November 11, 2024, 5:01 pm | Read time: 5 minutes
Nobody’s perfect – but many still try. However, striving for perfection can not only be exhausting, it can also make you ill. The professional trend is, therefore, increasingly moving towards “quiet quitting.” Read STYLEBOOK to discover what’s behind it and what tips an expert offers.
Striving to do everything right, meticulously checking your work, and then still not feeling one hundred percent satisfied – as exhausting as it sounds, that’s the reality. Studies have repeatedly shown that perfectionism can be linked to increased stress levels, exhaustion, anxiety disorders, and even depression. Nevertheless, until recently, young people, in particular, were more perfectionist than they were around 30 years ago, as a British study found.
Overview
Desire for perfection affects all areas of life
The study analyzed the expectations of students spanning from 1989 to 2016. It turned out that the social pressure felt by students in 2016 was 33 percent higher than that felt by test subjects at the start of the study. They put around ten percent more pressure on themselves to be perfect.
The results are hardly surprising. Social media constantly puts us under scrutiny. House, family, face, body, life – everything has to be perfect, or at least look that way. This is further evidenced by STYLEBOOK’s Beauty Impact Report. According to the report, 34 percent of the participants surveyed felt pressured by influencers to buy higher-quality products. Furthermore, the majority of respondents are dissatisfied with their appearance; 82% of those who use TikTok daily, i.e., predominantly young people, would like to change something about themselves.
The pursuit of perfection now extends beyond careers to include personal appearance as well. You can imagine how tiring this can be in the long run. But what’s the way out of this downward spiral of perfectionism? Psychologist Nicole Engel explains the first steps: “The most important thing is that I feel that I am dealing with the issue. If I notice that I feel tense or uncomfortable in my everyday life, that I feel stressed or burdened but just keep on functioning, I should stop and discuss the reasons for this behavior.”
We need to rethink mediocrity
Perfectionism is a learned strategy we adopt in our quest to please others. “If I am perfect and do everything perfectly, I cannot be attacked in my essence and my being.” Most people who are affected by perfectionism have learned that the people around them will like them if they do everything right.
This may have come from teachers, educators, or simply people who have made and continue to make demands on us. For fear of being rejected, we hold on to this tried-and-tested coping mechanism and try not to make any mistakes. “All people want love, affection, recognition, and positive appreciation. We have always been more likely to receive this positive attention when we have done something really well. Rather than when we conform to the norm.”
After all, who aspires to be just mediocre? Doesn’t sound very tempting at first. Engel explains why this is the case: “The very word mediocrity immediately conjures up a negative evaluation in our minds. In German, the word meritocracy immediately conjures up the attribute lazy. And if we are lazy, we are below the norm. But nobody wants to be worse than others. From a purely objective and non-judgmental point of view, however, the middle is simply the norm. According to the Gaussian normal distribution (a term used in psychological statistics to illustrate the distribution of certain characteristics, editor’s note), the majority of people are in the middle, with only a few outliers. So mediocrity is not a bad thing; it’s just normal.”
“Quiet quitting” – the counter-trend to perfectionism
More and more people are now discovering the principle of mediocrity for themselves. For some months now, there has been a quasi-counter-movement to perfection. An increasing number of young people are realizing that perfection isn’t the ultimate goal, particularly in the workplace. Instead, the maxim is the realization that there are more important things than work.
“Quiet quitting” is the name given to the behavior that employees display in this context. It is not about “quiet quitting,” as employers initially feared. It’s about no longer feeling compelled to go that notorious extra mile. Overtime, phone calls, and emails after work or tasks that do not fall within the scope of duties are simply rejected. This does not mean that the work is done less well or with less motivation; it just means that the pen is dropped at the end of the working day.
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How to deal with your tasks in a more relaxed way
What may shock some could be a viable escape from the clutches of perfectionism. Some people find this inherently easier than others. As the psychologist told STYLEBOOK, “Some people don’t have these traits in them that they place perfectionist demands on themselves.” Accordingly, they find it easier to resist the perfectionist demands of others.
But over time, you can learn a more relaxed approach. Here’s where the Pareto principle can lend a hand. “With the Pareto principle, 80 percent of the tasks at hand are completed with 20 percent effort. The remaining 20 percent would then require 80 percent of your energy. In everyday working life, it is usually not possible to give 100 percent, except in very few really important situations, such as a pitch or a very important project. Otherwise, 80 percent is enough. This principle can help people with very conscientious traits, in particular, to deal with their perfectionism. Even with the 80 percent effort, they still outperform the average.”
Instead, we have 20 percent of our energy left over, which we can invest in the finer things in life. In things and moments that make us happy. And does it really matter if the handout is secured with one staple instead of two or if the Instagram photo missed the perfect angle?