How Perfectionists Can Get Out of Their Own Way
和所有极端性格一样，完美主义也是一把双刃剑。工作中完美主义者的高标准和努力使之可以脱颖而出，他们的执着还有助于完善自身技能。而且，在某种程度上，非常认真负责还有助于避免错误。
Like any extreme trait, perfectionism can be a double-edged sword. Having high standards and being hardworking can help someone stand out in a crowded field, and their tenacity can help them improve their skills over time. And, to an extent, being very conscientious can help avoid errors.
这些优点以及任何瑕疵都会酿成大错的顾虑会让人一直保持完美主义思维。然而，想让自己的表现没有任何失误也可能产生巨大的负面作用。
The benefits I’ve mentioned, and a fear that any flaw will result in catastrophe, can keep people hooked on their perfectionist mindset. However, there are also significant downsides to attempting mistake-free performance.
如果难以摆脱自己的某些完美主义倾向，或者手下有这样的人，了解完美主义者在工作中“自毁”的方式会对你有所帮助。以下我将列出五种行为。
If you’re struggling to let go of some of your perfectionistic tendencies, or managing someone who is, it can be helpful to remember the ways perfectionists can self-sabotage in the workplace. I’ll discuss five below. You’ll notice a general theme of the person losing sight of the big picture.
“作茧自缚”
How perfectionists get in their own way
完美主义通常都难有裨益，不管这种性格看上去是如何的有用。不是所有的完美主义者都会出现下列全部行为，但所有这些行为都会适得其反。
No matter how much it may feel like perfectionism is a helpful trait, it usually isn’t. Not every perfectionist will do all of these things, but all of them are counterproductive.
难以做出决定或采取行动。完美主义者的动机是做出绝对的最佳选择，即使不一定非得要这样做。这会导致决策瘫痪。举例来说，鲍勃想买一件能提高工作速度的工具，但他决定去找没有差评的商品。他不由自主这样做，尽管他从逻辑上明白就算非常棒的产品也会有一些负面反馈，而且那些差评跟他计划中该工具的主要用途并无特别紧密的联系。然而，由于自行设置了这样的标准，鲍勃花了好几周时间来挑选要买的工具。这让他无法从使用该工具中受益，而且其他团队成员还认为他没主见、没条理。
Struggling to make decisions or take action. Perfectionists are motivated to make the absolute best choice — even when doing so isn’t strictly necessary. This can lead to decision paralysis. For example, Bob wants to buy a tool that will accelerate his work, but he’s determined to find an option that has no negative reviews. He’s driven to do this, even though logically he knows that even great products usually have some negative feedback, and that the specific negative comments he reads aren’t particularly relevant to how he plans to mainly use the tool. But because of his self-imposed criteria, it takes him several weeks to choose what to purchase. As a result, he misses out on the benefits of using the tool, and the people on his team see him as indecisive and disorganized.
过于担心沉没成本。
Worrying excessively about sunk costs.
完美主义者往往会反复咀嚼哪怕是非常微小的错误，这就造成他们非常想去扭转产生了沉没成本的局面。以安德莉娅为例，她购买了一项按月付费服务，可是一直没用过。但她仍在购买这项服务，并定下了今后从中获得“双倍价值”的目标，以便从情感上挽回自己所蒙受的经济损失：毕竟付费数月却从未使用过这项服务。与之类似，为了解决一个服务问题，马库斯在电话里跟客服沟通了10分钟，而后者显然没有纠正这个错误的权力。马库斯不想在没有结果的情况下放弃，因此又跟这位客服通话20分钟。完美主义者会在不重要的生产性活动上花费太多时间，而后才会继续前进。
Since perfectionists tend to ruminate over even tiny mistakes, they’re strongly motivated to attempt to recover situations involving sunk costs. For example, Andrea signs up to a service with a monthly fee but doesn’t use it. She stays subscribed and sets a goal to get “double value” from the service going forward in order to emotionally recover the money she’s lost paying the monthly fee for several months but not using the service. Likewise, Marcus spends 10 minutes on the phone trying to resolve a customer service issue with an agent who clearly doesn’t have the power to correct the problem. He doesn’t want to give up without success, so stays on the phone for another 20 minutes. Perfectionists can spend too long working on marginally productive activities before moving on.
避开难题以免失败。
Avoiding challenges to avoid failure.
