The Perfectionism Trap

Tagline: your impossible standards are a survival strategy, not a personality flaw

Hello, and welcome back to Wreaking More Joy.

I’m Janette Dalgliesh, and in this season, Reclaim, we’re digging into the nuts and bolts, the practical solutions, as we continue exploring how women can rekindle the romance with our purpose, our joy, and our personal power — especially in our working lives and especially in a chaotic world that can feel so unsafe.

In today’s episode I want to talk about perfectionism; that old familiar trope that makes us all roll our eyes at the familiarity and the frustration of it. I’m going to share a story, and I bet you can relate with at least some of it.

Over a decade ago, I was invited to give a keynote presentation for a small but pretty high-level businesswomen’s networking group in Melbourne.

It felt like a Major Opportunity, capital M capital O, so you can probably already imagine the energy I brought to preparing for it.

Impeccable notes, inspired handouts, and a slideshow that was a work of art - no ‘death by powerpoint’ on my watch, thank you very much.

I caught the train down from my home in the country, and being a dedicated perfectionist, I used every minute of that train trip to work on my laptop: polishing things, tweaking things, making everything just a little bit better.

I arrived at the venue early, because that’s what prepared, professional people do, and I walked in to discover that the entire audio-visual setup had fallen over.

Not just the AV; the power supply for the whole venue.

No microphone, no way to project my beautifully crafted, video-enhanced slideshow.

And, of course, no notes on my laptop because I had completely flattened the battery doing all that polishing on the train.

They didn’t even have lighting, so the entire event had to move outside to a space where at least the venue could provide some hastily catered-in snacks with coffee, and the basic necessities of life.

In this far more informal setting, less TED talk and more “Saturday afternoon at the pub”, I stood up in front of this group of professional, accomplished businesswomen and just spoke off the cuff.

Because here’s the thing: I do actually know my stuff, just like I bet you do too. 

Thanks to a twenty year career as a professional performer, I’ve had plenty of practice at being thrown in the deep end and thinking on my feet; so that’s what I did.

It was looser and more conversational than I’d planned. It wasn’t what I had prepared. I forgot some essential parts, and got drawn into rabbit holes I didn’t plan on.

And they loved it all.

The feedback was warm, the conversations afterwards were rich, and more than one person told me it was one of the best sessions the group had hosted.

All of that work, all of that preparation, all those hours on the train making it more perfect, and the version that actually landed was me at 80 percent: unprepared, battery-flat, notes-free, bits missing, extemporising from my heart.

That day I learned two important things:

One: my 80% is more than enough, and sometimes it’s even better that my ‘best’.

Two: sometimes perfectionism will literally kill your battery and sabotage your stuff.

These days I do travel with a power pack and a laptop with significantly more battery life, because I do not love that much of the unexpected!

But that lesson stayed with me.

And I want to explore a story about perfectionism that we’ve been sold, that may not be true.

Perfectionism is not a character flaw, or a form of self-sabotage, or a sign that you’re doing it wrong or you’re broken.

It’s a well-designed survival strategy.

It emerged in the moments where your nervous system learned that mistakes could be used as evidence against you.

For a lot of women, that isn’t a metaphorical moment; it is literal. 

We’ve all entered workplaces, professions, industries, and systems where one error could be cited as proof that the doubters were right, that maybe people like us shouldn’t be here after all.

The brain weasels — those delightful little creatures I talked about in Season 1 — are designed to scan for threat. 

And in environments where being less-than-perfect carries a real, measurable cost, the brain weasel logic is pretty sound: if I make this perfect, I cannot be criticised. If I cannot be criticised, I cannot be dismissed. 

Perfectionism becomes the price of the ticket to get into and STAY in the system.

And of course, the threat from which your nervous system was originally protecting you has most likely changed. You might be in a much safer environment now. You might be working for yourself, or with people who genuinely support you, or in a context where mistakes are actually fine and no one is keeping score.

But the perfectionism brain weasels don’t know that. 

They’re still in the old environment, still scanning for danger, still insisting that 95% isn’t enough. That you need to stay on that train, working on the laptop, making it better, even as the battery ticks toward zero.

And brain weasels are sneaky lil’ critters.

They’ll disguise perfectionism to look like being conscientious, or having high standards, or even “professionalism”. 

Nobody ever taps you on the shoulder and says ‘hey, that survival strategy is hurting you and you could have half-arsed this and it would have been fine.’ 

They’re more likely to say ‘wow, you’re so thorough’, while the perfectionism brain weasels bask in the sunshine of approval.

So it persists. 

And it costs you, not just in hours and exhaustion (though it costs you those too), but in joy. 

Yes, we have joy in doing a good job. Yes, there is such a thing as the joy of excellence. 

But there is very little joy available in an ongoing, endless pursuit of being good enough to be safe, because the goalpost of ‘safe’ keeps moving.

When is it perfect enough? Never.

When can I relax? Not yet.

What do we actually do about this?

I want to invite you to something I call the ‘Close Enough for Jazz’ practice. 

Step 1

Choose one piece of work you have been sitting on for a while. It could be something you’ve been over-working, over-polishing, or just not sending because it’s not quite right yet. Or it could be something you’re halfway through making, and you have a vision for the perfect version of it that seems a really long way off. 

Ask yourself, honestly: at what percentage point does this become useful to the person I’m making it for?

Not perfect or flawless, or polished within an inch of its life. Not the version you would produce if you had infinite time, infinite capacity and no other calls on your attention. 

Just actually, functionally useful. 

What percentage does it need to be at, for the person receiving it to get real value from it?

Step 2

Ship it at that percentage.

Step 3

This is the important bit: notice what actually happened and write that down.

Did the world end? Did you lose the client? Did someone send you a strongly worded email about the one thing you hadn’t quite finished?

Mostly, the answer is no. Mostly, what happens is what happened to me in that outside space with the snacks and the flat laptop: it lands just fine. Sometimes it even lands better.

Write that outcome down, because that outcome is evidence and evidence is what builds genuine self-trust over time, which is a thing we are going to talk about more, this season.

And if you’d like a journal prompt to play with, here it is: when did I first learn that my mistakes could be used against me? What was the context? What would it mean if I could go back with everything I’ve learned since then, all my maturity and skill and my confidence, and tell that girl that her 80% is more than enough?

I do love to provide excellence; that hasn’t changed.

And also: my 80% is pretty darn good.

I bet yours is too.

Meanwhile - if you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to take a deeper dive into wreaking more joy in your working life, come visit my website at www.janettedalgliesh.com

That’s it for Episode 2 of Season 2. Next week we’re talking about people-pleasing and why it, too, is not a character flaw but the result of some gnarly grooming we’ve all been exposed to.

Until then, take care of yourself, remember to charge your laptop, and go wreak some joy.

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