Breaking Up with 80%: A Perfectionist's Guide to Finding 'Enough'
"Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough." ~ Julia Cameron
Do you often feel like you need to give 110% to every task and project you take on?
While striving for excellence is admirable, constantly pushing yourself to do more than is necessary can lead to burnout. That's why it's important to learn to recognise when "good enough" is truely enough.
Maybe you've been told that 80% is good enough.
If you're a perfectionist or an overachiever, chances are you've heard that line before. And while it's a nice sentiment, I have to say that I don't think it's very helpful.
Think about it. What does it really mean to give 80% effort? How can you judge what that looks like? I don't know about you, but I don't have a little dashboard that tells me how much energy I'm putting into something. And as someone who's always thinking I should be doing more, I tend to underestimate what 80% effort actually feels like.
Does it mean you should only do 80% of a task or 80% of your tasks, in which case how do you know what 20% to leave undone? Not to mention the bone-chilling terror I feel at the idea of leaving things not done.
What's a better way to approach things?
There are three practical tools that I think can help overachievers and recovering perfectionists discern what enough is.
The first is to learn to work with your natural rhythms and cycles of energy. Whether it's your circadian rhythm, the rhythm of your week, your menstrual cycle, or the seasons, cyclical living is the permission slip to have periods of activity where you are all in, have a lot of energy, and want to do all of the things. It also gives you permission to rest, slow down, and have periods where you take a step back and allow yourself to have a lot more space. Working with your own cycles, rather than against them, helps you recognise that "enough" is not a fixed concept; it changes depending on where you are in a cycle. By paying more attention to your own rhythms, you start to learn when you're going past your own limits and to respect what enough is in that phase of your cycle.
The second is to get really clear on your values or needs and then focus on how you do things, rather than necessarily what you do. Think about the quality you would like to embody while working on a task. Maybe you want to focus on ease, for example. What does it look and feel like to work with more ease in what you do? Allow this to guide you into what enough might look like in any given situation. Make sure your values don't just exist in random words on a piece of paper but that you embody them and allow them to guide the way you show up and do things in your day-to-day.
Read more about why before what.
The third thing is to work on developing strategies to help anchor your nervous system in safety. Perfectionism is a nervous system strategy designed to keep us safe in the face of uncertainty and unpredictability. It can often come with a flavour of overachieving and never believing that enough is truly enough. If you've been practising doing things and being busy as a way of making yourself feel safe for years, suddenly not doing something can bring up all sorts of stuff in your nervous system. developing tools and practices to regulate your nervous system and hold that discomfort is key to breaking free from perfectionism.
At the end of the day, it's not about hitting some arbitrary percentage of effort. It's about learning to tune into your body, your values, and your needs, and finding a way to work that feels good and sustainable for you. Tracking your natural rhythms and cycles of energy, getting clear on your values and how you do things, and developing strategies to regulate your nervous system will help you discern what enough is for you. That is an ongoing practice and one you can get better at holding yourself in. So, go ahead and give it your all, and remember that it's okay to take a break and say no when you need to.
A Final Note
The sentiment that 80% is good enough is often confused with the Pareto Principle, which states 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes, asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs, and is also known as the 80/20 rule.
In other words, roughly 20% of the work that you do will be responsible for 80% of the outcomes, essentially arguing that, past a certain point, you get lower returns your investment of time and effort.
My point remains the same. Trying to decide at what point your efficiency, in terms of cost/benefit ratio, becomes low enough that additional work doesn’t lead to enough benefits in order to be worth it is completely misunderstanding the drivers of perfectionism. Good enough isn't about efficiency, it's about feeling and that's why I find the tools I've suggested so helpful.