This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 249.
When should you be meticulous at work? Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.
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Hey there, Michelle. How's it going? Good, good.
How are you, Lindsay? Great. Do you have a question to start off the day today?
I do. I do. Are you a perfectionist? Oh, that's a hard question to answer.
So I have tendencies in the direction of perfectionism.
Yes. And that's why, you know, that's why we came up with our slogan.
Why I always try to push myself towards connection because I am I'm not very good at details, but I obsess over details.
So it ends up being kind of taxing on my mind.
And I do try to do a really good job with everything I do.
So, you know, it's it's trying to figure out how to balance that out.
All right. What about you? Well, would you say it's like the same and your personal and work life or more one or the other?
Or I think it depends on what you mean by personal life.
Right. You know, are we talking about home projects or. you know, being a perfectionist in home projects or what are we talking about exactly?
Right. Sure. Home projects. Yeah. More. It's more work life.
Right. So wanting everything to be just make sure everything is right and just do a good job.
It's it comes from a good place. Right. Right.
Right. But sometimes it can go off the rails for sure.
Yeah. Oh, I I also think in my work life, I'm more of a perfectionist than in my personal life.
If you only saw what I'm surrounded by in my room and all the laundry, you would know that I'm not a perfectionist.
My personal life. But do you think it's a good thing to be a perfectionist?
I would say no, not a good thing. I mean, we're against perfectionism, right?
That is our slogan connection. So no, I do think it's good to want to do a good job.
It's just that sometimes doing a good job means other things like we say connection, not saying everything perfectly in the space of language learning or doing a good job means finding the little 10% thing you can do and avoiding the huge amount of work, the thing that's going to make the results move forward.
Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. That does.
So we're going to talk about perfectionism today and give you different ways to talk about it.
If you haven't already, go on back to episode 198 of the Business English podcast.
It was arguably the best vocabulary for a classy brag in English.
And sometimes if you're a perfectionist, maybe you like to brag, but maybe not.
So let's talk about perfectionism today.
But today I wanted to share a quote from Um, this is by Winston Churchill and the quote is perfection is the enemy of progress.
Yeah. And I hear this everywhere now. Right.
But that's a great one by Winston Churchill.
Love it. Love it. Yeah. Um, it kind of reminds me of the idea of connection, not perfection.
It's not the same thing, but it is just saying if you, you're not going to progress if you're just so worried about being perfect.
So, Um, I think that this was, I really liked this quote, so I wanted to bring it in.
Do you think perfectionism, how can it hold somebody back at work?
Well, I think perfectionism can lead to procrastination because sometimes in a really maladaptive way, right, a really bad version of a perfectionist could actually be a procrastinator because they want to do it so perfectly that they never even get started because, right, that's a really bad version.
But I'm sure that, you know, that happens sometimes.
Yes, definitely. Definitely. So today we're going to talk about different words and phrases dealing with perfectionism.
We're going to talk through these, talk about the differences between some of these, but these are going to be really good for describing these perfectionist tendencies.
So, Lindsay, what's the first one? Meticulous.
I love this. So we have to be meticulous when doing this work.
We can't leave any stone unturned. And to be fair, there are some jobs where you have to be meticulous.
If you're a heart surgeon, you have to be.
You have to be a perfectionist. Or even something less serious or less...
For example, maybe you're painting something that has a lot of detail.
You have to be meticulous. You kind of have to be a perfectionist.
That's what your client requires. Right.
That's true. You have to know your audience, know your job well enough.
I always say I would be terrible. I would be too nervous to be a doctor.
But I think for me, one of the other nerve-wracking ones would be pharmacist.
Oh, I know. I know. I thought about that before.
If you're giving out the pills and making sure you're counting.
Ah! Or there are certain pharmacies, I guess they call them compounding pharmacies.
I don't exactly know, but I think they mix the medicine together or something.
I don't think I would want to have that level of responsibility.
But hey, if there are certain minds that are more inclined, I think I have a feeling that more detail-oriented minds tend to be inclined to medicine or to healthcare or certain fields.
So that's great. I mean, that's a great career being a pharmacist.
Yeah, definitely. So you have to be meticulous if you're a pharmacist.
What's another word we can use that's in the same idea as perfectionist?
A stickler. And I think Aubrey and I might have talked about this on Business or All Ears English.
Not sure which one, but it's a great one.
It's a great one to be a stickler, requiring someone else to be perfect as well, right?
So she's a stickler for perfection, right?
Really, make sure you take your work five times before turning it in.
Yep. Right. Somebody is a stickler for something.
Yeah. I mean, it's hard. It's really hard because, you know, someone might say this person is a stickler.
The other person might say this person has high standards.
Right. They have high expectations for their team.
Right. Sometimes it could be exactly the same thing.
It's just the way you look at what the person's asking for.
So tricky. That's true. Right, right. It all depends on the situation and the person and the work as well.
The next one is precisionist. This one I don't hear quite as frequently, but it's a formal word.
You could say I tend to be a precisionist.
It slows me down a little at work. Yes. I want everything to be precise.
Yeah. And then the term nitpicky. She's nitpicky about the way slides are laid out.
She has a format she likes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Lindsay, are you a stickler for perfection in certain All Ears English tasks?
Is there a certain part of your job that you feel...
