"It's quicker to do it myself"

The habit doesn't stay inside your own work. Sooner or later it reaches the people around you.

Your colleague drafts the client letter and you rewrite it before it goes. You don't think it was wrong, only that it wasn't how you'd have put it. Your teenager loads the dishwasher and you reload it. Your partner books the holiday, and you spend the evening checking whether they got the best price. A junior member of your team hands you a first attempt, and you fix it yourself overnight and never explain what needed changing, because explaining would have taken longer.

Each of these feels efficient and even kind. You're sparing them the trouble and protecting the result. The belief is that your way is the right way and other ways are errors. Correcting an error quietly seems a small thing.

In chapter 2 I mentioned that Curran and Hill's questionnaire has three parts. One of them measures what the researchers call other-oriented perfectionism, which is demanding perfection of the people around you. It rose over the years along with the other two. So this is a recognised part of the pattern and no special failing of yours.

It's worth seeing how it looks from the other side, though, because you rarely get to. The colleague whose letter was rewritten learns that their drafts don't matter, since you'll redo them anyway. Next time they put in less effort, which confirms your view that they can't be relied on. The teenager learns that there's a right way to load a dishwasher which they'll never master, so they stop offering. Your partner learns that their decisions are provisional until you've audited them. None of them tells you this. They step back, and you find yourself doing more and more, and wondering why nobody else pulls their weight.

So the load you're carrying is partly one you've built. It's quicker to do it yourself this time, and it has to be done by you every time after. The hour you'd have spent showing the junior what was wrong with the first attempt would have been repaid within a month. Instead you've acquired a permanent job as their editor.

There's a cost to the relationships as well. Being corrected in small things, day after day, wears people down. It tells them they're not quite up to standard, on matters where they hadn't known there was one. People who live or work with someone like this often describe being tense around them. They say they're never sure what will be found wanting next. You wouldn't choose to have that effect. Nobody who has it means it.

The grades from the last chapter help here as well. Before correcting anyone's work, ask what grade the job needs and what grade they delivered. The dishwasher needs a four, since the plates have to come out clean. If they do, the job is done, whichever way the bowls face. The client letter needed a seven. If your colleague's draft was a seven in a different style from yours, it goes out as it is. If it really was a five, the useful response is to tell them the two things that would make it a seven, and let them make the changes.

This is harder than it sounds, because watching something go out at a seven when you could have made it an eight produces the wince at full strength. You'll find that the wince passes, that the letter is fine and that the client doesn't notice. Six months later you may also find a colleague who drafts well, and wants to, because their drafts are used.