How Perfectionism Can Help or Hurt Your Life

When I was growing up, my father would often joke about how when he was a child and brought home a test from school on which he had scored a 98: His father, my father told me, would ask him, half-seriously, “What happened with the other two points?”

I didn’t think much of my father’s story, other than to associate it with my grandfather’s expectations of good grades and high achievement—expectations which he also had for his grandchildren. But in recent years, I have heard similar stories from many different patients—people from a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. When people tell me that they remember parents saying this to them about their schoolwork, it often turns out that these people have high standards and expectations for themselves as adults.

Despite being accomplished and successful, they frequently wish they’d done more in their career or feel disappointed with their achievements.

So I was interested to read a recent New York Times profile of Peter Orszag, the new White House budget director and, at 40, the youngest member of the President’s cabinet. In the article, he talked about his work ethic:

Orszag, who grew up in Lexington, Mass., has always worked himself punishingly hard—a legacy, he says, from a math-professor father who glanced at test scores of 98 and asked about the 2 other points. “It was always, ‘When I was your age, I was a tenured professor,’ ” he said.

For some people, extremely high expectations spur them on to high achievement. For others, it demoralizes them; no matter how well they do, they feel they have fallen short. Not everyone has been as successful in the workplace as Peter Orszag, and for most of us, there will always be someone out there who is doing more or doing better. The challenge is learning how to work hard and strive for goals—but rather than measuring yourself against perfection or superachievers, setting your own goals and learning how to take satisfaction from reaching them.