1: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations.
At the end of the weeks to follow, we will begin an exploration of author Oliver Burkeman‘s Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.
Perfectionism is something we all know something about.
Perhaps we are perfectionists ourselves. If not, we likely know one. Maybe we live with one.
Oliver believes there is a better way of showing up in the world. Something he calls “imperfectionism.”
He defines imperfectionism as “a freeing and energizing outlook based on the conviction that your limitations aren’t obstacles to a meaningful existence, which you must spend your days struggling to overcome, en route to some imaginary point when you’ll finally get to feel fulfilled,” he writes.
Where did this insight come from?
He writes: From my “vague sense that I’m falling behind, and need to claw my way back up to a minimum standard of output, if I’m to stave off an ill-defined catastrophe that might otherwise come crashing down upon my head.”
Try harder, Oliver told himself. If that doesn’t work, try even harder.
For others, this feeling may show up “as imposter syndrome,” he notes, “the belief that there’s a basic level of expertise that pretty much everyone else has attained, but that we haven’t, and that we won’t be able to stop second-guessing ourselves until we get there.”
There were moments when Oliver longed for a just bit more discipline.
Other times, he was sure he could find the answer in a new system of managing his tasks and goals.
“I devoured self-help books, tried meditation, and explored Stoicism,” he reflects, “growing slightly more anxious each time another new technique proved not to be the silver bullet.”
What about achieving a certain level of wealth or status? “Certainly, it was clear,” he writes, that “didn’t cause the problem to go away—which makes sense, since in the modern world, external success is often the result of being even more enmeshed in the desperate game of catch-up than everyone else.”
2: At the heart of this anxious feeling is the sense of “sheer, overwhelming busyness, the sense of having far too much to do in the time available for doing it,” Oliver notes.
Somewhere, somehow, “is the idea that there exists some way of being in the world, some way of mastering the situation of being a human in the twenty-first century, that we have yet to discover,” he observes. “And that we won’t be able to relax into our lives until we do.”
The core of the issue, Oliver believes, is “the fatally misguided idea that reality can and should be made ever more controllable – and that peace of mind and prosperity lie in bringing it ever more fully under our control.”
Is life just an endless series of things we must learn to master and control?
“We set out to make mincemeat of our inboxes, defeat our to-read piles, and impose order on our schedules,” Oliver writes. “We try to optimize our levels of fitness or focus, and feel obliged to always enhance our parenting skills, competence in personal finance, and understanding of world events.”
And yet, our unending efforts to “get into the driver’s seat of life seem to sap it of the very sense of aliveness that makes it worth living in the first place,” he observes.
We lose what the German social theorist Hartmut Rosa calls “resonance.”
“The world feels dead; and for all our efforts to get more done,” Oliver notes, “we find ourselves somehow less able to bring about the results we were seeking.”
Which explains why many feel burned out, not “merely a matter of exhaustion, but of the emptiness that comes from years of pushing oneself, machine-like, to do more and more, without it ever feeling like enough,” he explains.
3: There is a better way.
“Everyday experience, along with centuries of philosophical reflection,” he notes, “attests to the fact that a fulfilling and accomplished life isn’t a matter of exerting ever more control. It’s not about making things more predictable and secure, until you can finally relax.”
Our most wonderful moments “often involve remaining open to serendipity,” Oliver writes, “seizing unplanned opportunities or riding unexpected bursts of motivation.
“To be delighted by another person, or moved by a landscape or a work of art, requires not being in full control.”
Does this mean we abandon trying to influence our reality?
Of course not. “It’s about taking bold action,” he notes, “creating things, and making an impact—just without the background agenda of achieving full control.”
When we embrace imperfectionism, “the world opens up,” he notes, “once we realize we’re never going to sort our lives out.”
We realize that a day will never come when all the stuff will be “out of the way” so we can at last build “a life of meaning and accomplishment that hums with vitality,” Oliver writes.
We accept there will always be too much to do. We welcome the understanding that we’ll never feel on top of everything. We aren’t likely to be fully confident about the future. We appreciate that we will never fully know what makes people tick.
We embrace that we will never achieve “the sort of control or security on which many of us feel our sanity depends,” he observes. “It just means that the list of worthwhile things you could in principle do with your time will always be vastly longer than the list of things for which you’ll have time.”
Imperfectionism is the understanding that this is good news.
We accept “that life entails tough choices and sacrifices, that regret is always a possibility, as is disappointing others, and that nothing we create in the world will ever measure up to the perfect standards in our heads. . .
“When we give up the unwinnable struggle to do everything, that’s when we can start pouring our finite time and attention into a handful of things that truly count.
“When we no longer demand perfection from our creative work, our relationships, or anything else, that’s when we’re free to plunge energetically into them.”
Not only that. We also recognize “how marvelously productive we become when we give up the grim-faced quest to make ourselves more and more productive; and how much easier it gets to do bold and important things once we accept that we’ll never get around to more than a handful of them.”
When we accept that life is fleeting and unpredictable, it becomes “absorbing, even magical,” Oliver writes.
When we stop hiding our flaws and failures from others, life is “much less isolating,” he predicts. “We liberate ourselves when we embrace that our greatest difficulties in life might never be fully resolved.”
Life isn’t a problem we must solve.
More next week!
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Reflection: How much energy am I spending trying to control or perfect every area of my life, and what might open up if I let go of that struggle?
Action: Identify one area where I can release the need for perfection this week and instead focus on what truly matters, allowing myself to embrace the freedom and vitality of imperfection.
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