Right. Because again, we're talking about different jobs needing to be meticulous or not, but it could be some tasks, some tasks in your job you have to, and some are not as much.
Yeah. I think, yes. I think my standards have been going up lately, especially in the area of project management.
So when someone is managing a project, I do feel it's really important that there's a lot of attention to detail.
For example, if We have a project manager for a course we're building.
It's really important that that person think ahead and imagine all the questions someone might have before assigning the task.
Right. That is a level of detail that one needs to have.
But in contrast, when people are on the podcast, it's a creative work.
And there's no real perfection and creative work don't go together.
It's creativity. Okay. Right. So, yeah, I would say there's a time and a place for perfection in certain positions at All Ears English.
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All right, Michelle, what's next? All right.
Well, how do you think people can be more kind to themselves and others regarding perfectionism?
I mean, I think prioritizing things, certainly taking a step back.
I think learning from prior mistakes, right?
So if we made a mistake last time, we learned to think about something new, then we apply that next time.
It's all about forward movement, right? right?
Right. Thinking that something, right. Yeah.
You said it perfectly. Thinking what is important in life.
So I remember in this, uh, gosh, when I used to work in radio, there was, they called it the upload and we, and I had to upload all of the news stories of the day into a system.
And so there was a lot of cross-referencing and checking and that's not that's something that would make me a little nervous because I was afraid of making a mistake.
So in that way, I was a perfectionist. But at the same time, it was for morning radio.
I mean, you know, you have to think about, okay, if I make a small mistake, I could have been a little less precise on it.
I could have worked hard, but I was so scared of making a mistake.
So You have to evaluate how important it is.
What is the worst that will happen if you do make a mistake?
Right, right. Exactly. And if you feel like you thrive in the world of details, then again, like we said, there are different industries or career paths that are better than others.
I mean, if you're an accountant, there is a problem if the numbers are wrong, right?
One number off by one number or by a hundred, it matters.
It has to be precise. Yeah. But obviously, there are other industries where it's a little more creative.
But I do think we want to do a good job.
We always want to do a good job. And that's just deciding in every given moment, what does that mean?
And then, of course, there's that idea of perfectionism actually holding you back, like we talked about.
So you have to evaluate when it's more important to be perfect and more important to go for something like with entrepreneurs.
It makes me think of what's the one from Spanx?
Uh, yeah, I'm forgetting her name. Uh, uh, Blakely, uh, Sarah Blakely.
Yeah. Sarah. Okay. I was right. You know, it's funny.
It was, that was actually just recently I do the crossword puzzle and that was one of the clues I quit.
It was her first name and it's Sarah. That's it.
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, anyway, doesn't, isn't she the one that says her father always said, tell me how you failed.
Yeah. I think that's so good. Yes. Right.
Exactly. And that's completely different in my mind between trying to do a good job.
Right. Because it's more like she was raised on the idea that failure is good and that it's more about what you do after you fail.
Do you are you now afraid to try anything new or do you actually go after new ideas constantly?
Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly.
Exactly. So should we do a role play? Yeah, let's do it.
So here we are co-workers and we're doing a project at work.
All right. So, okay, are you done? Sorry, just looking it over again.
I'm a bit of a perfectionist. It doesn't have to be perfect.
We just have to meet this deadline. Yeah, but Gregory is a stickler for perfect grammar.
That's fine. He's a bit nitpicky, but he won't freak out over a small mistake.
Sorry, Lindsay. I just think we need to be meticulous about this.
Ah, you and your precisionist ways. Follow up on.
Oh, no, that's a, that's a, I'm sorry. In the future, we could follow up and saying, oh, you.
Oh, you. Right. Okay. That was not part of the role play.
So we'll just bring that back. Michelle, let's talk about what we did here.
So you said, sorry, I'm a, yeah, I said, sorry, just looking it over again.
I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Nice. And then you and then you said, oh, yeah, but Gregory is a stickler for perfect grammar.
Right. And then I said, you said, it's fine.
He's a bit nitpicky, but he won't freak out over a small mistake.
Oh, and then I said, sorry, Lindsay, I just think we need to be meticulous about this.
So another way of saying detail oriented.
Right. Right. And then you said, oh, you and your precisionist ways.
So what are you doing there? Yeah, I'm just sort of, it's another way.
I'm not sure what I, what am I doing? You're kind of, you're kind of teasing me a little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a little bit of a tease.
I'm saying, I know you, this is how you are.
A little silly. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. I feel like the best way to think about perfectionism is as we're creating something new, there's levels of how detail-oriented we have to be.
For a first draft, we're just brainstorming, and that's not a time to be a perfectionist, right?
But then as we get deeper and deeper, when we submit something that's official, then we do want to be more meticulous around the final product, right, Michelle?
So it's really just about what stage are we at in the work.
Right. Yeah, that's a good point. So your level of perfectionism can vary from task to task, from different parts of the work, and it can change.
It can change throughout your life as well, I think.
Oh, interesting. Yeah, I love this. So I'm sure that we'll have an interesting poll for today's episode to find out, right, Michelle?
I would imagine what percentage of our listeners are perfectionists or not perfectionists.
Exactly. That's what I'm thinking. I need to see the results.
Don't forget to vote in our poll on Spotify, guys.
And Michelle, thanks for being on the show today.
Thank you, Lindsay. Have a good one. Bye, guys.
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