When producing something, being it writing an article, drawing a painting or whatever you do, you have to learn how to strike a balance between the quality of what you are producing and the amount of time you allow yourself to work on the project. Assuming that you don’t waste time, the more time you allocate to a project, the higher the quality.

The problem with perfectionists is that they only focus on one dimension: quality; without giving any importance to time. A perfectionist produces excellent stuff but most of the time this is done at great cost, since a lot of time is used to finish the work.

In the real world, quality is sometimes sacrificed in order to meet deadlines. Harsh competition forces such attitude since everyone wants to be the first to break the news: “First to produce this… New record in that…”. Perfectionists tend to be conservative and do not accept such reality. When perfectionists are part of a team, they tend to be show stoppers for every single defect that in a way or another diminishes quality. Don’t take me wrong… you need perfectionists in a team; since that way you will make sure that your product will have a certain degree of quality. But you have to be aware as to how many perfectionist you put in a team. Either too few or too many has undesirable effects.

In order to meet their own high standards, perfectionists put a lot of effort. They are ready to work long and extra hours, even if not getting paid, redo work of others which in their opinion is not up to standard and stress themselves by worrying too much. It is interesting the results obtained from a study published in the New York Times, where a group of perfectionists were made to slack on purpose. They were allowed to leave a messy desk, arrive at work late and leave early. When these perfectionists were asked for comments after such an experiment, they reported that they felt more relaxed and happier with this new life. They showed their surprise that things went well even though they ‘slacked’.

Even though perfectionists suffer from stress due to their ‘defect’, they still find it hard to get themselves not worrying too much about quality. It is the same like procrastinators cannot help themselves from delaying stuff to a later time. From my experience, I believe that perfectionist suffer since they are abused by others. Slacking team members tend to spot out perfectionists to do their job knowing that with the right words they will manage to use perfectionism to their advantage