Thoughts on feminism, perfectionism and delegation.

in #feminism7 years ago

I’m new to the Steem community. In fact, this is my first post here (introduction doesn’t count!).
When @techslut told me that I should join, I took my time. A whole lot of it. What finally gave me the motivation to join was an idea I had for something I wanted to write about.
In other words, I couldn’t bring myself to join a community of “interesting-amazing-way-out-of-my league-people” until I had something concrete to show for it.

Does this sound familiar to you?
Are you a woman?

If you’ve answered “YES!” to these questions, you know what I’m getting at. Perfectionism.
“I’m a perfectionist” is the greatest lie one can blurt out during a job interview, thinking to self that this is such a smart way to show off a strength under the pretense of a weakness. If you’re truly a perfectionist, you’d know it can make your life a living hell. You’d never mention this when applying for a job, because you know that being a perfectionist means that you’re never content with what you achieve, that you’re wasting more time and money to complete a task that was already “good enough”, but never for you.
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Even now, trying to write from my own perspective, I have at least a dozen open tabs of my so-called research so as to not appear ignorant, or misleading, or wrong, or offensive.
But this is not a research nor a professional article, so I’m going to lean back, write from my heart and that's good enough for me.

Studies have shown that perfectionism, even though a personality trait and not a disease, is related to multiple disorders, among which you could find depression and anxiety, nutritional problems, obsessive-compulsive personality, social phobia and insomnia.

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Is this gender related? Most probably.

When applying for a job, women will apply only if they’ve met each and every requirement, whereas men will apply with about 50% of the required skill set and make up for the other 50% with charisma. Women will ask for a raise after they are 100% positive they deserve it and the answer is going to be yes, whereas men will just try their luck every once in a while, even if they have nothing to show for it. When something bad happens, women will blame themselves for it. And when something goes right? Oh, the circumstances were just right, or the credit deserves to someone else. And men? You know it. Exactly the opposite.

Women are more likely to become perfectionistic, perhaps because society teaches us from a very young age that our job is to care. For everyone. For everything. It teaches us that if we try harder we will succeed, and that we can do it all by ourselves.
When I was a child, coming back from school with a graded test marked 98, my parents would ask me how could I forfeit 2 points (In israel, tests are graded 0-100 points. The equivalent for an A+ would be above 90). In retrospect, I’m sure this was an honest joke, But being a child I did not find it funny. When I grew up a bit and learned math (at the highest level, of course) I’ve encountered difficulties because I had trouble with my teacher. I took a tutor and eventually graduated with an excellent score, but was still feeling like a failure because I had help, it was not all me.

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When I’ve worked in banking (don’t ask…) I gave everything for the job, as I always have. This resulted in me being promoted up the ladder very quickly, and eventually got a team of 20 bankers to manage. Doesn’t matter that other team managers with much more experience had smaller teams. Doesn’t matter I wasn’t at any point trained to manage. I got very anxious and insecure, but every time I talked to my superiors about it, asking for help, they assured me that I totally got this, that I was so good at what I was doing, that this is easy. The burn out followed shortly.
As women, we are constantly told to keep doing what we do best (aka everything), encouraged to work harder, to be perfect at every aspect, and let’s not forget the big lie of multitasking.

When we’re so socially wired to do everything, to be good at everything and to do it all on our own because otherwise we’re a failure- how can we trust others to help us? We start to actually believe that a job well done could only be achieved by us, and by us alone. When we delegate, we do this reluctantly and with a lot of guilt associated.
Knowing how to effectively delegate is a skill. It’s critical to managerial success, of course, but not only. Delegation helps us in putting our efforts where they’re most needed, while showing others that we trust them and believe in them to take some of the pressure on themselves. Yes, it’s easy to say “But I’ll do this better! Others will mess it up!”, and it might be right, for a while. There’s a learning curve.
Delegation can make a stressful life so much easier. I encourage you, strong women, to delegate more often, not just at work. Teach the kids to do their own laundry. Set a morning routine in which you try and wake them for school only once, and the rest is up to them. Let someone else fold the clothes (even if it’s not exactly like you would have done yourself).

