Are You Stuck in the Perfectionism-Procrastination Loop? Here’s How to Get Out
Living in the perfectionism-procrastination loop is a particular type of never-ending hell.
And yet, it is a topic that I spend every day researching because it is such a human experience that is covered in so much shame and anxiety.
If you’re reading this article, you probably know the cycle inside out: you set high standards, you feel overwhelmed by said high standards, you start to doubt yourself and find comfort in doom-scrolling on social media, and then you feel shame about your inability to just do the task, so you put more pressure on yourself to get it done.
It is a self-reinforcing cycle, that only gets worse and worse if you do nothing to change it.
The goal of this article is to help you understand the reasons why you procrastinate, highlight the costs of staying stuck in the cycle and provide you with some tips to help you shift your mindset and behaviour.
What is perfectionism?
A perfectionist is a person who has incredibly high standards for themselves and depending on the type, others as well.
If you’re a perfectionist deep down you believe that you are not good enough so in an attempt to ease that feeling you set high (often unrealistic) goals, hoping that if you achieved them you would finally be deemed as ‘good enough’.
However, this mindset is crippling and reinforces your low self-esteem and drives an overwhelming fear of failure and a sense of inadequacy even if you are doing well.
There are 3 types of perfectionists:
- Self-oriented: perfectionists who set high standards for themselves
- Other-oriented: perfectionists who judge others against their own high standards
- Socially-prescribed: perfectionists who feel pressure from other people to meet high standards (e.g. family, culture, society etc…)
Related Post: 13 Subtle Signs You’re A Perfectionist And Don’t Even Know It
“Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is the pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough.” – Julia Cameron
What is procrastination?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary procrastination is ‘the act of delaying something that must be done’
It is often thought of as a form of self-sabotage because you want to do the task, but still, your brain convinces you to do anything and everything but the one thing you’re supposed to do.
The truth is, self-sabotage doesn’t exist. Your brain is trying to help you by avoiding activities that feel unpleasant, anxiety-inducing or boring.
Psychologists have identified 2 types of procrastination:
- Passive procrastination: delaying a task because you feel paralysed by fear, doubt or indecision
- Active procrastination: intentionally postponing a task because you believe you work better under pressure
Related Post: The Healthy Striving Mindset: How to Stay Ambitious and Keep Your Peace
“Procrastination is like a credit card: it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.” – Christopher Parker
What is the perfectionism-procrastination loop?
The perfectionism-procrastination loop is a self-reinforcing cycle that repeats itself until you decide to choose a different path.
- Step 1: You set unrealistic standards for yourself
- Step 2: You feel overwhelmed by the high standards you initially set out so you start to doubt yourself and fear making mistakes
- Step 3: You then avoid doing the task because it feels like too much pressure so you distract yourself by doing other less important tasks or fun activities like doom-scrolling on social media (aka procrastinating)
- Step 4: You start to feel guilt and shame about not working because now there is even less time for you to work on the task and become highly self-critical
- Step 5: You put even more pressure on yourself to make up for lost time
- Step 6: The cycle starts again
Why do perfectionists get stuck in this loop?
So there are quite a few interrelated reasons why perfectionists get caught in the perfectionism-procrastination cycle.
Unrealistic standards
It’s really easy to say in hindsight, ‘Yeah, maybe my standards were unrealistic,’ but it is much, much harder to notice and change them in real time if you’re a perfectionist.
When setting goals, most of us like to focus on the ideal outcome because why waste our time trying to be mediocre?
That’s why many of us fall into the trap of setting goals that are too far out of reach and then feel too overwhelming to start working towards. Having unrealistically high standards is a curse.
Fear of failure
If you base your self-worth on the things you do, your output, and what you achieve, failure feels incredibly personal and painful.
It feels like you are a failure and not that you failed at a task.
This fear of failure is so hurtful that you would rather ignore, avoid and delay working on tasks because even though it is stressful to procrastinate, it doesn’t come close to the pain of thinking you are not good enough.
Ego depletion
The ego-depletion theory is the idea that aiming for perfection drains your mental energy and makes it much harder to start and finish tasks.
It’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, so the mental fatigue you experience causes you to procrastinate by focusing on tasks that require less mental energy.
All-or-nothing thinking
All-or-nothing thinking is a key trait for all types of perfectionists. Since you have a big fear of failure, and tie your self-worth to your achievements, anything less than perfect feels worthless.
Why waste your time and energy completing a task to a ‘okay’ standard because you’ll just feel like crap since it’s not good enough. You might as well avoid the task since you can’t meet your high standards anyway.
In this American Psychological Association (APA) podcast interview, Dr Flett explained this idea succinctly “Falling short might even be more frustrating than falling way short (…) So they need to be absolutely perfect.”
“If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.” – Ecclesiastes 11:4
Self-criticism
Your daily thoughts are highly critical because you are constantly doubting yourself and debating whether the work you’ve completed is good enough.
It is your normal inner voice and every time you start working on something new, that voice just finds NEW ways to tear you apart and find flaws with everything.
It’s much easier to procrastinate and click the next episode on Netflix than it is to deal with all that negativity every single day.
Avoidance feels good at the time (present bias)
Honestly, avoidance feels GOOD— great, even. It’s fun watching TikTok videos that somehow provide you with a constant stream of content designed to meet your (very) weird sense of humour.
I think the TikTok algorithm is evil because it knows me too well…
Anyway, researchers call this the ‘present bias’ because we are motivated by doing things that feel good and provide instant gratification.
Overthinking and overplanning
This one feels like productivity but it’s not, it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
It’s much easier to spend hours researching new ideas, putting information into colour-coded notion templates and creating detailed plans than it is to actually do the work because you’re ‘getting ready’ to do the work.
