Perfectionism is often hard to spot. A lot is going on beneath the surface of hesitation and procrastination. It's a symptom of a bigger problem, usually due to low self-esteem or lack of trust in our abilities. It's been connected to a fixed mindset, the idea that your skills are set and you can't change them, and even to trauma and childhood wounds. Whatever the root cause, perfectionism is a protection mechanism created by our brains in response to our experiences as children (or even later in life) and the beliefs we have accumulated as a result.

I'm a recovering perfectionist. You should have seen me ten years ago. Unable to deliver any report or client work without finetuning it for weeks, often after procrastinating on getting started for at least that long. Today, I'm able to finish projects much faster, and more importantly, create better work in the process. More about how to overcome perfectionism, and how to stop sabotaging yourself in this episode.