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We don’t have to do it all by ourselves.
We don’t have to be perfect.
Let people in.
Accept help.
It doesn’t make you weak. On the contrary.
It makes you stronger.

I’d love to hear from you how you’re taking some pressure away from yourselves and letting others be there for you for a more relaxed and calm existence.

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I followed you after I read the first two paragraphs. It feels like you interviewed me or spied on my life as research for your article ;-) you hit the nail on the head on so many things: perfectionism, anxiety, bad/no delegation skills...
This was a great read. Thank you!
I absolutely agree with you about the kid stuff - for some reason, I am a totally different person when it comes to my son. Perhaps because I don't want him to end up like me. I let him do it his way, I encourage him to keep trying and not give up, I expect a lot of him and praise his effort. I don't care if he gets it perfect. My dad used to and still does redo everything we did. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!
Welcome!

So glad you enjoyed.
Took me a lot to learn how to be content for the little things, not just the "perfect" ones.
And it's wonderful that you encourage your son to try.
Heard a mother once talking on and on about how she's a control freak at the kitchen and how she didn't allow her son to cook (!!!) or even step inside her territory. So sad that while she thought she had protected the house from being messy, her son wasn't able to explore something great, probably being traumatized by her behavior.
Be the change you wish to see :)

I am trying! Sometimes the potential mess is definitely a detractor, but I don't want to be doing his laundry or cooking all his meals when he's 20! I was just watching the reboot of One day at a Time on Netflix the other day (a pretty progressive and cool show in many ways) and the teenage kids were complaining because their lunches weren't packed for them. Kids, I started packing my own lunch (with help) when I was in first grade! It was my problem if it wasn't packed! Alas... kids :-)

Yay! You wrote a post without bug pictures so I can come in and say how glad I am that you've finally joined us here!

And an excellent post at that, bringing to the fore important issues in a compelling way!

And you're still following me even with my bug pictures!
That means a lot.
making a mental note to ask about trigger/content warnings

I'm hoping they won't be a regular feature!

Wow, for a first post! You touch on such huge issues.

Perfectionism, oh, yes. The best excuse there is for procrastinating.

Is it gender reliant you ask? It might be. When I joined Mensa in Denmark, there were fewer women than men in there. They told us that women only took the test if they were almost certain that would pass. Men said, WTF, and just tried, even if they failed big time.

It's certainly something we must do our best (not be perfect) to conquer. So we can grow. And write. And do wonderful things.

Thanks for writing this post.

Thank you for reading it :)
It's sad when we let the fear of failure guide us instead of just trying.
Who knows, we might just succeed :)

"If you're not wrong five or ten times an hour, you're not trying."

These are the words I would tell my math students when I taught at the college level. Our society stresses success to the point where young people freeze at the thought of failure. The end result is they often learn to not try rather than risk that failure.

Which is foolish! There is often no upper bound on success, whereas, you can never lose more than you have at any given time. Over the long term, if you want some version of success, the odds are in your favor to try anything.

The above is basically a more abstract way of saying the same thing in your article. You can come out ahead, even if you don't win everything.

Very nice first piece! :)

Funny, for the short time I managed the team at the bank, and they were all so stressed of making mistakes, I told them "Only people who sit and do nothing are the ones who don't make mistakes".
We only learn and grow from our mistakes and stepping out of our comfort zone.

Thank you so much, glad you liked it :)

It's so true. I've had to work hard to break out of that mindset. It was my PhD program that did it for me. Suddenly my fear of not being the best was completely validated and I had to learn to be comfortable not being perfect all of the time and using my other skills. Once I learned that I became a lot more comfortable taking chances and making my own advancement happen.

Welcome to the community! You have a new follower. :)

I just want to be the best for myself.
And my best self should totally give less f**ks about extrinsic motivation and recognition.

