—— 选自HBR网站节选（吉玛译）

“If an interviewer ever asks you what your weaknesses are, just tell them you’re a perfectionist”.

  “如果面试官问你的缺点是什么，那就告诉他们你是个完美主义者。”

This was the advice given to me by my boss in my first ever job in IT. It is the kind of statement that makes eyes roll across the board, interviewees and interviewers alike know it as a cop-out answer. The view is that you’re not really revealing any weakness because employers want to hire perfectionists, perfectionists do great work right? The best work! Perfect work! It never occurred to me at the time, as I naively accepted this older and more experienced man’s instruction, that I’d grow to learn the real truth behind this statement.

这是我第一份工作的老板给我的建议。这种说法并不成立，面试者和面试官都知道这是一个站不住脚的借口。你并没有真正暴露出任何弱点，因为雇主想要雇佣的就是完美主义者，完美主义者做事完美，对吗?最好的工作!完美的工作!当时我从未想过，我天真地接受了比我年长、经验更丰富的人的教导，我长大后才明白这句话背后的真实道理。

“Perfectionism, in psychology, is a personality trait characterized by a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting high performance standards, accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.” — says Wikipedia. Sounds great! If I were an employer I’d want to hire someone who strives for flawlessness, sets high standards and cares about others’ evaluations, they sound like a real achiever. However, perfectionism can often be a blocker to achievement. Imagine that you are constantly aiming for perfection. Not greatness, not excellence, actual perfection. You can’t help but set yourself up to fail. Achieving perfection is not something that happens often. Perfectionists measure their own self worth by how able they are to achieve this perfection, by how much they can accomplish. If accomplishments aren’t attained then they can be very harsh on themselves.

“完美主义，在心理，是一种人格特质特征是一个人的奋斗为天衣无缝，并制定高绩效标准，伴随着关于他人的评价至关重要的自我评价和关注。”——维基百科说。听起来太棒了!如果我是一个雇主，我想雇佣一个追求完美无暇，设定高标准并关心他人评价的人，他们听起来就像一个真正的成功者。然而，完美主义往往是阻碍成功的绊脚石。试想下，你不断追求完美。不是伟大，不是卓越，而是真正的完美。你不得不让自己失败。实现完美是难得的事情。完美主义者通过他们能够达到完美主义和完成的事情来衡量他们自己的价值。如果没有成就，他们就会对自己更苛刻。

I was ‘diagnosed’ as a perfectionist with anxiety last year. It was actually a relief to finally have a name to put to the stress I was feeling. Every time I made a mistake or had a mental block on a piece of work I spiraled into depression and paralysis, making the mental block worse and my disgust with myself greater. One time, the anxiety I felt over my own failure was so bad that it manifested itself into crippling neck pain and doctors eventually put me on Valium to force me to relax and take time out.

去年我被诊断为是一个焦虑的完美主义者。终于有了一个名字来缓解我的压力，真是一种解脱。每次我犯了一个错误，或者在工作上有了一个心理障碍，我就会陷入抑郁和麻痹，使心理障碍更严重，我对自己的厌恶也更强烈。有一次，我对自己的失败感到非常焦虑，这种焦虑转化成了严重的脖子疼痛，最后医生给了我我开了安定，迫使我放松下来， 暂时停止工作。

The way that I could (and should!) have avoided these black holes is by asking for help, or giving myself time away from the problem that I had hit. Unfortunately the tech industry, and capitalism as a whole doesn’t encourage us to do those things.

我能够(也应该)避免这些黑洞的方法是寻求帮助，或者让自己远离我所遇到的问题。不幸的是，科技产业和资本主义并没有鼓励我们去做那些事情。

There are parts of the tech industry that I love, sure, but there are so many parts that discourage us from living healthy lives. Tech lauds the creator, the achiever, the ‘genius’. These people seem to be able to do everything right, know everything, continuously churning out new ideas and new products. They can instantaneously pick up new languages and new frameworks, hell they’ve written a new, popular framework while you were still struggling over learning the previous one. They are also constantly working, they never seem to need to take a break. We put these people on pedestal and endeavor to be like them, but we never hear about their foibles. We don’t know if they also have creative blocks, or how often they need to ask for help. It is also often easy to forget that they are specialists, they don’t know everything, they do know a lot about one thing in particular. We can’t all be this person, the genius. The average person is, well, average, but because of social media and this idea of the ‘tech celebrity’ we hear a lot about others’ accomplishments and not much about their hardships. We see people succeeding and creating and being excellent, but they don’t broadcast their mediocrity, or the times when they made mistakes.

