How To Make Decisions as a Perfectionist – 10 EASY steps
It can be super hard to make decisions as a perfectionist because our fear of failure and desire to control outcomes keep us stuck.
Luckily for you, I have compiled a list of 9 easy steps you can take when making a decision so that you can stress less and streamline your life.
These steps range from brain dumping/brainstorming to identifying needle movers.
The goal of this post is to keep it simple and practical because as a recovering perfectionist myself I KNOW how easily perfectionists can overcomplicate things.
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Signs you might be a perfectionist
Perfectionism doesn’t only show up when you have to make a decision. It can appear in nearly every area of your life for example in your work, hobbies and even relationships.
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), perfectionism is ‘the tendency to demand of others or of oneself an extremely high or even flawless level of performance, in excess of what is required by the situation.
Here are some common signs that you might be a perfectionist:
- you go through cycles of go-go-go and burnout
- You have unrealistically high expectations for yourself and/or others
- You struggle to let go of control
- You tend to procrastinate on tasks
- You tie your self-worth to your career/education
- You have a BIG fear of failure
If you recognise any of these signs you might be a perfectionist and congratulations on increasing your self-awareness!
Why do perfectionists struggle with making decisions?
There are many reasons that perfectionists struggle with making decisions; however, I am only going to focus on a few of them.
- Fear of making the wrong choice: you worry that you’ll make a wrong decision that will result in negative consequences. This fear keeps you stuck unable to move forward because you feel like you won’t be able to deal with the negative consequences if they do come up
- Overthinking and analysis paralysis: you overthink and overanalyse every detail of a decision, trying to weigh up all the possible outcomes and consequences. This can lead to analysis paralysis where you feel so overwhelmed by the amount of information available that you can’t even make a decision
- Need for complete information: you want to know EVERYTHING before you make a decision. However, it is impossible to know all possible outcomes and that desire delays the decision-making process
- Hatred of uncertainty: you HATE ambiguity and want answers to all your questions. You want to know exactly how things will turn out and not knowing causes you anxiety
- Emotionally tied to the outcomes: you’re scared that a mistake or a bad result will mean you are a failure and not good enough. This puts a MASSIVE amount of pressure and burden on your shoulders so you feel overwhelmed.
- Decision fatigue: you feel tired and exhausted by decisions you have already made in the past. Decision-making requires a lot of mental and emotional energy so you feel worn down.
10 steps you can take to make decisions as a perfectionist
1. Acknowledge your perfectionism
The first step towards making progress in decision-making is to acknowledge that you are a perfectionist. Therefore your perfectionism will hinder your ability to make decisions quickly and efficiently.
The sooner you acknowledge this fact, the sooner you can actually get things done.
Take a moment to check in with your body in the present moment:
- How do you feel right now?
- What thoughts and feelings are coming up for you?
- Do you have any doubts or fears?
Take some time to challenge your core limiting beliefs so that you can counter them quickly as they come up. You don’t want to waste time catastrophising or mind-reading.
For example, if you know your core limiting belief is ‘I am not good enough’, come up with 3 pieces of evidence where you have made good decisions and it has paid off for you.
Here are some other common perfectionist limiting beliefs:
- I am a failure – list 3 things you are proud of yourself for
- I must make no mistakes – list 3 times a mistake has turned out to be a blessing
- I must be perfect to be worthy – list 3 times you received praise for work you thought was ‘okay’ and not perfect
Starting with this exercise will help you get into the right mindset for success because you already have a pile of evidence showing you that you can do great things. It will take the pressure off of you to make ‘perfect’ decisions because you’ll realise that perfect doesn’t exist.
2. Check in with your values
This is a very important step and will be relevant throughout the whole decision-making and implementation process.
Your values are the beliefs and principles that truly matter to you. In order to make decisions without feeling regret you need to make sure your decisions are in alignment with your values.
To do this you must first know what your values are. I recommend you download my completely free Values Over Perfection workbook because it is jam-packed with questions and activities to help you figure out your values and align your goals to them.
In the meantime you can ask yourself the following questions:
- What makes me happy?
- What is most important to me?
- Who is important to me?
- What would my ideal life look like?
- What am I grateful for right now?
- What accomplishments am I most proud of?
- What do I want to get out of life and why?
Trust your intuition when answering these questions and pick out the key themes in your answer to help you identify your values
Here are some common values (download the full list of 96 values here):
- Family
- Integrity
- Kindness
- Adventure
- Duty
- Tradition
- Fun
- Ambition
- Learning
I recommend you write down your values on a piece of paper or a diary because you will be referring back to them consistently throughout the process.
3. Set clear goals
Now you will need to set clear goals and decide on what it is exactly that you would like to achieve.
