
In some ways it’s good – high quality work is important, and in fact anything important should be done well, perhaps as well as you possibly can do it. But things that are UNIMPORTANT don’t need to be done perfectly, sometimes not even well, just well enough. If a customer only wants a cheap or a quick job, or if they haven’t paid much for it, or if it’s something that nobody else will even notice, then good enough is good enough.
But for some of us, including me, this is difficult to do! Once you get into the habit of doing things as well as you can, of being fussy about the detail, you carry that habit on to everything you do, regardless of whether it’s important or not. Your pride is at stake, and it’s an effort to even think about how important something is – “just do it well every time!”

However this is impossible. There isn’t enough time to do everything perfectly. To put it another way, if everything you do has to be perfect, you won’t do very much. And other people will find you annoying because you take too long, you’re often not available (because you’re doing something else for someone else perfectly) – and then there’s the implied criticism of everyone else who ISN’T perfect.
The habitual pattern of looking for and spotting and correcting mistakes, and of always looking for ways to improve things, is called the Be Perfect Driver. And while, yes, doing things well can be useful, this driver will…
- Give you stress – have I done a good enough job? Should I re-do that section?
- Make you work longer hours than you should – just got to finish this spreadsheet
- Make you unhappy about everything you do – I found a mistake in my book after it was published, and I want to add one more disadvantage of Be Perfect to chapter 7
- Ruin your holidays – the hotel wasn’t quite right, the tour was missed out one village…
- Stop you relaxing – you just have to organise the wine bottles at the party….
- Stop you delegating – they won’t do it properly, and then you’re checking and correcting….
- Annoy your friends
…..it’s quite serious!

And once it starts it gets worse, in a self-reinforcing loop. You THINK that by trying to satisfy it you can make it go away, but all that does is feed it and make it stronger. The more you look for minor flaws and fix them the more obsessed you get with checking for flaws. It’s the first thing you do with anything that is presented to you, from a book to your daughter’s nativity outfit – you look for any errors or things that can be put right. You feed the obsession. And of course if you look hard enough you can always thing of one more thing you could have done or added, one thing that’s not perfect. Spot something (feels good) –> Fix it (feels good) –> look for the next thing…..
So, how to get your Be Perfect Driver under control?
- Realise that you have it. When I first discovered Drivers it was a big realisation for me, I thought I was just trying to do a good job, and that it was my personality, I had never thought about how I was the victim of an unproductive habit loop. Realise that you have it, and see the effect that it having on your life, your happiness and your relationships.
- Think about the source of the behaviour – if it’s coming from you then who is really in charge of your head? Are you really going to let this annoying little voice run your life? If you feel that it’s coming from other people then ask yourself whether they care – do they really notice?? And maybe it’s just tough if they do!
- Self talk: say to yourself “This is good enough now” or “This job only deserves 30 mins, so that’s all it’s going to get” or “If I spend too long on this then I won’t have time for something more important” or “I can stop whenever I like. I decide how to long spend on things”.
- Set a time limit on the unimportant stuff, and force yourself to finish on time.
- Leave a little detail unfinished, as part of your therapy. “That line that isn’t quite lined up on that diagram, but look, it hasn’t killed me. In fact, nobody else has even noticed!”.
- Zoom out and focus on the bigger picture – does this really matter compared to the much bigger things that are going on in your life, and in the world??

Summing up:
- There’s not enough time in life to do everything perfectly.
- Each thing you try to do perfectly means you don’t do something else at all, and that’s a waste.
- Most things are not important, so they don’t have to be done perfectly.
- YOU decide what’s important, and YOU decide how long to spend on things – not other people, and not the things themselves.
- You are already doing this – you could spend twice as long on everything you do, and do it slightly better, but you have already decided not to do that, and it’s fine. So, do that for these other things as well. You CAN win and take back control!
