We grow up in a society that upholds us to the highest expectations and standards. Parents, teachers, and relations oblige and praise children who achieve the highest grades in school and this mindset transcends to them in the careers and personal lives. This engulfs them in their adulthood and obliges them to score higher in school or complete a lot of tasks at the workplace to please our co-workers, friends, and strangers. This is detrimental as some people commit suicide or suffer emotionally/mentally when they do not meet these expectations. However, research indicates that hard work at school or workplace alone does not implify success in the real world. Schools ought to reward a combination of effort and outcomes.

Perfectionism is an enemy of productivity

Perfectionism leads to poor productivity as one tends to focus on petty details, and loses track of the bigger picture and time, apprehends failure which leads to anxiety, stress, and thus burn out. Perfectionism paves way for burn out. We should understand that everyone makes mistakes, and we should take them as opportunities to learn.

According to Dr. Bryan Robinson, people tend to misinterprete excellence with perfectionism. He further states that, "Too much—perfectionism—harms your career and health. If you’re a perfectionist, you’re a such a stickler that nobody—not even you—can meet your standards. When you hold the bar too high with coworkers, subordinates or yourself, it creates problems”.

In my humble opinion, setting SMART Goals or standards is the best way forward.

Setting SMART Goals

The more you delve in your career or relationships, the more you need to become more strategic to save both your time and energy, especially as a leader. You need to focus on the master plan and thus need to take agile approaches.

So, should we settle for mediocrity or "quietly quit”? Definitely not! The best resolution is to replace unrealistic perfecionism with realistic standards, also known as smart goals, and work towards achieving them. Smart goals means setting a threshold of minimum standards, and working towards achieving them.

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achieveable/Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound:

S – Specific: this means that your goal should define, "who, what, when, where, and why”. Saying that I want to become the richest person in Africa is blurry, but a specific goal would be, "I want to build a 3-bedroom house within 3 years”.

M – Measurable: this means that a person should be able to track and measure progress

A – Achievable: a well-defined goal ought to be attainable given the availabe resources

R – Realistic: when setting a goal, one should ensure that the goal is reasonable. For instance, one can’t say, "I will spend 2 weeks without eating so that I lose weight” – you would starve and die. A more realistic goal to lose weight would be, "I will visit a bariatrician or physician, and follow his or her recommendations or prescriptioins for 6 months so that I lose weight”.

T – Timebound: A clear goal ought to be attained within a specific amount of time, otherwise, it would be nebuluous to ascertain whether it has been achieved or not.

Goals do not necessarily need to be long-term, but also short-term that contribute to the bigger picture.

More techniques to imrove productivity without burning out

Time-boxing is another essential management technique where one determines which tasks are important and allocates a time in which to accomplish them. This technique is used by famously succesful people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

80/20 rule: Also known as the Pareto-Principle, the 80/20 rule states that 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your efforts, and thus you need to prioritize your tasks and focus on doing the few but important tasks that lead to your desired outcomes. It is famously used by the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet. I have tried to apply this technique in my life, but it did not fail me.

Ikigayi is another Japanese concept, where, as soon as they get out of bed early in the morning, one defines what inspires him/her, his or her purpose in life and what they brings them joy as works towards that.

Inference

Some people tend to focus on endless chores and tasks that they forget to cherish important aspects of their lives like families, professional networks, their health and others – which are the building blocks of a happiness and a meaningful life or career.

As a parent, you should stop forcing your child to become the first in class, best singer in church choir, most educated, richest, blah...blah...blah altogether. Rather, telling them to focus on their passions or dreams, and work towards them with a hindsight that not everyone is perfectly good at everything. Managers should also ensure that instead of expecting immediate quality performance from employers, they can integrate strategies for continuous learning and improvement.

All in all, we should understand that hard work and perfectionism don’t correlate to desired outcomes, and when we focus on being too perfect, we become anxious and run out of time by often focusing on the non-essential elements. Co-workers, employers, parents, and individuals shouldn’t hold each other to the highest standards of perfectionism but rather set realistic standards (smart goals expectations). We should not praise mediocrity but rather encourage being engaged to achieve the set goals and objectives.

The writer is in healthcare management, with concentration in Global Health Perspectives.