feel a thread of hope of which I can cling to.

Over the years, I’ve been quite proud to be a perfectionist.  Although I would never previously have understood my obsession of trying to be perfect as just that: being a perfectionist.  Sometimes though we behave in certain ways and just get on with it, never knowing that there’s a name, a title for what we do.

Dedicated, is the word I would have used and what I would have understood when I was the one stressing about being the ‘perfect’ customer services rep, or having to offer ‘above and beyond’ treatment to clients when I was practicing as a holistic therapist.

For years, I felt that constantly striving to be perfect was a good thing.  And to an extent it is.  But even I see now, that there comes a time when all you end up doing is squeezing the joy and pleasure out of life and work and putting untold and unnecessary stresses upon yourself.

When I started to write, I had the ‘light bulb’ moment of discovery when I began to witness the knots I tangled myself in, with my pointless attempts at being perfect on the page.

Because really, what is perfection?

Surely, we all know logically, perfectionist or not, that being free from flaws or defects is an illusion. Refusing to accept standards short of perfection is simply a matter of self-sabotage.  Because when we strive to achieve perfection, rejecting anything less, what we are doing is setting ourselves up for failure.  Still, we willingly buy into the belief that if try hard enough then we can overcome the odds and achieve perfection, even when we know it doesn’t exist.

A couple of years ago while struggling to manage my need to achieve the impossible, I came across an online article about how to overcome Perfectionism, which detailed and encouraged the use of the 70% Rule.

The rule, as its name suggests is learning to accept and commit to investing only 70% of your energy, and yourself in whatever you strive to be perfectionist about, while the article assured readers’ that committing at this level is both adequate and acceptable.  Much more so than the 100% and beyond that perfectionists generally aspire to. 

70% though, it’s a shocker, I know.

I have to admit that the times when I’ve been able to engage this 70% rule within my work, whether it’s cleaning, exercising or writing, it’s worked wonders.  Everything I’ve been doing has become less overwhelming, less time consuming and less stressful.  Instead of sitting in front of my Mac, as I have been these past couple of weeks, straining to flourish forth with a perfectly formed sentence, I would be able to just write. 

Just write and it flows.  When it flows unconsciously, I do some of my best work.  Then when I edit and revise, it has the potential to become good, solid work.

The 70% rule has worked wonders for Steve too.  As a miniature war gamer, Steve paints armies of figures, which sometimes are as small as 10mm.  They’re tiny and fiddly to paint.  For Steve they are a perfectionist’s nightmare.  Each figure has to be painted in minute detail; a time consuming and overwhelming task when you’re dealing with hundreds of troops that need eyebrows to be individually crafted.

The 70% approach for Steve meant that by letting go of his incessant need to be perfect, he could paint faster, and complete more troops in a shorter space of time and actually with very little effect to the overall quality.

That’s why blogging is so beneficial for me.  There isn’t time when writing a weekly blog to be precious.

Although I strive each week for that illusory nonsense of perfection, I fail.  And yet still I post my blog, hoping next week I’ll manage it.  Next week will be better.  And then I post again, still clinging to the notion that the following week, I will nail it.

But why do we do it, why do we repeatedly play this crazy game of ‘Striving for Perfection’ when the odds are stacked against us?

The ‘Psychology Today’ website state that perfectionism, ‘can be a quality that encourages a person to try his/her best and to make the effort to excel and surpass.’  They continue: ‘Perfectionism is often a quality of highly ‘successful people… But (that) some people take it too far.’ 

Err, yes, that would be me.

On their site they also offer an opportunity for you to take a Perfectionist Test, (I’ll put the link at the bottom in case you fancy a go).  Keen to see exactly how much of a perfectionist I am, took the test.

Their assessment of me was as follows:

“You set standards than can never be met.  Most likely, this tendency is making you suffer.  And needlessly.  It is time that you tuned into your perfectionist side and diluted it.  While a desire to do well, to do your best work, and to explore your full potential can give you a sense of satisfaction and personal fulfillment, you have to learn what it is ‘good enough.’”

Agreed.

However, I’d also follow on from that to say, that I have to learn that I am good enough.   Because buried deep in the heart of this need for perfectionism, along with wanting to succeed and be the best you can be, is a shortage of confidence and belief in ourselves. 

And so, as I ponder on how to break my habit of striving for perfectionism, another day disappears from my grasp and my assignment deadlines become one step closer.

When I chose the projects that I would work on for these assignments, I made choices based on the 150% rule that I was living by at the time, and now, I no longer have either the time or energy to follow through. 

So what can I do?

Firstly, I need to acknowledge where I am right now; and the pickle that I have got myself in.

Then it’s a question of beginning to accept ‘what I can do now, in the remaining time available.’ 

Finally, it’s about getting things done.

If I can get those first drafts written then possibly I can revise them into something worthwhile.

Afterwards, it’s going to be about letting go.

Because that’s the problem with perfectionism, it haunts you.  Each mistake, each paragraph, line or word that didn’t quite work or could have been better lives on in our mind. 

In the society we now find ourselves part of, we could be forgiven for thinking that making a mistake is just ridiculously stupid and wrong.

But it’s not. 

Making mistakes is how we learn in life.  Or it can be, if we allow ourselves the opportunity to acknowledge it, learn from it and move on. 

For perfectionists this is the difficulty and the point when our aims for being perfect falter, becoming dysfunctional. It’s irrational to believe, as we do, that it’s unacceptable to make a mistake. 

So, to overcome perfectionism we have to learn that there is a time and a place for our mistakes, and for our failures.  We must also, if we are to change, begin to accept that whilst there is nothing wrong in striving to be our best; there is nothing to be ashamed of in falling short of our ideal.  As perfectionists, we have to acknowledge who and what we are and begin believing that the 70% rule is more than sufficient, and that we are good enough, just as we are.

If you fancy the test then just click the link below:

Psychology Today