Wait! It’s not perfect!
I feel sorry for procrastinators. They carry a heavy burden. They are accused of being lazy, but I have found that most are not. They don’t hate work, they are simply perfectionists. They dread living up to their own standards.
Though some procrastinators routinely “put off until tomorrow what can be done today,” most are not trying to shirk work. They are just loathe to begin a task with themselves as the taskmaster.
As a young manager, my recommendations to procrastinators were less than effective - “What are you waiting for? How hard can this be?” That last question is the one they didn’t want to answer. If they were honest, they would say, “You have no idea how hard this is going to be. It is going to take forever.” They were right… if you had to meet their exacting standards.
What I learned over time is that they simply needed a different way to think about a job “well done.” As my eye for identifying these high-standard colleagues became more sophisticated, so did my advice:
Perfectionists need to hear that they have high standards, but they also need to understand that their standards are rarely needed. Eighty percent effort is good enough for most tasks. You can clean a garage to a 100% standard in eight hours or you can clean the garage to an 80% standard in two. In most cases, the garage will look the same whichever you chose. Unless you are building medical equipment, the higher standard is rarely needed.
Getting started is half the battle. Procrastinators are often surprised how the task shrinks in size once they take the first step.
Lastly, procrastinator-perfectionists often misjudge the amount of time it takes to complete a task. They will open and reopen the same email five times because they believe it will take them an hour to respond. In most cases, it is considerably less - sometimes just a few minutes. I recommend they try opening an email only once and then time how long it took to complete the task. These petty tasks are normally much easier than their high standard predicted.
Like any over-used skill, there is a proper use for perfectionism too. For example, few can see the scope and scale of a project like a perfectionist. Their sixth sense is especially valuable if you are embarking on a task that must be perfect (or nearly so). If you are not leveraging their natural talent in this area, then you are making a mistake.
Perfectionists are generally ready to help, they just need a little help understanding when their high standards are fully needed. And if you are willing to take the responsibility for the results, they are happy to jump in.
Let me know what you think.
