Sunday, September 23, 2007
Stress: Improve Your Life by Becoming an Imperfectionist
Lifehacker: "A lot of pressure if self-imposed - This was a great point made by Leslie Bennetts and illustrated poignantly with an anecdote about her friend, a successful lawyer, who broke down and decided to quit her job after she was informed that it was her turn to bake cupcakes for her child's class."
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9 comments:
In this industry the perfection is something that is always trying to be achieved. But something along the line, be it a bump in a project, a mistake, or just a plain accident will always come up. So yes we try to fix the imperfections so that it can be the best if could possibly be, but at some point if that plan isn't woking then acceptence needs to come into play. If something can't be perfect or can't be how it originally was designed then one needs to work with those imperfections to make those the best. Not only for stress reasons, but for experience too.
what a lesson for all SODrama students to learn...unfortunately, I have seldomly encountered a teacher who believed in this method, or at the very least mentioned the idea that, oh i don't know, perfection just isn't POSSIBLE in art. nothing will ever be perfect, because we're always wanting to make it better. even the best shakespeare plays aren't perfect. i just wish some teachers, even if it was just the first day of class, would set the tone for the year with "alright guys, don't kill yourselves, you'll never get a monologue/set/costume design to be perfect, so stop trying to reach that. embrace the imperfections in your art, for those are the things that make your art individual, make it yours." ah, just wishful thinking...
I think some people in this department can really use some of the suggestions from the article. In the collaborative environment like theatre, it is very difficult to survive as a perfectionist. As Mr. Joe Pino has suggested to us, it is better to call yourselves as a person with "higher standard." I also think that being a perfectionist in this industry is highly dangerous and even suicidal. Without logical compromise and interactions with the colleagues, it will be very difficult to get the next job.
Over the summer, I waited tables at a localy microbrewery back home. If there was one thing I learned, it was the fact that things were bound to go wrong. At first, I reacted in a way that I guess you could call "natural", sympathizing and putting myself down for things that went wrong. But over time I learned to realize exactly what this author speaks of. There's is a line you have to cross to determine what is emphatic and what is just fanatic.
accepting imperfections also allows your peers and advisors to feel comfortable giving honest criticism on your work, becuase they know that you are capable of accepting your flaws.
joe pino is a big advocate against people calling themselves "perfectionists". i like the note that a lot of stress is self-imposed. Especially in an industry where we often times work freelance, I can understand how easy it may be to lose focus on the big picture and stress yourself out.
this is a great article for the SOD. as Jeannie said Mr. Pino hates the term perfectionist, and i can see why. not only does it increase the amount of stres by considering yourself one, but it is down right ridiculous. there will always be some flaw in whatever you are producing, and i am not trying to be a pessimist but rather a realist. you can't spen the time fixing the little things when you ought to be moving on to other projects.
i often consider myself as having higher standards, but in this business you have to know that the bumps are coming, and my true higher standards drive comes in when those bumps come and things need to happen quickly to avoid delays.
I can personally relate to the stresses of trying to reach perfection. This was even back in gradeschool and early years of highschool. It was actually my increased work in theatre that changed my work pattern to something more rational. I just reached a point where I had to get certain things done by a certain time and it meant that I had to reprioritize my projects in a way that lead to completing them but not killing myself in the process.
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