© Engin Akyurt
The obsession with perfect results can make you ill.
September 22, 2024
Julia Werner
When is good good enough? Why is the pursuit of perfect results often a waste of life? And: why is "adaptive goal distancing" sometimes the very best course of action?
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Everyone who has had to go to the office or do a school internship at a post office knows this: funny employee sayings. 'In my next life, I'll be paperwork; it just sits there,' is always written on an office wall somewhere, and on a coffee mug: 'I don't care, I'll just leave it like that now.'
You can, of course, pity people who give up before they've even started. Or envy them. Because they've already accepted what comes out of their work. Mediocre below average? The main thing is that it's done. This deeply relaxed office specialist is speechlessly opposed by the diligent worker bee. Whether she's an artist, a writer, a statistician, or a cleaner, she always thinks there's more to be done.
The tile joints could use another round of toothbrush scrubbing, the portrait a bluer background - or a new face altogether, and a text is never finished anyway. The worst members of the 'I'll just go over it quickly one more time' faction, by the way, are fashion designers.
At the start of a Marc Jacobs show in New York, the audience once had to wait two and a half hours as if ordered and not picked up. The maestro wasn't finished yet and quickly took apart a few looks to reassemble them. The audience thanked him with outrage, after which every Marc Jacobs show started promptly at 6 p.m. from that evening on, and those who weren't there didn't get in anymore.
But Marc Jacobs is a big deal. We mini-Marcs often don't have a huge audience eagerly awaiting the outcome of our work. So it's all the more important for our own health to let go at the right moment. Psychology professor Carsten Wrosch, who made quitting a topic at Concordia University in Canada as an alternative strategy, calls the jump 'adaptive goal distancing.'
Means: The moment we realize we're not getting anywhere - especially with identity-forming goals - letting go is the smarter strategy. Because staying in place is the greatest stress, it saves us from all kinds of unpleasant things like hormonal imbalance, increased cortisol – and inflammation values and yes, in the worst case before depression. .
But how do you do that, distance yourself from the goal, namely the perfect result? Artists are regularly asked about this topic. Gerhard Richter responded in an interview with Swiss television like this: "When I can't do anything more to it. When there's no stupid spot left in the picture. Then I can't do anything more, then it's finished. It can happen very suddenly."
However, not everyone is so confident with this gut feeling. The curator Hans Ulrich Obrist even reported in an interview about an artist who demanded back a painting that had already been sold in order to work on it again. And the great Leonardo da Vinci noted many centuries ago with a slight resignation: "Art is never finished, it is only abandoned."
This is a bitter truth that actually applies to everything – from the job project to the big life plan itself. And it's so important because the obsession with the perfect result can notoriously destroy things.
For example, you can devote half of your life to the absolute desire to have children and, in the midst of hormone cycles and unsuccessful in vitro fertilizations, lose a lot of money and even more joy in life.
Of course, the perfect person has perfect children and lives happily ever after in a perfect family. But nobody's perfect. Many women suddenly became pregnant after releasing this meaningful, ultimate heart's desire and first flying to the Caribbean.
Yes, these are rare miraculous stories, but they illustrate that true magic often lies in letting go. The creative genius stroke happens more often than we believe, all by itself. And in pause mode, not by endlessly drilling holes in the same wall.
This even applies to dressing, the biggest area of worsening improvement. The great Giorgio Armani responded dryly to the question of a recipe for good style: "Before you leave the house, take three things off again." Add something, take something away, repeat. Until ideally, eventually, the penny drops.
Whether you are on the right track or should rather let it be, you can actually feel it already while doing it. You just have to learn to listen to yourself - and have the courage to leave gaps. Jean-Luc Godard's documentary "Sympathy for the Devil" was torn apart by critics, but it's absolutely worth seeing due to the Rolling Stones recordings.
The Nouvelle Vague star was allowed to film the Stones working on their later hit of the same name. At first, they sit seemingly listless and powerless, jamming a blues that slowly and steadily transforms into the samba madness that immediately gets into everyone's bones as soon as we hear the first bars.
There's Bill Wyman and Brian Jones, apparently on the sidelines. There's Charlie Watts, highly concentrated. There's Keith Richards, possessed, even playing bass. And Mick Jagger, a little evil, arrogant, smoking bored while singing.
Suddenly bongos appear, and his singing sounds a little bit more devilish. In the end, Richards conducts a group of people including the witch-hat-wearing Anita Pallenberg in front of the microphone. The legendary "Whoo, whoos" are heard. And Mick Jagger, behind a partition, now sings electrified, dancing, yes, he's grinning. That's the "We've got it!" moment. The one where nothing needs to be added. And nothing can be taken away.
© Pixabay
Tennis player Andrea Petkovic ended her career at 34 because she realized she would never quite reach the top.
This is what it's always really about. Sometimes you need feedback from outside because you've become so intertwined with your own work or life plan that you can no longer see the status quo. Deadlines are therefore true gifts for creatives.
At some point, they just have to send their child out into the world, regardless of whether they think it's ready or not. Then comes praise, and the child is grown up. Or criticism, then the child comes back home and is retrained.
Sometimes you have to start over many times, that is, tackle several versions of the same idea to arrive at the solution. All paths to the never-to-be-reached perfection are learning processes. After all, you learn from the duds – namely what doesn't work.
And sometimes you have to admit that you've long since made yourself comfortable on very old and dried-up laurels, i.e., past successes. In other words, that you're not learning anything new. That's the very best time to let go, because only letting go creates space for something new.
A good example is the tennis player Andrea Petkovic , who ended her career in 2022 at the age of 34, although she would have liked to continue playing until she was 50. Because she realized that she would never quite make it to the top. So she saw no point in putting all her strength and energy into this goal.
The multi-talented person published a book during her active career, today she works as a presenter and author. And she looks not only very successful but also very happy doing it. The Formula 1 driver Nico Rosberg, on the other hand, won exactly one world championship title and quickly left the racing circus. Maybe because he knew he wouldn't have a chance at another title.
But one can't help but speculate that there could have been more – another world championship title with another team, a new version of the same learning process? Maybe he would be among the greats today, but maybe not.
Letting go always involves a certain risk. It can be followed by a big hole or a brilliant stroke of genius. So it's not for cowards, neither for office drones nor for eternal pseudo-perfectionists. Perhaps the coffee mug slogan should simply sound a bit more heroic: "I don't care. But I'll leave it at that now!"
