You have a plan: a one-hour workout. But you come back later than you expected and you have maybe twenty minutes. You could do a shorter workout, but since it won’t be the way you planned, you decide: “Okay, I’ll do it properly tomorrow.” In the end, you do nothing. You want to write a text. In the ideal version, you need a quiet evening, two hours, and the right conditions. You have forty minutes. You could write the first part, but since you won’t finish the whole thing, you don’t even open the document. You planned to clean the apartment. You don’t have the energy for everything, so instead of taking care of the kitchen or one surface, you postpone cleaning until the next day. In each of these situations, something interesting happens: You can’t do 100%, so instead of doing 20%, you choose 0%. And this is exactly where perfectionism can work much less spectacularly than we usually imagine it. It doesn’t always mean spending hours correcting details or obsessively perfecting the result. Sometimes it appears much earlier – before you even start at all.
When “I won’t do everything” turns into “I won’t do anything”
High standards are not a problem in themselves. You may want to do your work well, exercise regularly, develop a project, or take care of your home. You may also have a specific vision of how you would like to do something. The problem begins when a certain standard stops being a goal you strive for and becomes a condition for taking actionIt no longer sounds like: “I would like to do a one-hour workout.” It starts to sound like: “If I don’t have an hour, the workout makes no sense.” Not: “I want to write an article today.” But: “If I don’t finish the entire article, there is no point in starting.” Not: “I want to clean the apartment thoroughly.” But: “Since I don’t have time to clean everything, I’ll do it another time.” After all, there is a huge space between completing something fully and not doing it at all. The problem is that with “all-or-nothing” thinking, it is easy to stop noticing it. In psychology, this way of perceiving situations in extreme, opposing categories is referred to as dichotomous thinking or “all-or-nothing thinking.” This does not, of course, mean that every person who postpones a task from time to time has a psychological problem. It is a way of thinking that can appear in many people in certain situations. In the context of perfectionism, however, it is particularly interesting because research has for years distinguished simply having high standards from more problematic elements of perfectionism, such as a strong fear of mistakes or an excessively critical evaluation of one’s own actions. In other words: wanting to do something well does not have to be a problem. What also matters is what happens when you are unable to achieve the standard you set.
Why can 20% seem not worth the effort?
Imagine that you planned to run ten kilometers, but in the end you can only run two. If you compare two kilometers with the planned ten, the result looks poor. You only did 20%. But change the point of reference. The alternative is no longer ten kilometers. In the real situation, the choice is: two kilometers or zero. And suddenly exactly the same action looks different. This does not mean that two kilometers magically become ten. It is not about convincing yourself that every amount of effort gives an identical result. Less really does mean less. Ten minutes of language learning does not give the same result as an hour. One written paragraph is not a finished article. Cleaning the desk does not mean cleaning the entire apartment. But between the sentences “this is less” end “it makes no sense at all” there is a huge difference. The first is a description of reality. The second is already an evaluation. And it is precisely this evaluation that can make 20% start to be treated almost the same as 0%.
Perfectionism can appear even before you start
Perfectionism is often associated with a person who does something and then endlessly corrects the result. But it can appear much earlier. “First, I need to know exactly how to do it.” “I need more time.” “I’ll start on Monday, then I’ll do it properly.” “I don’t have the right conditions right now.” “First, I’ll prepare a good plan.” Each of these sentences can be completely rational. Sometimes you really do need more information, time, or preparation. However, it is worth noticing what happens later. Does the preparation actually lead to action? Does the next “better moment” actually come? Or do the requirements for starting become so great that starting itself becomes increasingly difficult? After all, you can spend an hour preparing the perfect system for learning a language and not spend even a minute learning the language. You can spend weeks looking for the best workout plan instead of going to your first workout. You can prepare a project strategy for so long that the project still exists only in documents and notes. Then the preparation that was supposed to make action easier begins to replace it.
“I’ll do it properly tomorrow” sounds better than “I’ll do it imperfectly today”
There is one more reason why postponing a task can be tempting. When you say: “I’ll do it properly tomorrow”, you do not have to give up your ideal vision. It still exists. You did not do the workout today, but tomorrow you will do the full hour. You did not write one page today, but at the weekend you will sit down and write everything. You did not start the project, but when you have a calmer week, you will do it the way it should be done. The problem appears when tomorrow the situation is not ideal again. You have 70% of the planned resources. Then 40%. The next day 60%. And you keep waiting for the day when 100% appears. In this way, the ideal version of the task can paradoxically protect you from the experience of imperfect action, but at the same time make actual action keep getting postponed.
