This is the 10% happier podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, everybody.

Today we're going to talk about a very common psychic element perfectionism.

Sometimes, you hear people talk about perfectionism like it's a good thing, but that may be a

bit of a misunderstanding in my view.

It's great to have high standards, of course.

It's yet another thing to be so obsessive about the outcome of your work that you drive

yourself and everybody around you, totally nuts.

Or to be so afraid of failure that you refuse to try anything new at all.

In this episode, we're going to get some strategies for managing perfectionism from a very

smart and successful person who has struggled mightily with perfectionism himself.

Adam Grant is, I'm happy to say, a frequent flyer on this show.

He's the number one New York Times bestselling author of five books that have sold millions

of copies and been translated into 35 languages.

Those books include, thank again, give and take, originals, option B and power moves.

He's an organizational psychologist who has been the top rated professor at Wharton

for seven years in a row.

He's also the host of a new-ish podcast, which everybody should go check out.

It's called rethinking with Adam Grant.

That's in addition to his other chart-topping podcast called Work Life.

In this conversation, we talked about Adam's definition of neurotic versus normal perfectionism

...