当然，我喜欢科技行业的某些部分，但很多方面上阻碍了我们的健康生活。科技赞美造物主，成就者，“天才”。这些人似乎能够做好每件事，知道一切，不断地制造新想法和新产品。他们可以瞬间学习新的语言和新的框架，并创写一个新的，流行的框架，而你还在努力学习上一个框架。他们也在不断地工作，他们似乎从不需要休息。我们了解他们的努力和基础，但我们从未听说过他们的缺点。我们不知道他们是否也有创造性的障碍，或者他们寻求帮助的频率。人们往往容易忘记他们是专家，他们不知道所有的事情，他们仅仅对某件事知道的特别多。我们不能成为他们这种人，天才。一般人都处于平均水平，但是因为社交媒体和“科技名人”的想法，我们经常听到别人的成就，而不是他们的艰辛。我们看到人们的成功、创造和优秀，但他们不传播他们的平庸，或他们犯错的时代。

Tech employers will often encourage the unhealthy belief that we should constantly be striving to work harder, create more, learn everything. Capitalism wants us to be productive, make more money so that you can spend it. Perfectionist employees will pressure themselves into tiredness, depression, paralysis and burnout all while probably continuing to turn in excellent work, never daring to ask for help because that would be admitting that they can’t do something.

技术雇主经常会鼓励不健康的信念:我们应该不断努力工作，创造更多，学习一切。资本主义希望我们多产的，赚更多的钱，这样你就可以花钱。完美主义者的员工会把自己逼入疲惫、沮丧、麻痹和精疲力竭的状态， 但是他们还会继续从事优秀的工作，不敢寻求帮助，因为那将意味着有些事情是他们做不了的。

So what can we do both as perfectionists and friends of perfectionists to make the tech industry a safer place to work?

那么，作为完美主义者和完美主义者的朋友，我们能做什么来让科技行业成为一个更安全的工作场所呢?

1.Be kind to yourself. Sometimes you just cant tackle a problem, that’s ok, it doesn’t mean that you’ll never be able to, it just means that you can’t right now. Give yourself some time and don’t let feelings of guilt or shame take over. Take a half an hour walk, or even a whole day or two away from the problem, but schedule in a start time for when you will try again in the future.

1. 善待自己。有时你只是不能解决一个问题，没关系，这并不意味着你永远也不能，它只是意味着你现在不能。给自己一些时间，不要让愧疚感和羞愧感取而代之。花半小时的时间散步，甚至把问题晾在一边一到两天，但在开始的时候就安排下次尝试解决问题的时间。

2.Set deadlines/goals/targets/schedules that are realistic and tell someone about them. Too much freedom can often be stifling to perfectionists, we need something to aim for and improve upon. Given a blank canvas we’ll panic or procrastinate, or start and abandon multiple projects. Setting achievable goals will allow for striving for excellence while removing the paralysing nature of open ended tasks. Telling someone about a goal makes us feel more concretely about that goal. It is much easier to renege on a promise to yourself than a promise to someone else.

2. 设置最后期限/目标/行程/计划是从实际出发，并告知他人你的计划。太多的自由往往会让完美主义者感到窒息，我们需要有目标和改进的东西。没有计划，我们会恐慌或拖延，或者开始并放弃多个项目。设定可实现的目标可以让你追求卓越的同时消除开放式任务的自然麻痹。告诉别人目标会让我们对这个目标有更有实感。违背自己的承诺比违背别人的承诺要容易得多。

3.Remember that ‘Perfect is the enemy of great’. How many projects have you thrown away because they weren’t perfect, or because you were worried about how others would judge them? Getting something out is better than abandoning your hard work.

