Why perfectionism is holding you back

At the surface level, perfectionism sounds good: You strive for excellence based on your intrinsic desire for perfection. Nothing you produce will ever make your manager or the company look bad.

But perfectionism can become a major blocker to your career progress:

1. Perfectionism lowers your output.

• Studies show that humans assign higher value to short-term outcomes compared to long-term outcomes. That’s why we have trouble saving for retirement when we can use that money to go on a vacation right now.
• At work, this means perfectionists try to minimize the chance of making a mistake (that would result in immediate negative consequences) and end up spending too much time polishing deliverables. This results in lower output which, in turn, makes it harder to get promoted.

2. Perfectionism limits your growth opportunities.

• Perfectionists do whatever they can to minimize the possibility of mistakes. The natural consequence of this is that they tend to stay within their comfort zone.
• You started your career as a Marketing Data Scientist B2B SaaS? Better double down on what you already know, even if you discover you’re actually more interested in doing Product Analytics in Consumer Fintech. If you switch, you’ll have to learn a new industry from scratch and will be much more likely to mess up; why take that risk?

In my experience, perfectionism is especially common with highly analytical people or those with advanced academic backgrounds. And it’s becoming more and more common. However:

The hard, but necessary realization to succeed in a high-growth environment is that what got you to this point is not what will get you to the next level.

You might have gotten good grades and admitted to your target grad school program because you were able to deliver flawless work, spending months refining a single paper or project. But you will rarely get the opportunity to showcase this on the job.

It’s painful to deliver work thinking “I could have done a much more sophisticated version of that”; sometimes, you feel downright ashamed of the hacky solution you threw together. But it’s important to remember that the time you invest in a deliverable quickly hits diminishing returns:

How to spot perfectionism and what to do about it

The first step in tackling perfectionism is to understand what type you’re dealing with. There are three types:

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

For example, if you realize that your perfectionism comes at least partially from (what you feel are) unrealistically high expectations from your manager, you might need to work with them to address this instead of just trying to shift your own mindset.

Given that perfectionism can stem from many factors, including early childhood experiences, it’s not realistic to provide a one-size-fits-all recipe to overcome it in a blog post. Therefore, I’ll focus on the different ways that perfectionism shows up in the workplace, and what you can do in these specific situations.

Symptom #1: Perfectionists are unable to keep up with the pace of the business 🚀

• What this looks like: Perfectionist Data Scientists propose elaborate approaches that take months to yield results even when the company needs something in weeks. They’re unwilling to compromise and you often hear “That’s not possible”.
• If this is you: Remember that it’s your job as a Data Scientist to help the business get things done. Instead of saying “that’s not possible”, provide a set of options with their respective timelines and highlight the trade-offs. This will allow the business to move forward while knowing the risk, and you will be able to “cover your ass”.

What helped me: Don’t focus on how much better you could have made the deliverable, but how much worse off the project would be if you didn’t provide any input at all (which will happen if you are not fast enough).

• If you’re dealing with this: Rather than asking people how long they will need, communicate a hard deadline and ask for what’s possible by that date. Make it clear if a directional analysis will be sufficient; often, what’s needed to move forward is much less rigorous and detailed than what people think.

Symptom #2: Perfectionists are uncomfortable making decisions with incomplete data 📊

• What this looks like: Perfectionist Data Scientists are often paralyzed when it comes to decision-making. They drag out decisions in the hope of getting more information or doing more analysis to de-risk their choice.
• If this is you: Give a clear recommendation and then state your confidence level, and what will happen if you’re wrong. You should also add the key assumptions that your decision was based on; if 1) others disagree with the assumptions or 2) you get new information later that changes one of them, you will be able to adjust.

What helped me: Realize that we never have perfect information. Every decision is an educated guess to some degree, and research shows that we tend to overly regret the decisions we made.

• If you’re dealing with this: Put people on the spot; ask for recommendations or decisions from your team rather than options. And foster a culture where decisions are judged by what was known at the time since it’s easy to pick holes into something in hindsight.

Symptom #3: Perfectionists often become blockers for others 🚫

• What this looks like: Perfectionists pick endless holes in other people’s proposals without offering alternatives.
• If this is you: Don’t try to enforce perfection across the company. Playing devil’s advocate and challenging each other is important, but it should be constructive. Treat projects as an optimization problem where you need to find the least bad solution under the given constraints (time, budget etc.)

