By Natasha Josefowitz, Ph.D.
LA JOLLA, California — We’ve all heard the popular adage: Anything worth doing is worth doing well. But, I live by a different motto: not everything worth doing is worth doing well. In other words, some things just need to be completed in a way that is good enough but not polished. For example, when balancing work and home, something has to give, and that has to be okay. In a recent book by Robert E. Kaplin and Robert B. Kaiser, Fear Your Strengths, the authors take some of our common wisdoms and myths and examine what happens when we carry them too far.
Perfectionism, in its extreme manifestation, inhibits productivity, because nothing is ever good enough to act on or to be finished. Also, perfectionists have a high number of chronic illnesses due to their constant anxiety about not being good enough or doing anything well enough.
The common advice to follow your passion may also be misleading. Indeed passion has driven many inventors, entrepreneurs, and artists to succeed, but one must differentiate between the healthy pursuit of work one loves and the excessive need to engage in it at the exclusion of other endeavors which often leads to impaired relationships and burnout.
Fairness is a goal which we are admonished to pursue from the time we are small. And it is part of our genetic makeup to seek fair treatment, but that doesn’t mean that everyone has to always be treated the same. Fairness means treating people according to their performance or needs. If everyone in a competition is given first prize, this reward becomes meaningless. Taken to an extreme it can become demotivational, a ritual, non-productive scorekeeping.
Be nice. How often have I have we heard that one? We like people who are always nice; they are generous, happy to compromise, and available and helpful , and they don’t make waves. But do we trust them to give us an honest answer? To critique when necessary? To stand their ground and fight for something they believe in? Another downside of non-stop niceness is one never knows what negative emotions are being harbored. Is it repressed anger or hidden sadness? People who are always nice often leave decision-making to others who may eventually resent that burden.
Another mandate is to place collaboration at a premium. While collaboration has indeed led to positive outcomes in many endeavors, the rewards of diversity, working together towards a common goal, and fostering good relationships do not always outweigh the effects of lowered efficiency and productivity. Is there a push for people to contribute to a project even though they have nothing to offer? Are people organized into teams when they might work better independently? We all know the waste of time committees often engage in. I have at times caught myself saying when in charge of a group, “We have not heard from so-and-so,” thereby putting them on the spot and forcing them to come up with something, anything whether it adds to the discussion or not.
Finally, the prescription given to (mostly) women with both families and careers that they can do it all and achieve a balanced life is not doable. I was getting advanced degrees when my children were in school, so whose report was more important, theirs or mine? Do I attend their game or go to my seminar? Do I work late and get some take out for dinner or cook something more healthy? Do I refuse that promotion with longer hours and give up on quality time with my husband? These questions have no answers.
Our culture is full of edicts about how to live better, work better, and be a better person, but many of these strategies produce negative consequences when followed to extremes. The solution is to pursue our lives in a way which gives us the best results we can achieve overall. When we are faced with conflicting projects and priorities, what is “good enough”? We must decide what price we are willing to pay and then choose to do some of it in a substandard way, at a later time, or not at all.
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This article initially appeared in the La Jolla Village News and is republished with permission. Josefowitz may be contacted via natasha.josefowitz@sdjewishworld.com