Thank you for the warm welcome, you've got yourself a new follower as well :)

Delegating is hard. I say it as a freelancer with too much work at times. It's really hard to trust someone enough to do your job for you, especially if you're hired for the job/project based on your personal qualities and qualifications. For that reason I learned to delegate many of the things that are more family-related.
Luckily, I have a wonderful husband who likes to cook, works (mostly) from home like myself, and loves spending time with our daughter, so that's quite easy right there. He's also better in the mornings than I am, so he takes care of that part, too. Phew.
But the lack of ability to delegate at work is really frustrating sometimes. I don't know if it's because I'm a woman or because I really am a frequent perfectionist (with some of the disturbances it entails), but when it comes to work, it just feels wrong to let someone do a job I was hired for.
However, recently we found a very good solution for delegation of "stuff" neither my husband nor I like to or even can take care of - official stuff, declarations, medical documents, etc. - we send everything we can to a VA, a virtual assistant, which is like a PA, only online, and you pay them by the hour. This really takes a load off our shoulders.
I wish everyone would delegate more. It really feels good.

Thanks for the feedback :)
Of course if you're paid to do your job, paying someone else to do this is uncomfortable.
I was never a freelancer, so I can't tell from my own experience,
But I've heard stories of women entrepreneurs that try to do it all on their own because they can't trust others to "do their jobs". But you can't be good at accounting, business management, human resources, logistics, administration, IT... sometimes you just have to accept that in order to maintain your sanity- you have to let other professionals in their fields in. So yeah, it'll cost you money. But you gain so much more.
As you said about the VA, it just feels good. You help other people make their living, you a load off your shoulders so you can invest yourself where you're needed most. It's just good!

Very nice first post! I managed to find you from @yoo1900's curation efforts and the recommendation from your partner yesterday.

You touched on a few interesting topics within the post. The best point is about delegation, I thought. It's interesting to hear from a woman's perspective about how you perceive the world around you. It's a shame that there is so many generalizations thrown about and shoddy statistics about how the different genders are, but I guess it must hold some merit. It's just disheartening to read as a male and I think the beliefs that some people have are just plain wrong.

It's nice to see that you got the vote for your first post on the channel. It's great to get that support and I think it's beneficial to get other people on the platform that are supported by their partners or friends who can guide them in the real world as well as just online. There is a lot lost in translation over the web.

Anyway, nice to read and hear your views on certain things. Some I may not agree with but I know we are all different in our own little ways. Best of luck of the platform!

Thank you for reading :)
I warned that that was completely my point of view, nothing certain and researched about it.
Just wanted to make it clear that nothing I wrote was a criticism on a masculine behavior (not here at least...), but a shout out for women to embrace this- Be confident, stop trying to be perfect, don't let insecurities hold you back, and if there's something you want to achieve- just try. Don't overthink it.

I love the way you introduced that:

Does this sound familiar to you?
Are you a woman?

That was a lightbulb moment for sure. I recognize a lot of what you describe. I'm a woman, and also a serial procrastinator and I'm sure it's partly caused by some subconscious feeling that things must be perfect.

For me, it helped a lot when I heard about the concept of "satisficing", and recognized that there's something to be said for submitting a piece of work that's acceptable, rather than spending loads of time trying to making it perfect. I also found this video super helpful (it's titled the habits of effective artists, but really it's helpful for any creative person). In his second point, he talks about how you learn the most in the early stages of a creative project, and then the last stages - the perfecting phase, if you want to call it that - is usually not that helpful for learning anything, it's just time consuming, so an effective artist should aim for volume, not perfection. Easier said than done huh :D
Thanks for bringing these things to our attention. Noticing and thinking about these problems is definitely the first step towards doing something about them.

welcome aboard, Lionne!
Ask away, I've found most on Steemit to be helpful and decent people.
BTW, if you are looking for someone to discuss NOT being a perfectionist???
... all I can say, I've got it down pat!

Once you feel comfortable here, ask about meeting people on Discord channels. Those are the real places to chat, connect, and find followers and like minded.

This is definitely on my bucket list!
Thank you :)

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