Why Perfectionism Isn’t Your Superpower (It’s Your Excuse)

My daughter had five paint swatches taped up in her living room for ages. All five are variations on two colors so close together I genuinely could not tell them apart anymore. And in her foyer, three more swatches that don’t have a single thing in common with each other, three completely different directions for that room.

This week’s post comes with a video too — because some things are easier to say out loud.

I asked her about it not long ago and she just laughed and said she’d get to it eventually. I recognized that laugh. I’ve laughed it myself, about plenty of things that weren’t paint.

Here’s what I’ve landed on watching her sit with those swatches: perfectionism isn’t your superpower. It’s an excuse with better PR. And it rarely travels alone. It runs with two companions who look nothing alike but are doing the exact same job underneath, keeping you safe from the moment someone, possibly you, decides you got something wrong.

In Why You Keep Getting in Your Own Way, I named five patterns that run more of our lives than we’d like to admit. A couple weeks ago I paired up the People-Pleaser and the Over-Functioner in a post about disappointing people gracefully. Today I want to take the other three: the Perfectionist, the Doubter, and the one I’ve started calling the Waiter, because “Procrastinator” never quite captures what she’s actually doing. All three of them are terrified of the exact same thing. Getting it wrong.

The Perfectionist Keeps Things “Almost Ready”

Start with the living room. Five swatches, two colors, and a gap between them so small it barely qualifies as a decision anymore.

The Perfectionist isn’t chasing excellence there. She’s postponing a verdict. As long as there are still two live options on the wall, nobody, including her, has to commit to one and find out whether it was actually the right call. Finished things get judged. Almost-finished things just get admired for their potential, indefinitely.

I’ve watched this play out with bigger things than paint. A business plan that lives in “just needs one more pass” for the better part of a year. A project that never quite gets called done because done means it could be wrong. The Perfectionist will tell you she has high standards. What she actually has is a very effective way of never having to find out.

If you’ve read Easing Back Into Real Life (And Letting It Be Imperfect), you already know where I land on this: imperfect and finished beats immaculate and stuck, every single time. Researchers who study this pattern have found something similar. Perfectionism isn’t really about the work. It’s a trap built out of fear, dressed up as a work ethic.

The Doubter Outsources Her Own Read

Here’s the part of the living room story that gave it away for me. Those two colors are close enough that my daughter couldn’t tell them apart in most light. So she asked everyone else to weigh in instead, me, her sister, a friend who stopped by to drop something off and got handed two paint chips before she’d even taken her coat off.

The Doubter doesn’t trust her own read on anything, so she goes shopping for someone else’s. She’ll ask three friends whether a text sounds “too much.” She’ll run a decision past her whole group chat before she’ll stand behind it herself. It isn’t that she can’t decide. It’s that somewhere along the way she decided her own judgment isn’t safe to use alone.

The Perfectionist keeps things almost ready so they never have to be judged as finished. The Doubter borrows other people’s judgment so she never has to trust her own.

I wrote a whole post a while back on why saying “I don’t know” is a sign of strength, and I still believe every word of it. But there’s a difference between not knowing yet and refusing to ever be the one who decides. The first is honest. The second is a hiding place with a very reasonable-sounding excuse.

If you’re not sure which of these patterns has been running your own decisions, that’s exactly what our free reflection Where Are You In Your Becoming? was built for. Eight questions, about two minutes, no wrong answers. It names your stage plainly and hands you a reading path matched to where you actually are right now. You don’t have to have it figured out to belong here.

Meet the Waiter (The Procrastinator’s Real Name)

Now the foyer. Three swatches, and unlike the living room, these don’t have anything in common. Three completely different directions for that room, and not one wall has been touched.

This is the pattern everybody calls procrastination, but I don’t think that word tells the truth about her. She isn’t lazy. She’s waiting. Not because the choices are too similar this time, but because they’re too different, and picking one means genuinely giving up the others. She’s waiting for enough certainty to show up before she commits to any direction at all.

I’ve written before about waiting for the right time, and this is its messier cousin. That post was about waiting for permission from your circumstances. The Waiter is waiting for permission from herself, and she’s decided that permission only arrives once she’s certain she won’t be wrong. Since certainty like that basically never shows up, she can wait a very long time.

Researchers who study procrastination keep landing on the same finding: it usually isn’t about time management at all. It’s fear wearing a very convincing disguise. The task itself was never really the problem. Being seen attempting it and getting it wrong was.

Full Circle: Permission to Be Imperfect

(Why Perfectionism Isn't Your Superpower, After All)

Here’s the part I didn’t expect when I sat down to write this. All three of these patterns, the Perfectionist, the Doubter, and the Waiter, trace back to the exact same place I started this whole blog. Permission. Not permission from your calendar or your kids or your ex-mother-in-law. Permission to be wrong sometimes and still be fine.

The People-Pleaser needed permission to disappoint someone. The Perfectionist needs permission to call something finished before it’s flawless. The Doubter needs permission to trust her own read without a committee vote. The Waiter needs permission to start before she’s certain. It’s the same slip of paper, handed to a different part of yourself each time. If you’ve read How to Stop Apologizing for Everything, you’ll recognize the shape of this. We keep needing to grant ourselves the same permission in a dozen different outfits.

The foyer is still exactly as bare as the day she started. No deadline has come along to push that one yet. And if I’m honest, most of us have some version of this happening somewhere in our own house, our own inbox, our own half-started something. That’s not a failure. It’s just the pattern, waiting to be named.

If any of this landed for you today, come sit with us over in The Thrive Hive. There’s a whole group of women in there naming their own version of this, out loud, together. Next week we bring all five patterns back into one room and help you figure out, plainly, which one is loudest in your life right now.

You’re Not the Only One Asking

Is perfectionism the same thing as having high standards?

Not quite. High standards are about the work. Perfectionism is about avoiding judgment, and it often uses the language of high standards to justify staying unfinished. The tell is whether “almost done” ever actually turns into “done.”

Why do I keep asking other people what they think instead of trusting my own opinion?

This is usually less about the specific decision and more about a learned belief that your own judgment needs outside approval before it’s safe to act on. It often starts reasonably enough, checking in occasionally is healthy, but becomes a pattern when you can no longer make even small calls without a second opinion.

Is procrastination really about fear, not laziness?

For most people, yes. Research consistently links procrastination to fear of failure and fear of judgment rather than a lack of discipline. The task itself usually isn’t the obstacle. The risk of being seen attempting it imperfectly is.

Can the Perfectionist, the Doubter, and the Waiter all show up in the same person?

Very often, and it makes sense once you see the shared root. All three protect you from the same possibility, being judged as wrong, so it’s common to run all three depending on the situation.

What’s the first step to interrupting these patterns?

Start by naming which one is loudest this week without trying to fix anything yet. Naming is what turns an automatic reaction into an actual choice.

Is this connected to the anxiety and stuck patterns you’ve written about before?

Yes. These three patterns are part of the same five described in Why You Keep Getting in Your Own Way, and the anxiety underneath them is explored further in When Anxiety Feels Like a Full-Time Job.