Are You Not Crazy? Is That Your Personal Foible?

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Women are in a double bind on some of the stuff. We're not imagining it, we're not crazy. But there's no way around the kind of bigger society ocean that we're swimming in. In some ways, these negative habits are things that are rational adapt tions to an irrational world. For me, the real insight was that you cannot wait for your thoughts to dictate your behaviour. You sometimes have to let your behaviour shape your thinking. And i like that she gave really good am practical steps that i think i will probably start taking.

If you’ve worked your way up in a competitive field — or are anxious by nature — you may have perfectionist tendencies. Maybe you’re a hard-driving, obsessive worker who thinks a task is never quite done. Or maybe you’re avoidant, struggling to start a project because you want it to be done just right.

We all know society holds women to a higher standard than men and rewards us for not making mistakes. But internalizing other people’s expectations — or what we think they expect — will only burn us out. To keep rising in our careers, we need to get in tune with our own standards for what’s a good, or good enough, job.

It is possible to keep our perfectionist tendencies under control. We talk through tactics with Alice Boyes, a former clinical psychologist turned writer and author.

Our HBR reading list:

“How Perfectionists Can Get Out of Their Own Way,” by Alice Boyes

“How to Focus on What’s Important, Not Just What’s Urgent,” by Alice Boyes

“How to Collaborate with a Perfectionist,” by Alice Boyes

“Perfectionism Is Increasing, and That’s Not Good News,” by Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill

Get the discussion guide for this episode on our website: hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work

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Email us: womenatwork@hbr.org

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.