Hard bosses, real stakes and bad weeks

The method is simple. Some situations aren't, and I should be plain about them.

If your boss really does pounce on small things. Some do. If yours sends documents back over a misplaced comma, then for that reader small faults do matter. The line for their work is higher, and the check list for it should include whatever they usually catch. That's still the method. You're setting the grade by what the recipient needs, and this recipient needs an eight. What you don't do is apply that boss's standard to everyone else you deal with. It's also worth asking them early what they care about most, since people who pounce usually have three or four particular dislikes, and those can go on the list. If the pouncing is constant, personal and aimed at making you feel small, that's a different problem from perfectionism, and it's one to take to someone senior or to HR.

If the stakes really are high. A grant application, a legal document or a safety report deserves a nine. Give it one. Set a generous time budget, write a longer check list, and above all get a second person to read it. A second reader catches far more than your own fifth pass, because they don't know what you meant to say. High stakes call for a careful process, which isn't the same thing as a long stretch of suffering.

If you're a student. Essays and dissertations are where many people first meet this habit, and the marking does reward quality. It rewards it on the marker's terms, though. Read the marking criteria before you start and use them as your description of done. They nearly always ask for an argument, evidence and structure, and hardly ever for a flawless sentence. A finished essay handed in on time with an ordinary final paragraph will beat a brilliant one capped for lateness. If you keep asking for extensions on work that was nearly done, tell your tutor or the university's support service what's happening. They've seen it many times and they can help.

If you work for yourself or make things with no deadline. Chapter 12 suggested inventing a reader and a date. I'd add that you should set a limit on the number of drafts. Decide in advance that a piece gets three and then goes out.

When criticism comes. It will, now and then, and it would have come anyway. Try to sort it into two kinds. Some of it is information, such as "the second section confused me", which is useful and costs you nothing to accept. Some of it is taste, such as "I'd have started differently", which you can thank them for and leave. Neither kind is a verdict on you. If a single critical remark wipes out your week, that's chapter 7's mechanism at work, where your worth is riding on the work. It's worth noticing, and perhaps worth talking over with someone.

When you've made a real mistake. Correct it quickly and plainly, as in chapter 11. Then look at whether your check list would have caught it. If it wouldn't have, add a line. That's the entire lesson. It isn't evidence that you should go back to five passes, which wouldn't have caught it either. In chapter 2 I said you remember the rare catches. Far more mistakes got past all that polishing, and you never counted those.

If this feels like more than a habit. Some signs suggest it's worth seeing a professional. One is when the checking takes hours every day and you can't stop it even when you badly want to. Another is when it comes with intrusive thoughts and rituals. The NHS describes obsessive compulsive disorder as a condition of unwanted, repeated thoughts together with repetitive behaviours that the person feels driven to carry out. It says effective treatment is available. That's a different thing from the habit in this book, and a GP can help you tell them apart.

The same goes if your standards are mainly about eating, weight or your body. The NHS advice is to see a GP as soon as you can. It applies as well if your mood has been low for weeks, or you feel worthless whatever you achieve. In England you can also refer yourself to NHS talking therapies without seeing a GP first. If you've had thoughts of ending your life, get help the same day, through NHS 111, an urgent GP appointment, or 999 in an emergency.

Weeks when it all comes back. There'll be one. You'll be tired, or newly criticised, or facing a piece of work that matters a great deal to you. You'll find yourself at the kitchen table at midnight, putting a comma back. It happens to everyone who tries to change a long habit, and it doesn't undo what you've learned. The old routine had years of practice. When you notice what you're doing, do the smallest version of the method. Ask what done looks like for this piece, check it once against that, and send it tonight. After that, go to bed. You can go back to using the full method with whatever piece of work comes next.