Escaping the perfectionist spiral
Detail-oriented Dilettantes! Graham here.
In this post: the joys of being a perfectionist, and one thing to try next time you’re stuck in a perfectionist spiral.
Plus, do you work in mental health? Read to the end of this issue for a big ol’ announcement just for you.
Podcast perfection
As you may have seen in the last newsletter, we've just released ep 3 of the Big Feels podcast into the wild.
The response has been great, and we already have a few new episodes in the works.
Woop!
I’m really glad people liked it, because I spent a whole lot of time on it. Honestly? Too much time. Hours and hours spent scrubbing up the audio, editing out extraneous noises, agonising over levels.
Ever find yourself stuck like this? Where even as you're doing something, you know you're overdoing it, but you still can't seem to stop?
The joys of audio editing
All in all, I spent about a full week editing this one single episode.
What!
Partly it's just that, well, podcasts are hard work! And partly it's that I'm on a bit of a steep learning curve here.
I decided to use this particular episode as a chance to boost my own audio editing skills, going over and above this time to set myself up better for the next episodes we do.
So far so good. I definitely reached a point where I was feeling good about both the edit and my new-found audio knowledge.
And that's when things fell apart completely.
The panic moment
I'd made about four different versions of the final audio render, comparing each one to see which sounded best. I finally settled on one particular FX chain that sounded pretty good.
But then came the panic moment.
I logged back into my editing program to return all the settings back to my chosen version when I noticed a strange new echo on everything.
At some point in my last round of edits I'd somehow managed to change the rate of playback. Returning it to the original rate solved half the issue, but it meant that each individual track was now out of sync, in a way that couldn't be solved by simply nudging each track one way or the other.
If that doesn't mean much to you, the key takeaway is simply this:
FUCK!
I hadn't saved each version as a separate file. I had no way of going back to before I screwed it all up.
Perfect.
Not only had all my hard work been for nothing, but it had actually made the end product considerably worse than when I started.
The perfectionist spiral
Maybe you're not on a crash course in self-taught audio engineering, but perhaps you know this moment.
The moment when you realise two things simultaneously:
1) That your impossibly high standards are now actively sabotaging your ability to finish whatever project you're working on, because you refuse to settle for 'good enough'.
2) That even though you can see this, your only way forward is to keep working, especially now that you seem to have made it worse in the pursuit of perfect.
This is the perfectionist spiral.
And there's a parallel shame spiral too
As I frantically tried to fix what I’d done, I had the following not-so-helpful thoughts:
'Other people wouldn't be so panicked by this.'
'Other people wouldn't get themselves into this mess in the first place, because they'd have stopped three versions ago and be done by now.'
Again, the spiral. The more you judge yourself for being such a perfectionist, the more shame you feel. The more shame you feel, the more you judge yourself for being such a perfectionist.
Even my laptop was judging me. Look at its smug little face.
Scratching the poison ivy
This whole experience is nothing new for me, but it actually went better than usual this time around.
When the panic point hit, I managed to pull out of the perfectionist spiral fairly quickly, which I put down to a book I'm reading.
Pema Chödrön's Taking the Leap: Freeing ourselves from old habits and fears. In this book, she gives an analogy that I think helps explain the perfectionist spiral.
Chödrön says that so often we're like young children that have a bad case of poison ivy. We want to relieve the discomfort, so we scratch ourselves, which seems like a perfectly sane thing to do.
Except of course this only makes the itch stronger. And so goes the cycle.
When it comes to my perfectionist streak, I know intellectually that at some point during something like an audio edit I'm going to have to say 'okay, that's not perfect but it'll do.' But I can't stop scratching. I think, 'yeah it's close, but what if I just tweak this. And then this. And then... oh look the whole thing is out of sync.'
Chödrön calls this 'being hooked.'
How to get unhooked
When I reached the panic point editing this podcast, I happened to have the poison ivy analogy in my mind.
It meant I was more quickly able to identify what was happening.
'Oh, I'm scratching the poison ivy here.'
Sure, it would have helped if I'd figured this out three versions earlier, before I screwed up the tape sync irretrievably by trying to make it perfect! But it still helped.
When I realised how much I'd screwed things up, I took a deep breath and said to myself, 'okay, I'm hooked.'
This helped create enough space to slow the spiral down, just a little. I still felt panicked, and lost as to what to do next. But there was more space than usual, to simply let these big feelings sit there, instead of frantically trying 'work' my way out of this uncomfortable situation.
Finding space for ‘good enough’
In this space, I managed to figure out a workaround that may not have otherwise seemed acceptable to me. Instead of painstakingly fixing the problem in my editing software, I found an mp3 render I’d exported earlier. It was mostly fine except for a minor glitch at the start, so I spliced it with another old render, which all ended up sounding good.
In other words, I picked 'good enough' instead of perfect. And I got the damn thing finished.
Breathing out
So next time I'm hooked in the perfectionist spiral, I'm curious to see whether I can take this same approach. Breathe out, and name what's happening.
'I'm hooked.'
That and, I'm also going to start saving multiple versions of my audio edits!
If you haven't already, go check out the fruits of my frantic labour by searching 'Big Feels Club' in your podcast player, then hitting 'subscribe'. Or click here to launch the episode in Apple Podcasts.
Meanwhile, speaking of the 'work + big feelings' equation. . .
Calling all mental health professionals! *Announcement time*
Do you work in mental health? Do you also have your own big feels?
Then you know this can be a tough gig.
You feel like you’re supposed to have all the answers (and you know you really don’t).
You hear how your colleagues sometimes talk about ‘people like us’.
A while back we started working on a little resource to support all you sensitive cats out there doing the best you can in a not-so-sensitive mental health system.
Introducing: Big Feels @ Work. A five-part audio series for mental health professionals with big feelings.
It’s happening in April. It’s free (for now). And we made it just for you.
Click that big pink button below to check it out.
