The Perfectionism/Procrastination combination!

I wrote about Procrastination earlier in the year, and it’s such a common feature of life with ADHD for many of us that there’s always more to discover and say about it. I wonder how many of you will recognise yourself in any of the examples of the perfectionism/procrastination combination below?

Procrastination can happen with perfectionism when we have set ourselves very high standards. Impossibly high standards. It’s got to be just right. It’s got to be perfectly conceived before we start. Or we’re thinking of the perfect way of doing things, or feeling as though we have to set everything up perfectly before we can start.

And the end product has got to be perfect, otherwise people will think badly of us. Or we’ll think badly of ourselves. And nowhere in there does “just good enough” come into it. I quite often see my coaching clients almost cringing when they hear the expression “good enough”, as if that is actually painful to them to think about, or consider that approach—approaching something in a way that it could be just good enough. And then what happens is not only do we put off doing the thing, but then when we do start eventually, maybe doing the thing, the perfectionism is still there.

Take writing an email, for example. We put off writing, and when we do start, that perfectionism nags away at us, making us dot every i and cross every t before moving on. I’ve known people who feel they absolutely have to correct the first sentence and make it just right before they can continue and write another sentence.
Editing as we go because we can’t bear a typo, a spelling mistake, or an unfinished thought in the mix is an extremely inefficient way to write, time-wise. For one thing, it will take a lot longer, and because we cannot see the whole picture before we start editing, it will almost inevitably need doing again.

With emails, I often find that people think of it as a big thing. It’s got to be the right time to start. They’ve got to be in the right mood. They’ve got to find all the things that they wanted to consider before starting to write it. They need to find the files. They need to find the information. That note they wrote on a piece of paper somewhere. Everything’s got to be set up just so, and then they can get on with the writing… Perfectionism = waiting until everything is just right before getting started = procrastination.

Another way that perfectionism can get to us when we have ADHD is by making us overly critical of ourselves. Instead of giving ourselves a pat on the back when we eventually do the thing, we think, oh, it took me so long. I, you know, I should have done it months ago or weeks ago or last week or a few days ago or whatever it is. I didn’t do it exactly how I wanted it to be done.

And we tend to be focused on that rather than the fact that, actually, yes, well done, we’ve done that, sent that email, even if it was a little bit late. Even if that card or present or whatever it was was sent late, we’ve done it. And we need to feel that we’ve done it and give ourselves due acknowledgement for that fact. Because if we don’t, if we only focus on all the negative aspects, how is that going to motivate us for next time?

And that’s a really important factor with perfectionism coming into procrastination – we don’t give ourselves enough praise. We don’t acknowledge ourselves enough. We’re always looking at what we haven’t done and where we’ve procrastinated. We build it up into this major crime. Oh, I didn’t do it straight away, or when I first intended to. Well, is that a crime? Sometimes we need to wait before getting into action. It helps us to think. It helps us to think things through. It helps us to gather more information. And it may not be a good moment to send something, and that’s okay.

We’re always going to have priorities to juggle in our lives, so could we be a bit more compassionate toward ourselves? In fact, research shows that increasing self-compassion through three short, focused sessions can help people with perfectionism. A 2021 RCT (Woodfin et al., Frontiers in Psychology) found a brief three-session self-compassion course produced significant reductions in maladaptive perfectionism, anxiety and depression versus a waitlist control.

So we can be more gentle with ourselves. We can acknowledge our imperfections and, rather than dwelling on them, getting stuck there, and beating ourselves up, forgive ourselves and move on. We can be kinder to ourselves when we fall short. And also, we might actually take a moment to pause and acknowledge our accomplishments, and that will help us to motivate ourselves for the next time.

If you are finding that procrastination is having an unwanted effect on your life, perhaps you’d like some help to dig into what’s going on for you. Does perfectionism play any part?

For the past 11 years Coach Anna has been helping ADHD clients like you to get back into action and move forwards with confidence. You can contact Coach Anna here to schedule a 1-1 appointment to discuss your needs and priorities. Or you might consider joining this coaching group starting September 21st 2026 if you’d find it useful to hear from others who face the same challenges and learn what has helped them.