When perfectionism makes you a better creative, and when it doesn’t

Hands up if this sounds familiar. In the 2023 film BlackBerry, the creator of the eponymous smartphone technology Mike Lazairidis is painstakingly developing the first prototype, adamant it should be absolutely perfect before shown to any potential investors – despite imminent financial ruin. His CEO (more of a numbers guy than a creative) tells him “perfect is the enemy of good”. Lazairidis retorts that “‘good enough’ is the enemy of humanity”. The scene is an allegory for interactions between creatives and operations/producers /project managers, etc. since the dawn of time.

In the strive for great work, creatives are often the dog with a bone, iterating and fine tuning to the point of obsession. It’s in a creative’s nature to pore over details others don’t see (or pay for), willing to sacrifice money, time, and their own sanity to realise their vision. Since it’s so common, is it possible that creative people are predisposed to perfectionist traits – is it part of the package? And if so, when does it pay to be perfectionist, and how can you stop it holding you back?

The key personality trait that aligns between perfectionists and creatives is a strong imagination, explains Mel Padron-Golding, a therapist at Blue Rhythm – an organisation that specialises in mental health support for creatives. She says a vivid imagination is often identified in people from a young age, something they are born with, as intrinsic to their personality. This trait means they have clear visions for things they wish to see created in real life, and a “compulsion to match the vision as accurately as possible” – this is how they start to become perfectionists. It’s a gift and a curse, Mel says, as it’s often what makes them successful; great books, films, works of art are a reflection of its creator’s superlative imagination.

Herein also lies the rub. Creative works are often expressive, the creator closely intertwined with the work, and therefore seen by their creators as a manifestation of themselves. “Freedom of expression is vitally important to anyone within the creative industry. It is literally a part of their psyche,” Mel says. “Without it, creatives feel trapped, misunderstood, and even lost. Perfectionism can be seen as a direct link to the survival of a creative personality, as it’s an essential part of who they are. The artist is putting their persona into the work, so it has to align with their beliefs, their values, for it to be authentic.”

Instances where that vision is unmet is when problems start to arise, Mel explains. “Creators can be prone to obsession to perfect a piece, and obsession is not healthy when it comes to mental health. It can lead to the feeling that it’s never good enough, and in turn ‘I’m not good enough’.” If that person has past experience of rejection or criticism, this process can tap into those feelings of inadequacy, she adds.

Creative paralysis vs iteration

This resonates particularly with Siqi Song, an Oscar-nominated animation director from China, whose stop motion films are not only charismatic and heartwarming, but handmade with the utmost precision. The process is painstaking; Siqi (as are most stop motion animators) is unwaveringly patient and dedicated to detail. Look closely at a set of her’s and you’ll see teensy details (flower petals, crumpled coffee cups) meticulously crafted only to appear on screen for a fraction of a second. And for good reason. Siqi believes that while the story is, of course, vital to an animated film, a well-crafted production can better communicate that story, so the quality of the animation is often a major factor to a film’s success. But that pressure can be stifling.

“In my early career I just wanted to make a masterpiece, but it stopped me actually creating,” she remembers. “I was looking at the masters who had been practising for decades, and expecting that standard for myself.” Siqi says she often found herself trapped in a corner creatively, spending ages trying to find the perfect story rather than getting started, whereas she believes those early years should instead have been explorative. “It was a waste of time – it was preventing me from creating work and learning from the process.”

Perfectionism paralysed her creatively, but what she grew to realise was that letting go of some of that control actually made for better work in the long run. “There might be mistakes, there might be flaws [in those early projects] but it helped me to learn techniques for making films and how to tell stories, by making it, finishing it, and showing it to an audience to get feedback.”

