Thanks for posting here and giving us a chance to see if we can help. The one thing I want to make clear is that I don’t think you have to be 100% on *everything*, there is some stuff you just don’t like that much.

For example, maybe you go water-skiing with your family on the big summer vacation, and it seems like you never get any better… before you decide to beat yourself up about it, dig deep and figure out if you even *care* about skiing… if you don’t, and the only reason you do it is to have fun at the family get together, then don’t waste any time beating yourself up over it, recognize that it’s just a passtime thing, you put in a small amount of effort into it, and that is OK with you and move on.

Now, for the items that *are* important to you, that you still only give 50 or 60% on, I think that this new article might be a good read, specifically Section #2 on handling Self Doubt… that’s the trick with a lot of people that are completely frozen in complete inactivity… they dwell on how far the distance *seems* to be between Point A (where they are now, that they don’t want to be at) and Point B (some imagined successful point that looks to be like 100 miles away).

This is a lot like trying to cross the Sahara desert, the only possible way to do it, is to start taking 1 step at a time… there is NO other way. That is why I suggest breaking tasks down into “micro” tasks that seem to have nothing to do with the bigger task, so it doesn’t feel so daunting. In the long run you come to realize that the distance between Failure and Success was a hell of a lot shorter than you realized.

I gave some examples in the other article, but some other example might be something like this:

Current State of Mind (Point A): I’m a terrible father, I never play with my kids and don’t feel that connected to my wife.

Perceived Perfect State (Point B): My kids adore me, we play ALL the time and I love it, my wife admires me and I love her to pieces.

So given that, when you are sitting at Point A and imaginging that you want to get to Point B, it more or less feels impossible. You probably say stuff like:

* Well I would need like 6 extra hours a day to play with my kids and wife to fix this.

* I would have to be a stay at home dad, and I can’t do that!

* I travel too much, it’s impossible to see them more!

* My wife is always so critical, I could never be close to her!

basically just a myriad of reasons as to why you can’t ever get from A to B… but the reality, the honest-to-god reality, is that to get to Point B, you don’t have to do any of that stuff… the *real* solution probably looks something like this:

* When you get home, you announce to your kids that it’s “catch-playing-time” and take the football out back and for 15mins, play speed-catch with them, asking them about their day WHILE you are throwing and catching.

* When you walk in the door, you kiss your wife and take the trash out.

* You russle the kids up to help set the table for dinner, normally they sit infront of the TV until dinner is served by your wife, but *you* take the extra 2mins to russle them together and make it a family affair.

* When you kiss the kids goodnight, you tell them you had fun today playing catch (they probably had fun too)

While I’m suggesting just 1 of those things above, even if you did ALL of them, you literally are looking at like 20mins worth of work and suddenly find yourself 75% of the way from Point A to Point B… see what I mean?

NOTE: I have no idea what you are 50% about, I’m just using the whole kid/family/wife thing as an example, so please adjust accordingly.

So to recap, I would really focus on the following things first:

* Establish the things that are you important to you that you want to be doing 100%
* Figure out where you feel you are with each of these items (Point A) and where you think 100% lies (Point B)
* Make a single, simple micro-change with regard to each of these items, that takes you even 1% closer to Point B, I think you’ll be surprised how far that single change actually gets you towards feeling much better about yourself and where you stand in life.

Type A: This is an interesting point. It’s true that a Type-A/perfectionist would definitely suffer from the “this is never good enough” to the point of frozen inactivity like you said… I’ve been there many many times (and I’m sure will be there many many more times in my life). Although I still think that Type-A “it’s never good enough” is born out of fear of failure… you never want to declare the project ‘finished’ because it’s not good enough in your mind and you might need to face the fact that it wasn’t good enough, so you just stop working on the project or work on it endlessly, either way I see that as a 95% approach to a job.

Like you said a 100% approach is to assess a job, do it, complete it and move on. It’s the whole deal… the acceptance of the responsibility, the diligent planning and execution and moving on from there.

