How ‘Imperfectionism’ Can Help Us Beat Burnout

Playing in the Ruins of Our Ideals

Source: K Mitch Hitch / Unsplash

Burnout grows in the gap between our reality and our ideals. When the chasm between our musts and coulds and our lived experience becomes too big, and, as one of my clients put it, “we ‘should’ all over ourselves,” we feel like failures. Plagued by guilt and shame, we become convinced that we must either dramatically change ourselves or else change our circumstances.

A third, more Stoic, option is to adapt our horizon of expectation and to investigate the nature of our shoulds and the ideals upon which they are built. Are these ideals realistic, obtainable, or helpful, or are they designed to make us feel forever faulty and not good enough?

I am currently reading Oliver Burkeman’s excellent new book Meditations for Mortals, and I was particularly struck by one image he shares early on. Burkeman’s Meditations impart his philosophy of “imperfectionism”—the idea that if we embrace our limitations and accept what is rather than constantly chasing what could or should be, we will be able to live a much more satisfying life.

Our time on this planet is limited, as is our energy, and we will never get everything done that we want to do. No productivity hack or time management regime on Earth can save us from this fact. The only thing we can hope for, according to Burkeman, is a sense of inner release by accepting our human limitations.

Playing in the Ruins of Our Ideals

The late British Zen master Hōun Jiyu-Kennett deliberately decided never to lighten the burden of her students but instead to make it so heavy that they would put it down. Rather than making them feel that their struggles might be overcome for good one day by investing sufficient effort and time, she felt it would be kinder “to help them see how totally irredeemable their situation is, thereby giving them permission to stop struggling. And then? Then you get to relax. But you also get to accomplish more and to enjoy yourself more in the process because you’re no longer so busy denying the reality of your predicament, consciously or otherwise.”

The writer Sasha Chapin refers to this state of acceptance as “playing in the ruins.” In his 20s, Chapin wished to become a famous novelist, one as accomplished as David Foster Wallace. When that didn’t happen—“when his perfectionistic fantasies ran up against his real-world limitations—he found it unexpectedly liberating. The failure he’d told himself he couldn’t possibly allow to occur had, in fact, occurred, and it hadn’t destroyed him. Now he was free to be the writer he actually could be.”

When we are confronted with and fully face our limitations and the reality of our situation, Chapin writes, “A precious state of being can dawn … You’re not seeing the landscape around you as something that needs to transform. You’re just seeing it as the scrapyard it is. And then you can look around yourself and say, OK, what is actually here, when I’m not telling myself constant lies about what it’s going to be one day?”

Burkeman suggests that when we accept what is and let go of our burdensome ideals, we can simply get on with life: “It’s precisely because you’ll never produce perfect work that you might as well get on with doing the best work you can; and … it’s because intimate relationships are too complex ever to be negotiated entirely smoothly that you might as well commit to one, and see what happens. There are no guarantees—except the guarantee that holding back from life instead is a recipe for anguish.”

Solution-Oriented Pragmatism

How, then, might we begin to play amidst the ruins of our ideals? And does this stance not seem defeatist, akin to a capitulation, a giving up of our hopes and dreams? Where exactly is the line between injurious ideals and healthy aspirations that might drive us to achieve our best?

In psychological terms, we can describe such acceptance-based approaches as solution-oriented pragmatism. The key question to ask ourselves about our thoughts, beliefs, and ideals would not be “Are they true?”, “Are they right?”, or “Are they sufficiently aspirational?” but rather, simply, “Are they helpful?”

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I am generally a big fan of the “Is it helpful?” approach. Investigating whether our ideals and the many musts and shoulds that swim in their wake serve us well or are, in fact, stifling and counterproductive can be transformative. In my previous blog, I wrote about the ways in which our current parenting ideals have become dangerously unmoored from what, for most of us, is the reality of parenting. In addition, they are also time- and emotional-labor intensive as never before in history. They make many of us feel like utter failures on the parenting front.

Perfectionist Strivings vs Perfectionist Judgements

And yet. A part of me continues to wonder whether doctrines of gentle acceptance are truly in the spirit of Stoic and Buddhist desire adjustment, or whether they might sometimes border on succumbing to drab Realpolitiks of the soul? What about vision, goals, and aspirations? We also know that living without goals and visions is a dangerous affair and that we may drift through life like a twig in the river without them, getting dragged this way and that by the currents.

An idea from perfectionism studies is helpful when considering imperfectionism and its advantages and disadvantages. In a study from 2016, psychologists Joachim Stoeber and Lavinia E. Damian distinguish between perfectionist strivings and perfectionist judgments. They argue that whilst perfectionism is clearly associated with burnout risk, not all aspects of perfectionism are bad for us.

In fact, striving to do our best and to achieve success in what we are doing can be a very good thing. After all, perfectionism is also related to our love of beauty and excellence and to our desire to learn, grow, and develop. What is most problematic about our perfectionism is perfectionist judgments—i.e., when we castigate ourselves harshly for having fallen foul of our ideals and when our inner critics broadcast bullying messages of worthlessness, not-enoughness, and general unloveability as a consequence.

In an ideal scenario, we would keep some of our perfectionist strivings and also be exceedingly compassionate with ourselves when we are confronted with what we have actually achieved and produced and how we show up in our lives more generally. If we were able to hold our ideals more lightly, as “nice to haves” rather than crippling musts, coulds, and shoulds, we could perhaps truly begin to play.

Serious Play

What is so great about playing, though? Why should “playing in the ruins” become a new aspiration? Playing allows us to explore without the fear of failure. It enables learning by fostering curiosity in non-judgemental settings. Playing makes us more creative, innovative, enhances our problem-solving ability, and reduces stress. It takes pressure of our activities.

Play is, of course, also associated with levity and lightheartedness, with taking ourselves and our aspirations less seriously. And if that seems too much of a stretch for us, we might at least enjoy the notion of “serious play”—engaging in playful processes and applying open, curious mindsets to serious questions.