“Upon completion, however, I felt significantly lighter – as if the perfectionist finally gave in and left for another place for a while.”

That’s an interesting feeling! I know perfectly well what you mean, although I don’t play video games (congrats on completing the game btw!) I get this feeling mostly in the shape of an “artistic” need to create something. Perhaps it’s the right side of the brain requesting stimulation? Perhaps this perfectionist versus realist is simply right versus left brain half?

As you also mention, you would be unhappy if the perfectionist inside you would constantly be suppressed. It shouldn’t either. And as you say, there are mechanisms for coping with heavy workload even though a perfectionist exists. As every student has experiences before exams. Perhaps the most realistic scenario is simply to live with the conflict between rational time-management and perfectionistic indulgence?

All pod casts are free and downloadable in mp3-format. Enjoy! Now, I’m off to do some sun-bathing and reading glossary flash cards concerning international relations :-)

The perfectionist constitutes but one piece; as a side-note, for me it’s noisy, annoying and quite the geek.

Actually, I can provide you with two befitting, recent examples; one in which my perfectionist trait overtook other traits – and one in which it was overtaken – starting with the previous. Yesterday (read: 4 am this morning), I completed FFXIII – scoring my last trophy at roughly 100 hours of gameplay.

Now, I have exams upcoming and need to do a bunch of other important stuff. So, why did I -need- to waste so much time on running around a fictional field slaying the same beast uncountable times over and over in order to be at peace? I would argue that the perfectionist in me is to blame, it wasn’t satisfied with an incomplete FF play-through. Frankly, it refused to leave me alone until the task was satisfyingly perfected. Because, I most certainly did not “enjoy” the final 30 hours of plain running-around and repeating the same (predictable) fights over and over.

Upon completion, however, I felt significantly lighter – as if the perfectionist finally gave in and left for another place for a while.

My latter example – when the perfectionist was, on the contrary, over-taken – occurred a couple of months ago. I needed to round up my MSc thesis, produce a bunch of work-related stuff and was about to leave for Italy. My rationality trait took charge and went through the process of partly organizing tasks for me but more importantly stating when they would be -rationally- (in contrast to satisfactory) completed.

The latter example entails an example in which the situation was not even remotely manageable, and the perfectionist had to give in. The previous example on the other hand shows for a situation in which my rational trait still view a positive outcome as manageable, no matter whether it is reducibly so. If the situation remains even slightly manageable there’s no chance in hell that, being a perfectionist, my perfectionist trait would give in. I would need to force it, and doing so would make me unhappy – it goes against who I am and how I want to be. Whether you are a perfectionist or not thus do not limit yourself to the need of performing tasks in a perfect manner – rather they strongly influence you towards not being satisfied in any other case. I think the difference in-between is essential enough to be noted. The recognition of other traits being able to, in times of need, force down the perfectionist, will allow you to not only be at peace with the perfectionist within you, but might even make you grow rather fond of it.

This sort of evolved into a rather long comment… ah well, my key notions are: Being a perfectionist is not something you choose – it’s one of those fundamental traits constituting who you are. Being a perfectionist does not mean that you need to complete tasks in a perfect manner because, luckily, you most likely have other traits that are able to over-take the perfectionist within you when it gets a bit too far carried away (being aware of being a perfectionist greatly helps if it’s your rational trait that needs firearms). It does, however, mean that a part of you will continuously be creating an attracting force towards a dangerously narrowed vision – and it’s something a person with a strong perfectionist trait simply will need to cope with.

If you are a perfectionist, a good counter-measure to combat getting carried away is to force additional attention into a wholesome scheduling routine once a month – in which a strict focus is to rationally deal with the issues that your perfectionist trait most likely will have created over the previous month. That way, issues never get the time to build up into being unconquerable, because, if you truly are a perfectionist – build up they will.

If a person would decide which task is more important, that implies one or more lower-priority tasks will be completed in a less than perfect way. Thus, this person is not a perfectionist, since he actually made the sane choice of prioritizing. (The assumption here also that no person can do everything he or she is supposed to do with a “perfect” result.)

Obviously, one can be a perfectionist only regarding one kind of tasks (for example sculpting) and not all other. But some still tend to lack the ability to let certain things go and focus on others. Those are the ones I refer to as perfectionists.

That rather sounds like lacking insight and judgement which is far from perfection.

Yes, a realistic possible condition to have a peace of mind when studying, such as a clean desk, might be important for some. But on the other hand, if it’s a condition for them to have the desk cleaned to have their piece of mind – then why did they not schedule the cleaning in reasonable time before the exams, so they won’t waste time doing it when they should really be studying.

If the person was truly a perfectionist then he would have accomplished this prior to the studying times and consequently never would have felt regret for not having cleaned his task or answered that email.

To use Fredrik’s term: Such a person is perhaps lazy after all?