How to Be (Reasonably) Hard on Yourself

Let’s say you have perfectionist tendencies—meaning that your assessment of quality may exceed others’—you’re working on a project and you’re approaching a deadline to submit a draft for feedback. The idea of submitting something below your standards feels wrong, so you grind late into the night until it feels right to share it. However, if your se... See more

Here we find as good a general strategy for balancing obsession and perfectionism as I’ve seen: Give yourself enough time to produce something great, but not unlimited time. Focus on creating something good enough to catch the attention of those whose taste you care about, but relieve yourself of the need to forge a masterpiece. Progress is what ma

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Bracy believes you can both accept where you are and hope to grow. “So instead of thinking of it as ‘bettering yourself,’ I like to think of it as committing to personal values such as the desire to grow, learn more, work hard, etc. When you look at it that way, you’re not seeking this destination of a future version of yourself but instead committ

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Given any project, always aim no higher than the quality target, and always strive for minimum expenditure of effort. It doesn't matter whether you're writing a term paper, pulling a person out of a burning house, or creating a galaxy-spanning human civilization — the goal is always to achieve some quality target with minimum effort.