A small step does not have to be as good as the full version
In conversations about small steps, it is very easy to fall into the other extreme and start arguing that “it doesn’t matter how much you do, everything is a success.” That is not the point. There are situations in which 20% simply is not enough. If you have a deadline at work, the client probably will not be delighted to hear that you completed one fifth of the assignment because you are using the small steps method. If you are preparing for an exam, five minutes of studying a day may be insufficient. If a particular project requires several hours of focus, it cannot always be meaningfully broken down into five-minute fragments. Small steps are not meant to replace a realistic assessment of what the task requires. They are meant to help where the alternative looks like this: “I can’t do as much as I planned, so I won’t do anything.” This is a completely different situation. If you can write only one paragraph today, the article is still not finished. But tomorrow you start with the second paragraph, not with a blank page. If you can do only ten minutes of movement, you have not completed a full workout. But you did ten minutes of movement instead of none. If you only have the energy to take care of the kitchen counter, the apartment still needs cleaning. But the counter is clean. You do not have to call 20% a complete success to acknowledge that 20% and 0% are not the same thing.
Consistency does not require perfect execution every time.
Small steps have another meaning, especially when you are trying to build a new behavior. Research on habit formation shows that the automaticity of a behavior develops through repeating it in a specific context, and the pace of this process can vary significantly between people and behaviors. Therefore, there is no magic number of days after which every habit becomes automatic. This is important because the popular approach to change often focuses on a perfect streak: exercise every day, study every day, follow a specific routine every day. And life is not a perfect streak. There are days when you have more time. There are days when you sleep worse, have more responsibilities, or something unexpected happens. If a behavior can exist only in its full version, every deviation from ideal conditions increases the risk of completely breaking continuity. Flexibility does not therefore have to mean a lack of consistency. Sometimes it is precisely what allows you to maintain consistency.
The minimum rule: set less before you need it
One way of working with the “100% or 0%” approach is to create a minimum versionIt is best not to come up with it only at the moment when you are tired and trying to negotiate with yourself. You can set it in advance. You have the full version: 60 minutes of exercise. And what is the minimum version that still makes sense to you? Maybe 15 minutes. Maybe 10. It depends on you, the type of activity, and the goal. You have the full version: write an article. Minimum: write the first paragraph or prepare the structure. You have the full version: an hour of studying Dutch. Minimum: 10 minutes of reviewing vocabulary. The most important question is: “What is the smallest version of this action that still makes sense to me?” Not: “How little can I do to fool myself into thinking that I did something?” Not: “How can I lower the requirements to zero?” But: what is the smallest version that still has real value?
The minimum must have the right to remain the minimum.
Here another trap appears. You decide that today you will do 10 minutes of exercise. You do 10 minutes. And immediately this appears: “Actually, I could have done 20.” Or: “What even is 10 minutes?” In this way, the minimum rule stops working because after completing the task, you move the criterion of success. Minimum does not mean that you are not allowed to do more. If after ten minutes you feel like continuing – continue. But there is a difference between: “I want to do a little more” and “What I did doesn’t count until I do more.” If every time you reach the minimum you consider it insufficient, it quickly stops being a safe, realistic version of the task. It becomes another standard that can be moved.
When you keep doing the minimum, it is worth asking a different question
The minimum rule should also not be used to ignore the information that reality gives you. If once you have the resources for 20%, that is normal. If for a week you are operating at 20%, perhaps you are simply going through an intense period. But if for months your plan assumes 100%, while reality regularly allows you to do 20%, the problem may not be that you keep doing too little. Perhaps the plan is too big in relation to the life you actually lead. This is an important difference. The minimum rule can help you get through a weaker day. However, it should not be used to maintain for years a plan that you are practically never able to carry out. Sometimes you do not need another way to motivate yourself. You need to change the plan.
Find your “zeros”
You can now do a simple exercise. Think about three areas of your life where the approach “either I do it properly or not at all” appears most often. It could be exercise, studying, working on your own project, cleaning, cooking, creating content, or something completely different. For each one, write down three things: What does my 100% look like? What do I usually do when I can’t do 100%? What would be a reasonable minimum version? Example: 100%: a one-hour workout. Typical 0%: I don’t exercise if I have less than an hour. Minimum: 10–15 minutes of movement. Or: 100%: write the entire article. Typical 0%: I postpone the work if I don’t have several hours of peace and quiet. Minimum: write 300 words or one section. And then look at your answers and ask yourself one more question: Where do I not need to do more – but simply stop turning “less” into “nothing”?
You don’t have to choose between perfection and giving up
It is not about always doing 20% from now on. Nor is it about lowering all standards, giving up ambition, or convincing yourself that a small amount of effort is always enough. If you have the resources for 100% and you want to do 100% — do it. If the situation requires full completion — full completion still matters. But not every day looks the same. Sometimes you will have 80%. Other times 50%. Sometimes 20%. And that is exactly when it is worth remembering that there is a huge space between perfect execution and giving up completely. Perfectionism can erase that space and leave you with only two options: well or not at all. You can bring back the other options. The next time the thought appears: „Dzisiaj nie zrobię tego tak, jak planowałam”, you don’t have to immediately convince yourself that you can do everything. Ask yourself a simpler question: “Since 100% is not possible today, what version still makes sense?” Because 20% is not the same as 100%. But it is still more than zero.