3.记住“完美是伟大的敌人”。有多少个项目是因为它们不完美，或者因为是你担心别人会怎么评价它们而被你丢弃的?丢掉一些东西比放弃艰苦工作要好

4.Acknowledge that you are your own most harsh critic. Most people don’t expect perfection from other people, perfectionists only think that they do. No one is going to judge you as harshly as you judge yourself. It is ok to make mistakes, everyone does! It is ok to release imperfect code. It is even ok if someone calls you up on a mistake you made, thank them, learn from it and you’ll both move on with your lives, the world will not end.

4.承认你是自己最严厉的批评家。大多数人并不期望从别人那里获得完美，完美主义者认为他们自己可以做到完美的。没有人会像你评价自己那样严厉地评判你。犯错是可以的，每个人都会犯错!不完美是可以的。如果有人向你提及你犯的错误，感谢他们，向他们学习，你的生活还将继续，世界末日也未到达。

5.Try to see yourself as you see your friends. It is easy to start putting yourself down when you don’t meet your own unachievable expectations. Consider how you’d react if someone said the things you’re thinking about yourself about one of your friends.

5.以看待朋友的方式看待你自己。当你不能实现自己无法实现的期望时，你很容易开始贬低自己。试想一下，如果有人与你说了对你朋友的看法，你会做出怎样的反应。

6.Think your fears though to their logical conclusion. Perfectionists often think catastrophically, ‘If i make a mistake in front of my colleagues then that will be the end of everything’, without really thinking through what ‘the end of everything’ would actually look like. Consider the worst possible outcome of your fear, then be honest with yourself about how likely that scenario actually is. Then you can start to consider how such an event would actually play out and how bad or not it would actually be.

6.通过逻辑结论思考恐惧。完美主义者常常会突发奇想，“如果我在同事面前犯错，那一切都完了”，而没有真正思考“一切都完了”到底是什么样子。考虑恐惧带来的最坏的结果，然后诚实地告诉自己这个场景的可能性有多大。然后你就可以开始考虑这样的事件究竟是如何发生的，以及它事实上到底有多糟糕。

These are all still things that I am learning for myself. I’m starting to recognize when I’m engaging in black and white or catastrophic thinking, learning to be kind to myself, learning to ask for help. I think these are things that we should be encouraging our colleagues to do too.

这些都是我正在学习的东西。我开始意识到，当我进行对黑人和白人或灾难性的思考时，学会对自己仁慈，学会寻求帮助。我认为这些都是我们应该鼓励我们的同事去做的事情。

The tech industry needs to get better at encouraging developers to ask for help and teaching that no one knows everything. You can make it easier for your junior colleagues by asking if they need help with anything and by doing code reviews and pair programming sessions. We should endorse a healthy work life balance and time away from the keyboard. We should acknowledge that everyone has a bad day occasionally and that we should treat mental health issues with the same weight that we do physical health issues. If you have the flu you take the day off, if you can’t face the office then don’t force yourself to be there.

科技行业需要更好地鼓励开发人员寻求帮助和让他们知道没有人知道所有的事情。通过询问他们是否需要帮助，通过代码审查和结对编程会话，你可以让你的下级同事更容易些。我们应该认可一个健康的工作与生活间的平衡和远离键盘的时间。我们应该承认，每个人偶尔都有糟糕的一天，我们应该以同样的心态来对待身体健康和心理健康问题。如果你得了流感，你可以休息一天，如果你想待在办公室办公室，那就不要强迫自己去。

If you’ve ever canned a project, or suffered from paralysis or depression or anxiety because of perfectionism, please talk about it. I’d love to talk to you about it!

如果你曾经因为完美主义做过一个项目，或者陷入瘫痪、沮丧或焦虑，请说出你的想法。我想和你谈谈这件事!

The more I’ve spoken about my experiences with perfectionism, the more people have told me about their own similar problems, with the tendency for intelligence and achievement in tech industry employees, it is perhaps unsurprising that so many people suffer from perfectionism. The more open and communicative we are about it, the more pleasant a working experience we can create for everyone.

关于我的完美主义经历话题，我交谈的越多，就会有越多的人告诉我他们自己的类似问题，随着科技行业员工的智能化和成就的趋势，很多人都有完美主义，这并不足为奇。我们更加开放的，无隐讳的谈论它，我们就能给每个人创造更多愉快的工作经验。