迎接挑战前，完美主义者都想让自己觉得已经彻底准备好了。这可能会阻碍他们进步或迈上领导岗位。举例来说，阿特觉得“在会上发言之前，我得上个公共场合发言培训班”，这真的没有必要，而且现实中他也不会很快去参加这样的培训。因此，阿特错失了一个绝佳机会。
Perfectionists want to feel absolutely ready before taking on challenges. This can lead to holding back from advancement or leadership roles. For example, Art thinks “Before I speak at a conference, I need to take a public speaking course” when that’s not really necessary and not something he’ll realistically do anytime soon. As a result, he misses a great opportunity.
把自己的高标准用在别人身上。
Applying their high standards to others.
大多数情况下，完美主义者只会用极为严格的标准来要求自己。但有时会出现范围扩大化的情况，他们会认为别人也应达到自己这样的标准。这尤其适用于最终成绩会影响到完美主义者的集体项目。在和同事们准备推介材料的过程中，兰杰在最后关头提出了一系列改动意见，这疏远了他和大家的关系。兰杰想做的改动并不大，但其他团队成员都很累了，想回家休息。他们觉得兰杰是在给大家添堵。对同事吹毛求疵或者要求过高会损害人际关系，某些情况下会让完美主义者在社交领域受到排斥，原因是跟他们打交道是对情绪的严峻考验。
For the most part, perfectionists tend to apply their extremely rigorous standards to only themselves. However, there can be some bleed-through were the perfectionist also expects others to conform to their standards. This especially applies to group projects where the end result will reflect on the perfectionist. Ranjay alienated his colleagues when he suggested a bunch of last-minute tweaks to a presentation they were preparing; the changes weren’t that major, but the team was exhausted and wanted to head home. It felt to them like he was piling on. Nitpicking colleagues or being too demanding can harm relationships and sometimes lead to the perfectionist being socially excluded because they’re emotionally hard work to deal with.
反复思考弱点、错误和失败。
Ruminating about weaknesses, mistakes, and failures.
完美主义者之所以在避免微小错误方面有如此之强的动力，原因之一是犯了这样的错误往往会触发他们的“沉思模式”。安德莉娅反复地想着自己缴了费却没用上的服务；推介材料看上去是那么敷衍的想法让兰杰无法释怀。在这里，对已发生情况进行反复思索产生了负面影响（这和出于担心而反复考虑可能出现的情况相反）。这样做会加大心理上的痛苦，使之超过这些情况下本应有的水平；还会让人易怒、抑郁，进而损害其工作表现和人际关系。
One reason perfectionists are so strongly motivated to avoid small mistakes is because making them triggers their tendency to ruminate. Andrea ruminates over the subscription service she doesn’t use; Ranjay can’t let go of how sloppy that presentation looked. Rumination is negatively-toned overthinking about situations that have occurred (in contrast to worry that’s overthinking about situations that might occur). It intensifies emotional pain to the point it’s out of proportion to the situation. It causes irritability and feelings of depression, and can disrupt the person’s performance and relationships.
怎样调整
What perfectionists can do to change
如果这篇文章让大家产生了“这就是我”的感觉，那就可以看看下面这些实用的解决方案，以尽量减少完美主义倾向的不利影响。
If you’ve had a “that’s me” experience reading this article so far, these are some practical solutions for minimizing the downsides of perfectionistic tendencies.
从成功中汲取经验。
Learn from successes.
对完美主义者来说，从错误中吸取教训可能是个过于艰难的任务，而且会让他们“陷入沉思”。一个替代方案是从自己的成功中汲取经验。通过回想自己取得成功的过程，完美主义者就会发现，尽管没有尽善尽美或者100%的成功把握，但自己还是完成了一件有意义的事。这样，完美主义者就能意识到采取“预备、瞄准、开火”的方式会给自己带来哪些好处，这种方法让他们基于经验来校正程序和决策，而不是进行大量的研究和思考。
The idea of learning from your mistakes is likely to feel too confronting to a perfectionist, and trigger rumination. An alternative is to learn from your successes. By reflecting on the pathways that led to your successes, you’ll be able to see that you achieved a meaningful end despite not doing everything completely flawlessly or being 100% certain of success in advance. Through this process, you’ll be able to understand how you can benefit from taking a ready, fire, aim approach, where you tweak your processes and decisions based on experience rather than from exhaustive research and deliberation.