Unlike Siqi, graphic designer and creative director renald Louissaint believes his perfectionist traits were helpful early on, but have hindered him as a professional designer. As a student at the University of Connecticut, being in a rural area “without much to do other than focus on your work” the “obsession” he had for his work helped him go above and beyond on research and details – “it made my work better”. Then, in his career, “it slowed me down”, he says. “My first job out of school was at a small studio, and there wasn’t time or space for me to have that same mindset of perfectionism, because they just needed things done quickly.” Now based in New York, he’s working at a tech company, and says “there’s no benefit to being a perfectionist in that environment – if anything it’s a hindrance because they’re craving more scrappy idea sharing, no-ego type of stuff. When you’re working in a team, with so many moving parts, to tight deadlines, you have to relinquish the ego.”

Creative director and artist Pablo Rochat instead has built a career from exposing and iterating his visual experiments publicly, via Instagram. He’s earned 1.3 million followers for his hilarious visual tricks – from making a train to transport his hot dogs to the barbecue, to depicting his desktop folders as teeth on a background photo of his face – and his work is, by its nature, experimental and fun. But it is by no means thrown together. Pablo says his process “involves a lot of trial and error, both in the making and publishing of creative work,” and that the perfectionist in him can “interfere when I’m sucked into perfecting a detail for too long and lose track of the bigger vision and flow of the creative process,” he says. “Especially in the beginning, it’s easy to get distracted with specific details when you are not even sure if the whole idea actually works. Like many creatives, I am always in the weeds of the creative process and can get lost in perfecting the details.”

Boundaries and perspective

So how can you tell when your perfectionist traits, which in many ways have aided your creative prowess, have gone too far? If you’re prone to obsession, especially when it comes to work, there’s always a way to justify why it’s worth the agony. But, as Siqi, renald and Pablo attest, getting bogged down in detail might be limiting you overall.

Therapist Mel says that, while it can be tricky to check yourself when you’re deep in the process, the first step is to recognise how much time, energy and focus it’s taking “to the point of feeling consumed”. Is it affecting your sleep, are you getting up in the middle of the night to work on it? Is it the only topic of conversation, with anyone? “There’s a lack of balance and perspective” in those circumstances, she says.

There are ways to combat this, through self-management and also therapy, she explains. “Regularly check in, get grounded and remember the original vision and goals. Set and maintain boundaries: What am I trying to achieve? When can it be enough? When is it ok to call it a day? It’s a really difficult task for creatives to do, but discipline is a skill that can be learned.” Working with a coach or therapist can help that process.

Boundaries help with balance, perspective, and importantly structure – when a project, particularly a personal one without a client deadline attached, could theoretically go on forever.

renald says he only realised he was going too far when he saw other designers with the same trait obsessing over a small detail in a meeting. “I was like, ‘oh wow that’s what that looks like?!’ Getting that perspective from the outside really helped me because I was like, I’m supposed to agree with you but you’re coming off like an asshole.” renald’s point of view shifted: “I started to try to understand how I want to be in the world, versus how I want the world to be.”

When creative people do prevail against the tide, and pursue a creative path, quite often then they are out to prove themselves (and prove their parents wrong) and validate their decisions. So when things don’t go exactly to plan, they take it to heart. Consider, is that your driving force, and if so, is it the right one? Adjusting your motivations might help reshape your perspective.

“It can feel both liberating and daunting to let go,” Mel says, “because letting go can often be confused with giving up.” As the work feels interwoven with the creative as a person, this translates to giving up on themselves, she says. Some of her clients grappling with obsessive perfectionism have found it useful to explore the pros and cons of loosening the grip – particularly what you’re relinquishing and what that might create space for. Perhaps it’ll give you more time with your loved ones, or better relationships with co-workers, or build in flexibility for other people or outside factors to influence the work for the better.

renald’s biggest piece of advice to anyone trying to deal with their perfectionism is to “figure out what matters and what doesn’t”. He touches on the mental health benefits of letting go. “I think there’s just a benefit to peace. Up until a couple years ago, I was just stressed all the time, about things not going my way, not getting the outcome I was hoping for, things being off by a millimetre. Then you look back and you’re like, wow, this doesn’t even matter.” Recently he finds himself more inspired by how his professor at UConn approached the creative process, as just that: a process. “He was focused on the journey rather than the outcome, and I think perfectionists in general worry so much about the outcome they don’t focus on the journey.” renald’s top tip for allowing this freedom is in planning – he shows me a huge, dense spreadsheet where he planned every detail of Parallel’s recent book design project, stating: “This is where I put my perfectionism now.” For him, a detailed plan for the structure of a project allows for creative freedom within those parameters.

