Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / How Workplace Perfectionism Accelerates Burnout
Transcript
- Lucas: There's this stat from psychologist Thomas Curran that I keep coming back to — perfectionism among young professionals has increased by about 33 percent since 1989. And not just striving for excellence, but the kind where you feel like anything less than flawless is a personal failure. Luna: And that's not just a personality quirk — it's a burnout accelerant. I've seen it in my own career. When I was a junior editor, I'd rewrite emails three times before sending them to my boss. Lucas: Right. And that extra effort doesn't usually lead to better outcomes — it just depletes your energy faster. A listener named Priya, who works as a marketing manager at a mid-sized tech company, wrote in to us. She said she was logging 60-hour weeks redoing presentation decks because she felt they weren't 'polished enough.' Eventually she crashed — couldn't get out of bed for a weekend. Luna: That's the classic pattern. The perfectionist loop: you set an impossibly high bar, you almost meet it but not quite, you criticize yourself, then you work even harder to avoid that feeling next time. Lucas: Curran's research actually distinguishes three types of perfectionism. Self-oriented — the pressure you put on yourself. Other-oriented — expecting perfection from colleagues. And socially prescribed — feeling like everyone expects perfection from you. The third one is most linked to burnout because it's the least in your control. Luna: And that's the one that's really spiking. Social media, always-on work culture, the comparison game. It's exhausting. Lucas: Exactly. So the question is — what do you actually do if you recognize this in yourself? Because just saying 'lower your standards' doesn't work. Your brain treats lowering standards as a threat. Luna: Yeah, it feels like you're admitting you're not good enough. So what's the reframe? Lucas: One shift that's helped people I've talked to is moving from 'perfect' to 'complete.' The goal isn't a flawless deck — it's a deck that's done and communicates the key points. Priya started setting a timer for each slide, and when the buzzer went off, she moved on. No more polishing. Luna: That's really concrete. And it forces you to tolerate the discomfort of 'good enough.' There's actually data showing perfectionists underperform on complex tasks because they're so afraid of making a mistake that they never finish. Lucas: Right. There's a study from the Journal of Counseling Psychology that found perfectionists had higher cortisol levels and lower immune function. The body pays a price even if the work looks good. Luna: So beyond timers, what else works? I've heard of something called 'deliberate imperfection' — intentionally leaving one small thing imperfect to practice tolerating it. Lucas: I love that. A friend of mine, a designer, once left a minor alignment off in a client presentation — on purpose. Nothing happened. The client didn't notice. It was a way of teaching his brain that 95 percent is usually fine. Luna: The other piece is feedback. Perfectionists often avoid showing work early because they're afraid of criticism. But showing draft versions actually calibrates your standards — you realize what 'good enough' looks like to others. Lucas: That's huge. Priya started sending 'rough cut' versions to a trusted colleague before finalizing. She found out her colleague thought her first drafts were already great. She was spending 10 extra hours on marginal gains no one valued. Luna: And for managers listening — you can help by explicitly saying 'this is good enough' when it is. Teams absorb your standards, so if you demand polish on everything, you're fueling burnout. Lucas: Exactly. I think the deeper point is that perfectionism is often a response to anxiety. You try to control outcomes by overpreparing. But the irony is it makes you less resilient — because you never learn that you can recover from a mistake. Luna: So it's not about not caring. It's about caring in a way that's sustainable. If we've helped you think through a career move or decision, that's exactly what we hope for — and honestly, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Lucas: Yeah, it really makes a difference. No pressure, but listener support is what keeps this ad-free and focused on the stuff that matters. Back to the topic — I think the most practical takeaway is to identify one task this week where you deliberately aim for 'good enough' and see what happens. Luna: And then reflect on how it felt. Did the world end? Probably not. Did you get more time back? Almost certainly. Lucas: That's the experiment. And over time, you retrain your automatic perfectionist response. So here's a question for listeners — what would you attempt if you only had to be good enough? We'd love to hear your stories. Luna: And we'll be back next time with another angle on keeping your career healthy. Thanks for listening.