Tip of the Week: Leave Your Desk Messy
December 6th, 2007 (7:26am) Anne Zelenka 13 CommentsTweet This
Spend too much time worrying about getting your desk perfectly clean and your work perfectly excellent and you might put yourself at risk for psychological problems.
A slavish devotion to perfection can be psychologically unhealthy, according to Benedict Carey writing for The New York Times:
[Several] recent studies stand as a warning against taking the platitudes of achievement too seriously. The new research focuses on a familiar type, perfectionists, who panic or blow a fuse when things don’t turn out just so. The findings not only confirm that such purists are often at risk for mental distress — as Freud, Alfred Adler and countless exasperated parents have long predicted — but also suggest that perfectionism is a valuable lens through which to understand a variety of seemingly unrelated mental difficulties, from depression to compulsive behavior to addiction.
Tags: perfectionism