Taking the scenic route

As we’ve seen increasingly at It’s Nice That, the Photoshop and now AI eras in creative industries have allowed for visual “perfection” but without a human touch, the results lack soul, and the visual landscape becomes homogeneous and stale. In reaction, the overwhelming trend across so many design and visual art forms in recent years is purposefully flawed, handmade, imperfect and human – as we explored in our piece on the rise of analogue techniques and which our Tokyo correspondent Ray Masaki dissected in his piece on the Japanese concept of heta-uma.

Designers such as Kartik Tuli and Alfie Allen are purposely going off-grid and breaking rules; illustrators such as Laura Callaghan and Jason Sturgill are making their lives technically more difficult by choosing analogue processes. All to bring humanity and personal expression back to their work, and feel closer to it – warts and all.

Siqi notes that, particularly in stop motion animation, the strive for perfection in the physical production has seen innovations that make films look 3D animated – which kind of misses the point. In reaction, audiences are looking for authenticity and humanity in the films they’re watching, which is driving an increase in the use of analogue animation processes – where imperfection is a good thing. “It’s somehow more interesting if it has a handmade quality to it,” Siqi adds. Pablo also believes “craftsmanship should be rough around the edges when it reveals a more human touch behind the work”, which is foundational to his success.

“Sometimes you release something and it’s not perfect, but the imperfections are what make it human,” therapist Mel offers. “You are human, and those human elements add your unique character to the work.”

Perfectionism as a power-up

In an ideal world, if you can view your perfectionism as a superpower, you just need to figure out how to control it, and when to unleash it. Nowadays, Siqi chooses moments to let her perfectionism loose. Factors like limited studio time and deadlines mean “you can’t be picky with every shot […] it’s more important to finish on time and be professional” but where there’s an opportunity “to have the luxury of a perfect shot, particularly if it’s important to the story, I will push it!” She notes that also, in editing, a flaw that seemed glaring on set, is usually forgotten (or even works well) when the project is seen as a whole. “You have to always look at the bigger picture. In the best animations, you don’t notice the animation, you’re focused on the story.”

renald agrees that perfectionism can be a useful power-up at times. “What I learned recently is there’s a time and a place for perfectionism,” he says. “And that time is self-initiated projects, because you’re investing in yourself. If you can hone that perfectionism and still put something out on time, it makes the world of difference.” He recently co-founded a design studio and publishing house called Parallel, which renald says is “riddled with perfectionism, but in a way that we enjoy because we have the time”. Like Mel expressed earlier, renald sees his own studio as a “representation of us […] so we have to get that right. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault.”

Pablo is also an advocate for perfectionism when it calls for it, for example, when creating a visual illusion that relies on perfect editing in order to trick the human eye. He says clients (some of his include Nike, Balenciaga and New York Magazine) often expect the creative on a project to be setting the bar for the production value. “Especially when working with clients where craftsmanship and production quality are a part of their identity,” he says. But he’s learned through experience “when to perfect the details and when to put perfection on hold for the sake of moving toward a final piece”, and, vitally, when to let go. “Perfectionism is good and bad. As creatives, hopefully we can find the balance between mistakes and perfection, so we can be productive and enjoy the work.”

To bring it back to Blackberry, the creator needed someone to push him to be less precious about his creation to get it off the ground, otherwise we might never have had smartphones – the business would’ve gone bust while he tinkered indefinitely. But his perfectionist approach to its design most certainly helped it become the pioneering technology that it was, in a sea of merely “good enough” competitors. The lesson: see your perfectionism as the ace in a card game. Every once in a while, take time to stand back, think tactically about the long game, and choose when it’s the right time to play it.