This approach is mentally and emotionally draining because you’ve spent all this time thinking without moving the needle forward on your project which causes more anxiety overall.
Signs you are stuck in the perfectionism-procrastination loop
If you’re someone who experiences any of these signs below, you’re probably well-acquainted with the negative cycle:
Is this you?
- Constantly overthinking and overplanning
- Avoiding tasks until the very last minute
- Find it difficult to start big projects
- Believe that if you can’t do something perfectly, it’s better not to do it at all
- You doubt your abilities
- Have difficulty making decisions
- You tie your self-worth to your productivity levels
- You always spot problems with your work and keep changing it
- You don’t know what to do so you do nothing instead
- You are waiting until the right moment
“A year from now, you may wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb
What are the costs of being stuck in the procrastination cycle?
I was the ambassador of this self-fulfilling cycle back in my uni days because it was all I knew and I paid the price by experiencing moderate-severe anxiety.
For example, at 20 years old I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and advised to lower my stress levels.
I cried so much because I thought I was going to die since high blood pressure at a young age is not normal and the doctor made sure I knew that.
(There are ways to deliver bad news tactfully that don’t involve telling an anxious person not to be anxious. But I digress).
Here are some other costs of the cycle:
- Burnout
- Stress and anxiety
- Depression
- Low self-esteem
- Missed opportunities
- Lower life satisfaction
- Strained relationships
- Loss of motivation
- Self-hatred
- Even a lower life expectancy (according to this study!)
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.” – Anne Lamott
8 steps to get out of the negative cycle
1. Acknowledge the cycle
Self-awareness is always the first step in healing and changing any behaviour or thinking pattern.
So, you need to pay attention to the ways (e.g. doomscrolling on social media, tidying your room etc…) and what triggers you to procrastinate (e.g. looking at your to-do list or having far away deadlines).
2. Identify the telltale signs of unrealistic standards
If you’ve been through the cycle enough times, you’ll eventually notice the types of tasks and activities that cause you to procrastinate most.
What is it about the goals you set that feels overwhelming and unachievable?
For example, whenever I set the goal to write 25 blog posts in a month, I never get close to achieving it because I put so much pressure on it so that goal is unrealistic.
If I set the goal to write 12 blog posts, I’m able to get much closer to 20 because the pressure is off.
3. Challenge the need for perfection
Why does the task you are trying to complete need to be perfect on the first try?
We all know that truly successful people never complete perfect work because perfect doesn’t exist. Yet, so many of us strive for it uncompromising.
Why specifically do YOU need to be perfect? What does perfect look like? What would happen if your work was not perfect?
4. Rationalise
It is much better to have something than to have absolutely nothing. Wouldn’t it be better to start right now than to delay it for another second?
You’d probably like yourself more too in the process if you just started now. Starting now is one way to show yourself love, kindness and compassion
5. Break down into impossible-to-fail tasks
Break down your tasks so that they are so small that it is impossible for you to fail. So small that you would feel genuinely silly if you didn’t tick it off because there is absolutely no way you would fail it.
For example, set the goal just to walk to the laundry basket, you don’t have to do the laundry since the task is just to walk to it.
Now if, for some reason, you decide to take the laundry to the washing machine, then that’s a win but it’s not the goal.
Whenever I break down a task I end up doing the whole thing, I just needed that boost and motivation to get started.
6. Feel the discomfort and do it anyway
You need to accept that you will probably always feel discomfort when working on tasks that trigger your perfectionism—tasks that you really want to do well in and feel pressure to get done right.
But that’s okay!
Every time you push through your discomfort and take an impossible-to-fail step forward, you’ll get used to the feeling and it won’t feel so paralysing every time.
7. Know when to delegate or drop tasks
Just because something is on your to-do list, it doesn’t mean it’s something you actually need to do. Sometimes you’re creating additional stress for yourself by holding on to tasks that you can just delegate or eliminate completely.
For example, if there is a task on your list that you keep skipping week after week, maybe, just maybe, you should simply not do it.
Maybe it’s not important or urgent enough to be given your full attention and that’s okay.
8. Celebrate your effort, not just the result
Finally, shift your mindset from focusing solely on the end result. Try to focus on the effort that you put in consistently and HOW you show up in the world.
For example, instead of focusing on getting a 1st in your degree, focus on being the type of student who would get firsts in their degree.
How do they show up every day? Are they consistent? Do they ask questions? What is one small thing you can do every day that would help you be a better student?
“The cost of procrastination is the life you could have lived.” – Unknown
Are you ready to break out of the perfectionism-procrastination loop?
The perfectionism-procrastination loop is genuinely not a cycle you want to stay in for any period of time but now you know the signs, you can start taking steps to break away and stop it ruling your life.
You don’t have to struggle every single day, beating yourself up for not doing what you say you’re going to do. You can take tiny impossible-to-fail steps forward until one day, your focus has shifted away from your output towards a healthy effort-based approach.
It takes time, so be kind to yourself.
Remember, if you’ve been a perfectionist your whole life, how would you know any other way of thinking? So expecting to immediately change your lifestyle is just another way of setting unrealistic goals and fuelling your perfectionism.
Use this article as a guide and take small scrappy steps.
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- How to be productive every day – 13 ESSENTIAL mindset shifts!
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- 5 Simple Ways To Develop An Effective Productivity Sprint (Examples Included)
- What Is Mindful Productivity? The Cure For Hustle Culture
- 5 Simple Tips For Creating A Mindful Action Plan For Your Goals
- How to let go of productivity shame and live your best life
- Your Worth Isn’t Measured by How Hard You Push Yourself