What helped me: Pretend that if you criticize someone else’s proposal, you are now on the hook for solving the problem instead. This forced me to go from “This doesn’t make sense” to “Here’s what I would do instead”.

• If you’re dealing with this: Set a deadline to propose alternatives and reward solution-oriented thinking rather than people who solely point out problems.

Symptom #4: Perfectionists polish every single deliverable 🎁

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

What helped me: Try to think about it the other way around. Everyone will notice that you spent a lot of time polishing this internal deck instead of working on something impactful. In a fast-moving company, that actually looks worse than delivering a document that’s rough around the edges.

• If you’re dealing with this: Lead by example; set a culture where screenshotted graphs from a dashboard with brief commentary are an acceptable way to create a slide. Don’t nitpick minor things like color or font choices.

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

Symptom #5: Perfectionists give too many details 🔬

• What this looks like: Perfectionists add too many details in written and verbal communication. They are uncomfortable with simplifications and use extensive technical jargon.
• If this is you: Focus on the key insights and put the supporting information in the appendix. And use plain English; you want people from different teams and backgrounds to be able to understand your work. You only realize impact as a DS if others understand the takeaways of your analysis.

What helped me: Don’t try to anticipate all questions and answer them preemptively. Put the most likely questions in an FAQ section and prepare to answer any remaining ones live; this actually makes you look more competent than including everything in your document.

• If you’re dealing with this: Ask presenters for a five minute executive summary to force them to focus on the essentials. Then ask targeted follow-up questions as needed.

When to be pragmatic, and when not to

There is a time and a place for getting things 100% accurate, and there are instances where speed trumps perfection. But when should you be pragmatic, and when is it a bad idea?

Here are the factors you should consider to guide that decision:

• ♻️ Is the decision reversible? There are decisions that are one-way doors, and others that aren’t. You should spend the majority of your time analyzing the ones that are costly to reverse, and move with educated guesses on the others.
• 💰 What is the expected financial cost of being wrong? Even if a decision is reversible, it might be costly to do so (e.g. wasted Eng resources, money spent on the wrong tool etc.). Decisions with a high cost to reverse should receive more scrutiny.
• ⚖️ Is there a potential for reputational damage or legal consequences if you mess up? Having to walk back on a statement you made internally is awkward; admitting to regulators that you made a mistake can have serious consequences. As a rule of thumb, anything that goes to regulators, Wall Street, your board of directors or customers should receive the maximum amount of rigor.
• 📈 How sensitive is the decision to the analysis? One very common mistake is to keep investing time in an analysis even if additional accuracy won’t change the decision. For example, if you want to estimate the potential revenue from a new business opportunity, it might be enough to know whether the opportunity is in the range of $100M or $1B to make a go or no-go decision.
• 🗑️ Is this throwaway work? Investing time in work that will be used over long periods of time is more beneficial than analyses that are used for one-off decisions. Make ad-hoc analyses “good enough” for the problem at hand, and focus most of your efforts refining things that will be used broadly by internal or external customers.

How to become more pragmatic

I’ve had to unlearn perfectionism myself. These mindset shifts have helped me do that:

• Realize that even if you do things perfectly, you’ll still fail all the time. For example, just because you do a flawless analysis of your Total Addressable Market (TAM) doesn’t mean your market entry will be successful. The key success factor is to get more “shots on goal”, so your time is better spent on trying more things rather than perfecting a single one.
• Don’t focus on the things you got wrong, but the ratio of what you got right. If you’re right most of the time, it’s fine to be wrong some of the time. For example, Amazon’s leadership principle is “Leaders are right, a lot” (not “all the time”).
• Practice your judgment in low-stakes situations. Practice making judgement calls even when you’re not the decision maker. E.g. if you’re in a meeting where an executive is asked to decide, think about what you would do. Decision-making is like a muscle and is best trained in low-stakes scenarios.

Conclusion

Becoming more pragmatic is a journey; it takes time, so don’t expect to shift your mindset overnight. But it’s worth it; it will not only increase your impact, but also reduce your stress level as you will spend less time chasing elusive perfection.

For more hands-on analytics advice, consider following me here on Medium, on LinkedIn or on Substack.