Perfectionism is one of downtime’s biggest enemies. I know, because for much of my life I let perfectionism steal my downtime. In our busy, hyper-connected world where quiet downtime is hard to come by, it’s particularly important for my fellow introverts to be on guard against perfectionism eating up their downtime. Speaking from experience, getting enough downtime allows us introvert to have the mental space to see the big picture, like the way our current patterns of living, for instance perfectionism, impact our life. But it’s hard to get downtime if one is spending every moment obsessed with making things perfect. Instead of using our free time to relax we can easily end up using that time trying to perfect something that doesn’t need to be perfect.

Here are three tips on reducing perfectionism:
Realize that time spent perfecting the wrong things means not making progress on the right things.
Many years ago my family owned a yarn store. My role was primarily marketing and PR. One day I had too many things on my plate, so I asked a family member to cut in half the flyers I had just printed. The result – slightly crooked flyers. I ended up recutting all of them, despite my already stressful day and having more important work to do. Sadly, the yarn store is now closed for good. My perfectly cut flyers couldn’t keep it open.
Create systems.

• Use a tool to create the system. I use a timer when picking a new restaurant, because I would spend more time researching restaurants than actually eating a meal at a restaurant.
• Delegating your perfectionist tasks to other people. I tried learning how to sew my own shirts, but sewing doesn’t come naturally to me. I could have spent a few years learning sewing to make adequate-looking shirts, or I could buy them (a form of delegating).
• Stop doing the perfectionist tasks. Yes, we introverts don’t like telephones, but in terms of downtime I’ve realized that it’s better to have a 5 minute phone conversation with someone than to spend 10 minutes continuously rewriting an email only for there to be follow-up emails to respond to.

Know that you are enough.
You are not less of a person because that informal email to your brother contained 3 grammatical errors, or because you don’t practice yoga like everyone else (I don’t practice yoga, but I always mean to…). You’re human, and you’re real, and you’re perfectly imperfect.

Perfectionism may seem like the “right” thing to do, but it can end up being the wrong thing when you need downtime.

Do you need help creating more downtime in your life? Take my upcoming downtime course or work with me one-on-one to create an action plan around a personalized time audit.