How to manage your perfectionism as a writer.

When it comes to me being a writer, it's not exactly a secret that I tend to be pretty hard on myself. As a writer, I feel that I have to write good stuff all the time and that I'm not allowed to make mistakes in the process.

Especially when it comes to writing on behalf of others, I feel that I have a responsibility to get things right. I feel that since I'm not just representing myself, making mistakes is unacceptable and makes me a bad person.

So when it comes to me - or anyone else - being this kind of a 'perfectionist', it's obvious that even though it's not a bad thing to set high standards for yourself, it's not always a good thing either. It's not good to always demand too much from yourself.

The biggest problem with being a perfectionist is that even though writing good stuff requires that you try your best, there are days when things won't go your way. No matter how hard you'll try, on some days you won't be able to write good stuff at all.

During these bad days, if you're a perfectionist, you might get so stressed from possibly 'failing', that you might even think that you have failed as a human being. You might think that you're the worst person in the world and that you can't succeed in anything.

So when it comes to these situations when things don't go your way, is there anything that we could do so that we could perhaps avoid them? Is there a way to handle these moments when things just don't seem to work at all?

At least in my opinion, the best way to 'manage' yourself as a perfectionist - unlike what some might say - is actually not to lower your standards. You should not automatically think that you should become a writer that demands less from yourself.

Instead of lowering your standards, a more constructive way to manage your perfectionism would be to become more aware of yourself as a writer. You should become more aware of what your strengths and weaknesses are.

For example, when I start working on a project, it always helps (strength) if I have had previous experience working on my tasks. It helps if I feel comfortable about the processes and have a solid idea on how the writing process is going to work.

By that I mean that as long I'm aware of the mistakes that I'm going to make and how I can fix them, things are going to be okay. As long as I know how long the project is going to take on average and where the obstacles are going to be, I won't get too frustrated.

On the other hand, when it comes to projects that I'm not used to doing at all (weaknesses) - like writing stuff using some other language (Finnish in my case), there's more than a good chance that I'm going to run into real problems with my expectations.

For example, when I wrote a thousand word documentation for our team's project last week, I felt really uneasy during the process. I didn't feel comfortable almost at any point during this supposedly 'easy' writing task.

The reason for this feeling was that even though I did have tons of experience in writing articles, I had written all my articles in English. I didn't have a writing routine at all when it comes to using my mother's tongue.

So not surprisingly, when I tried to write in Finnish after like a ten year break, I kept running into obstacles all the time. I ran into problems, because I didn't know that I would have to adjust and that the two languages weren't completely interchangeable.

Especially when it comes to certain phrases and transitions, I felt completely lost with the project. I had such big problems that I even had to spend more than twice as much time on the project than I usually do when I write in English.

In that sense, when it comes to managing your perfectionism as a whole, it's pretty obvious that the biggest issue with the trait isn't necessarily perfectionism itself. It isn't necessarily a bad thing to keep setting high standards for yourself.

After all, when it comes to writing, we shouldn't forget that writing good stuff isn't really that easy to do. Even though it might sometimes look that way for an outsider, that's not how things usually go when it comes to the craft.

In that sense, even though it might sometimes be painful to screw things up (especially for a perfectionist), we shouldn't let that discourage us too much. We shouldn't forget that it's not impossible to overcome these things.

After all, as long as we know what we're doing and we're able to predict and control our projects, our perfectionism won't be a problem. As long as we know where the usual pitfalls are going to be and how to fix them, things should be okay.

On the other hand, if we don't know what we're doing and are not used to our tasks, things will be harder. Things will be harder and no matter how talented or perfectionistic we might be, our projects are going to be in trouble and won't be finished that easily.