5 ways to help workplace perfectionists break their time-sucking traits

Have you ever spent hours or days on a PowerPoint presentation, only for it to get a cursory glance in one meeting? Have you found yourself working late nights drafting a report that ends up with only a handful of downloads? Do you have an overflowing folder of projects that weren’t quite good enough, so they were never subjected to external scrutiny and languish in your bottom drawer? 

You are a perfectionist.

You may even hold pride in your perfectionism. But the upshot is that this condition is one of the biggest time suckers and causes of inefficiencies in the workplace. Perfectionists spend too much time on tasks that do not add a lot of value. 

In interviews, admitting to be a perfectionist is often viewed as the perfect answer to the question: “what do you see as your greatest weakness?” However, we argue that being a perfectionist, and not curtailing the tendency is bad for business and bad for the employee personally.