When setting goals, I like to aim for ‘satisficing’ rather than perfect which is basically a combination of the words ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’.
Satisficing is a strategy that aims for satisfactory (or good enough) results rather than the perfect solution.
You will need to identify the minimum criteria necessary to meet your goal rather than exhaustively searching for the best possible outcome.
This goal-setting step is ESSENTIAL for perfectionists because we tend to overthink ourselves to burnout and have nothing to show for it apart from stress.
I recommend you:
- Take some time to set SMARTER (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound, Empowering, Reflective) goals.
- Then break down these goals into smaller manageable steps
- Write out the minimum criteria that you would be happy with for each of these goals
4. Explore your options
Many perfectionists get stuck at this step because they have no boundaries.
Exploring your options can start off as a fun activity if you’re like me and enjoy researching and learning new things. But before you know it, this activity can turn into a never-ending spiral of doom scrolling and anxiety.
So in order to avoid that, I recommend you set a time limit for exploring your options to avoid overthinking.
You need to gather enough information to make an informed choice without getting overwhelmed.
Depending on the complexity of the task I like to set a 20-minute to an-hour time boundary for research
5. Brain dump
Now that you have done your research, it’s time to write down all of your thoughts, ideas and opinions in a brain dump.
I like to get a scrap of paper or a notebook and scribble all over it noting the pros and cons of each idea.
When writing down your pros and cons, make sure you are being honest and realistic. Don’t try to skew the results towards your preferred outcome by minimising the cons because it will only delay your decision-making process further and make it harder for you to decide.
Even if you do decide to stick with your preferred option, it is much better to go into it with a clear understanding of the cons rather than be in denial.
6. Rule things out quickly
Once you have completed your brain dump or brainstorm of ideas, it’s time to quickly and efficiently rule things out.
Ruling things out quickly will help you limit the potential for decision fatigue so you’ll have more energy to focus on the big decisions later on.
Here are some steps you can take:
- Eliminate options that don’t align with your values
- Remove options that don’t meet the minimum criteria of your goals
- Add the items that are nice to have but don’t meet either criteria to an ‘idea bank’ for future reference (e.g. spreadsheet, notebook or in your notes app)
- Narrow down your choices to a few viable options
7. Identify your needle movers
Look through the remaining options and reflect back on your values and goals that you noted earlier.
Determine which of the actions in your revised brain dump will have the biggest impact on your goals and values – these are your ‘needle movers’.
Basically, which action will move the needle in your life further e.g. like a car speedometer.
Identifying your needle-moving tasks will help you know where to prioritise your effort and focus.
Make sure these tasks are in alignment with your values and long-term objectives.
8. Pick one and go for it
Just pick an option. That is the step, pick one and go for it!
You’ve started with a massive brainstormed list of things you could potentially do and then you’ve narrowed it down to the most important and aligned choices.
So the only thing to do is pick the best option from your narrowed-down list. You won’t really know if you have made the right choice until a few steps into the future.
However, you can go to sleep knowing you did the best you could with the resources you had at the time and that is good enough in my books!
TAKE IMPERFECT ACTION!
9. Decide on your daily non-negotiables
Now you have made a decision, I recommend you identify your daily non-negotiables to help you hit the ground running.
- Identify the essential tasks that must be done daily
- Try to keep it simple and only identify 1-3 critical actions
- Make sure these tasks are small enough that you can do them consistently on a daily basis to build momentum
- Don’t try to overcomplicate the process by including unrealistic metrics – refer back to your minimum criteria in your goal. What activities will help you meet that goal?
10. Accept that there are few final decisions
In life, it is VERY RARE that there are decisions you can’t come back from. Most decisions are not final and can be adjusted and adapted over time as new information comes up.
It is your perfectionism that is causing you to believe that there is only one way to live your life properly.
I like to build regular review points when I am working towards my goals to see whether my actions are still in alignment with my values and if I am still on track to meet my criteria.
If not, I will audit my decisions and come up with plan B.
It is that simple!
It’s really important to adopt a growth mindset when working towards your goals because we will never have all the answers and new information is always expanding the picture. We can’t just stay stuck in one idea because that will hold us back in the long term and continue to fuel our fear of making decisions.
What step stood out to you the most?
Let’s be real, making decisions is hard when you’re a perfectionist.
But I hope these tips have given you the confidence to make a decision and move on with your life.
Remember, there are very few final decisions and you can always course correct as new information becomes available to you.
Treat your life as a game and keep adapting and evolving as you go on.
Comment below if you have used any of these decision-making steps in the past.
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- 7 easy ways for perfectionists to increase their self-awareness
- STOP Saying These 7 Toxic Perfectionist Phrases To Be Successful
- 7 Important Boundaries Perfectionists NEED To Set Without Guilt!
