Done is Higher Than Perfect

Step one in tackling perfectionism is to grasp what type you’re coping with. There are three types:

1. Self-oriented (you hold yourself to impossibly high standards)
2. Socially-prescribed (you are feeling that others require you to be perfect), and
3. Other-oriented (you hold others to an unrealistically high bar)

For instance, should you realize that your perfectionism comes at the least partially from (what you are feeling are) unrealistically high expectations out of your manager, you would possibly have to work with them to deal with this as an alternative of just attempting to shift your personal mindset.

Provided that perfectionism can stem from many aspects, including early childhood experiences, it’s not realistic to offer a one-size-fits-all recipe to beat it in a blog post. Due to this fact, I’ll deal with the various ways in which perfectionism shows up within the workplace, and what you may do in these specific situations.

• What this looks like: Perfectionist Data Scientists propose elaborate approaches that take months to yield results even when the corporate needs something in weeks. They’re unwilling to compromise and you frequently hear “That’s impossible”.
• If that is you: Keep in mind that it’s your job as a Data Scientist to assist the business get things done. As a substitute of claiming “that’s impossible”, provide a set of options with their respective timelines and highlight the trade-offs. This may allow the business to maneuver forward while knowing the danger, and you may find a way to “cover your ass”.

What helped me: Don’t deal with how significantly better you may have made the deliverable, but how much worse off the project could be should you didn’t provide any input in any respect (which can occur should you usually are not fast enough).

• When you’re coping with this: Quite than asking people how long they are going to need, communicate a tough deadline and ask for what’s possible by that date. Make it clear if a directional evaluation will likely be sufficient; often, what’s needed to maneuver forward is much less rigorous and detailed than what people think.

• What this looks like: Perfectionist Data Scientists are sometimes paralyzed with regards to decision-making. They drag out decisions within the hope of getting more information or doing more evaluation to de-risk their selection.
• If that is you: Give a transparent suggestion after which state your confidence level, and what’s going to occur should you’re fallacious. It’s best to also add the important thing assumptions that your decision was based on; if 1) others disagree with the assumptions or 2) you get latest information later that changes considered one of them, you’ll find a way to regulate.

What helped me: Realize that we never have perfect information. Every decision is an informed guess to some extent, and research shows that we are inclined to overly regret the selections we made.

• When you’re coping with this: Put people on the spot; ask for recommendations or decisions out of your team reasonably than options. And foster a culture where decisions are judged by what was known on the time because it’s easy to select holes into something in hindsight.

• What this looks like: Perfectionists pick limitless holes in other people’s proposals without offering alternatives.
• If that is you: Don’t attempt to implement perfection across the corporate. Playing devil’s advocate and difficult one another is essential, however it must be constructive. Treat projects as an optimization problem where it’s good to find the least bad solution under the given constraints (time, budget etc.)

What helped me: Pretend that should you criticize another person’s proposal, you are actually on the hook for solving the issue as an alternative. This forced me to go from “This doesn’t make sense” to “Here’s what I’d do as an alternative”.

• When you’re coping with this: Set a deadline to propose alternatives and reward solution-oriented considering reasonably than individuals who solely indicate problems.

• What this looks like: Each document or slide (even just personal notes or internal documentation) is impeccably formatted and designed.
• If that is you: Focus your efforts on customer-facing deliverables and people going to executives. Any time you spend making some internal working document pretty is time that you may spend shipping more stuff.

What helped me: Attempt to give it some thought the opposite way around. Everyone will notice that you just spent a whole lot of time polishing this internal deck as an alternative of working on something impactful. In a fast-moving company, that really looks worse than delivering a document that’s rough around the perimeters.

• When you’re coping with this: Lead by example; set a culture where screenshotted graphs from a dashboard with transient commentary are a suitable solution to create a slide. Don’t nitpick minor things like color or font selections.

Side note: That doesn’t mean it is best to submit something completely unformatted. Spending five minutes to make the document easy to digest (not necessarily pretty) is time well spent.