I do see where you are coming from, but I think it’s a perspective thing like you said… it sounded to me like you were equating the amount or level of work with the percentage of effort… so 110%’er Type-A, that is frozen on a project… but giving 110% on it.

My comment there is that they implicitly wouldn’t be giving 110% on it and are actually giving 95% on it for exactly the point you made at the end of your post: they aren’t working smarter, they are just working really really hard, non-stop. So in a way, yes they may be putting in more time on something, but are ultimately shirking the responsibility of completing the task and accepting the results.

I think Type-A’s suffer from this perfectionist approach that causes them to lock up a lot… I’ve had it with certain things over the years, but I’m generally not too Type-A, I have seen other friends who are big-time Type A completely lock up on tasks for *years* because of that though… it’s astounding to me that in their minds, they have reasoned that not completing the task and facing the “failure” (that no one would even notice) is worse than never completing the task and letting it flounder forever.

BTW I loved your examples, they were *spot* on… god I think 3 of them were straight out of my life.

So in closing, I absolutely agree with the work smarter point you made… it really is all about assessing the tasks and makings heads and tails of them and then completing in the appropriate manner that gets them done and gets you moved onto the next thing with a satisfactory amount of effort and work.

Thanks again for posting, really enjoyed reading your response.

I would disagree on one point. You said: “You are never completely happy with your own efforts completing things.” You offered this as a symptom of being a 95%er. I think this is the mark of a Type A “One hundred and ten” per center. They are never happy with the job they’ve done. I would think the 95% guy would look at his work and say things like: “Good enough” or “It’s not going anywhere” or “meets the minimum standards.”

I have always struggled with this concept. I’ve despised since childhood that “close enough for government work” mentality, but my attempts to get things PERFECT have often left me frustrated and unable to complete tasks to my own standards. Then I found myself foundering for awhile, unwilling to start projects because I did not want to go through that cycle of beating myself up over impossible details. I have since come to terms with it though. Here’s what I’ve found.

Some jobs need to be absolutely perfect. We can’t sent the shuttle into space with improperly seated o-rings in the booster rockets. Check, check again, re-check one more time. On a smaller level, I never publish a post until I have thoroughly proofed it. That was your example (and you still have about a dozen typos, LOL ). But, on the other side of the equation, some jobs really just need to get DONE! The doing is more critical than the perfection of the result. Ripping out the weeds in the garden, you may damage some keeper plants. More will grow. Putting out the garbage, you forget the pail in the upstairs bathroom. The truck comes again on Thursday. Painting a surface to protect it from rust, you get runs and drips. The part is hidden from sight anyway, and the point of painting it was the protection, not the beauty. This critical evaluation of every job has made me more productive, even in some large scale undertakings.

The point is, we need to bring our well seasoned, experienced eye to a task and rather than burden ourselves with the idea that our reputation depends on every little thing we do, so it all has to be perfect, we need to evaluate what is needed, and accomplish that while letting what is not needed fall away. It may look like 95%ing, but it really is working smarter, and it yields more accomplishment, which in turn, boosts our little egos and makes us feel better about ourselves.

Interesting… I function really heavily around positive feedback, in work scenarios when I’ve ceased to get it and have no meter of how well my work is being perceived I more or less totally become unhooked and want to leave.

If you had that choice you want more detailed positive/negative feedback or do you function pretty well without it and it’s just personal preference to know if you are giving something your all or not?

I know you want some time to think about this, no rush on a reply. Just an interesting dialog that’s all

Professionally I get no “pat on the back” or acknowledgment for a job well done. It either works=GOOD or it doesn’t work=BAD. The only times I get positive feedback is when it’s done fast.

But I don’t have any “excuse” for my 95%-behaviour in my non-work life.
More thinking to do about that.

Do you ever feel frustrated with yourself about doing things that you know you could do better or does it never come up?

That’s one data point I didn’t have… does it just not matter really to some folks *or* do some folks never notice it cause they are perfectly cool with how things are going anyway?

Would be interesting to get feedback from that angle as well.

Life on cruise control…..

I’m going to ponder this.