Hi everyone and welcome to our podcast in Good Company.

I'm Nicola Tangan, the CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, and your host today.

Today we are doing a bonus episode with a world leading expert on perfectionism.

Why do we work so hard? Does it lead to better results?

What does it do to the workplace? What does it do to us?

Tune in.

Thank you. What does it do to the workplace? What does it do to us? Tune in. So a lot of people are just kind of grinding away day and night, tireless pursuit for perfection.

You know, trying to get the perfect grades, perfect job,

perfect partner. I guess that sounds familiar for a lot of people. But what if I told you that

this relentless quest for perfection is actually not just exhausting us, but it's also not

making us perform any better. So to discuss this and other things,

really pleased, got the world leading expert on perfectionism, Thomas Curran. Welcome.

Thank you very much. That's a lovely introduction. It's great to chat.

Great. Now, what is perfectionism?

Okay, so I guess the starting point for understanding perfectionism is really to get into the weeds of it a little bit and understand where it begins.

And perfectionism begins with a place of lack, of a place of deficit, of a feeling that we are not quite enough, not perfect enough.

And from that starting point, what we're trying to do is perfectionistic people is conceal,

disguise, hide, to repair in some way what we know deep down to be an imperfect self.

So perfectionism is really about trying to overcome what we feel is deficit and lack

through excessive standards, through trying to project into the feel is deficit and lack through excessive standards,

through trying to project into the world a perfect image of ourselves.

We want other people to see perfect performances, perfect appearances, because of that starting

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