Breaking Up with Perfectionism

Worklife with Adam Grant

TED

Management, Worklife Podcast, Worklife With Adam Grant, Work Life Balance, Ted Talks, Podcast About Work Life, Ted Adam Grant, Adam Grant Podcasts, Ted Podcasts, Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist, Business

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Perfectionism is on the rise–and not just in job interviews when people claim it’s their greatest weakness. But the desire to be flawless is not always productive—or healthy. As a recovering perfectionist, Adam dives into how he managed to abandon the quest for 10s while holding onto his drive for excellence. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/WL45

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Chris Duffy, host of How to Be a Better Human, another TED podcast.
0:04.0	Most of us want to be better, but we're not quite sure where to begin, and our show is here to help.
0:08.1	On our podcast, you'll hear from guests and TED speakers who might just make you a better human,
0:12.7	from standing up for what you believe in to challenging conventional wisdom, embracing rejection,
0:17.0	or finding gratitude every day, our show is your guide to becoming a little less terrible.
0:21.8	Not that you're terrible right now, I think you're great, but on something me become a little less
0:25.4	terrible and maybe you'll pick up something along the way. You can find How to Be a Better Human
0:29.6	wherever you're listening to this. Diving attracts perfectionists. This is Eric Best,
0:35.2	the longtime diving coach at Michigan State University. He's been the big 10 coach of the year,
0:40.4	and he's now coaching multiple Olympic medalists at Indiana.
0:45.2	There is this one guy that I coach. He wanted everything to be so perfect. There's this thing in
0:52.6	diving called a block. You start your motion to do the dive, and then you stop before you complete the
0:58.7	dive. Well, he had a lot of problems with blocking. I would spend hours and hours watching this guy
1:05.7	waste a lot of his practice time. Yes, I am talking about Adam Grant. Guilty as judge. I never
1:14.4	thought about it as an expression of perfectionism. Oh yeah, but you're right. You would do that on
1:18.8	the most basic dive. I look at the block as a manifestation of everything is not perfect
1:26.0	up to this point. So I can't do the perfect dive from here. And because I can't do the perfect dive
1:32.7	from here, I'm going to restart. Well, guess what folks? You can't restart diving and you can't
1:40.8	restart life. Diving exposed my perfectionism. But it also taught me to manage it. I learned that
1:48.8	instead of aiming for perfection, it's healthier and more effective to strive for excellence. I'm
1:56.8	Adam Grant, and this is Work Life, my podcast with the Ted Audio Collective. I'm an organizational
2:02.1	psychologist. I study how to make work not suck. In this show, I take you inside the minds of
	...

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