完美主义者还会看到非完美主义但成功的角色模式和同事——他们是怎样在不受完美主义困扰的情况下变得行事有效的呢？看看他们是怎么做的，然后向他们学习。
You can also identify non-perfectionistic, but successful, role models and colleagues — how are they able to be effective without succumbing to perfectionism? Observe what they do and learn from it.
采用启发法，以便更快地做出决定并采取行动。
Develop heuristics to enable faster decision-making and action taking.
启发法或者说经验法则的目的是在大多数情况下做出好的决定，但并非次次如此。它能帮助人们在较快决策的益处和推迟行动、继续思考可能带来的额外好处之间进行权衡。比如说，在为同事联谊活动挑选举办酒店时，你可以列出五项标准，然后挑一家至少满足其中四项标准的酒店，这就是一个有用的启发法。
Heuristics or rules of thumb are aimed at producing good decisions most but not all of the time. They help balance the benefits of faster decision-making against any incremental gains you might get from delaying action and continued thinking. For example, a useful heuristic might be, when selecting a hotel to host a work event, you’ll define 5 criteria and pick a hotel that meets at least 4 of these 5.
对完美主义者来说，启发法是排定先后次序的绝佳方法。我的个人经验法则是“价值超过100美元的工作先于价值不足100美元的工作”。这帮我降低了次要生产性活动的位置，比如花30分钟时间把一件我不满意的低价商品退还给店家，而我在这段时间里本可以做产出远高于此的工作。
Heuristics are a great method of prioritizing for perfectionists. My personal rule of thumb is “Do jobs worth $100+ before <$100 jobs.” This helps me de-prioritize marginally productive behaviors, like spending 30 mins returning an unsatisfactory low value item to a store when I could be doing something much more productive.
问问自己“我怎样才能提高1%？”这是一种常见方法，而且如果你倾向于采用过于复杂的方法来解决问题，它就会特别有用。因为完美主义者希望毫无瑕疵，而且通常对较小收获不屑一顾。而通过寻找使自身行为提高1%的途径，完美主义者就会开始认识到，一些取得进步的方法比自己想象的要容易。举例来说，如果知道自己过于消极，而且自己的态度让别人觉得泄气，那么或许可以决定从每次会议发表一次积极的看法着手。这既是提高1%的策略，也是经验法则发挥作用的实例。
Ask yourself “How could I improve by 1%?” This is a popular approach that’s especially useful if you’re prone to overcomplicating solutions to problems. Because perfectionists want to be flawless, they’re typically dismissive of incremental gains. By looking for how you can improve your behavior by 1%, you’ll start to see that there are easier ways to improve than what you’re imagining. For example, someone who knows they’re too negative and that others find their attitude demoralizing might decide to start making one positive comment during each meeting they attend. This is both a 1% improvement strategy and an example of a useful rule of thumb.
学习打破“沉思”的策略。
Learn strategies to disrupt rumination.
如果知道怎样约束自己的“沉思”行为，容忍自己犯错误和有缺点就会变得容易得多。要注意的是，当完美主义者开始反复思索某件事时，他们要问问自己执着于此是否真的对自己有帮助。“沉思”往往不能解决问题，这和看上去恰好相反。如果思维只是不断地原地打转，或者发现“沉思”让自己出现了坏情绪，那就要弃之而去。
It’s a lot easier to tolerate making mistakes and having flaws if you know how to curb rumination. Notice when you are starting to mull over something, and ask yourself if obsessing over it is really helping you. Often, rumination feels like problem-solving — but it isn’t. If your thoughts are just going in circles, or you’re noticing that your rumination is putting you into a bad mood, let it go.
意识到完美主义的成本以及它对个人的生产率、幸福和人际关系（包括工作上的和家庭的）有何影响后，完美主义者就可以开始消除这种具有破坏性的习惯了。
By becoming aware of the costs of perfectionism, and how it affects your productivity, well-being, and relationships (both at work and at home), you can start to mitigate this destructive habit.
（时青靖 | 编辑）
爱丽丝·博伊斯（Alice Boyes）曾是临床心理学家，后转型为作家，著有《健康心理工具箱和焦虑工具箱》（The Healthy Mind Toolkit and The Anxiety Toolkit）一书。
