Up: [[Compulsion]] Created: 2025-07-07 Even writing that heading grates at me. My spice racks are alphabetized. I don’t have a junk drawer. Rod, the art teacher at the community centre in Cobourg, saw my studio and told me that I could never be an artist because I’m too tidy and organized. I won’t use a palette knife in art because I don’t like there to be clumpy bits of texture in a painting. I am not messy! Nor do I think that I procrastinate much, although I can’t be quite as indignant about that one. According to the [quiz](https://www.perfectionistsguide.com/quiz) I took in psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafler’s book, *The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control*, I’m a messy perfectionist with procrastinator perfectionist tendencies. Once I read Katherine’s book (she feels likes a friend so I’ll use her first name), I saw myself in all five of the perfectionist types she describes. I still don’t like the names given to the five types, and the quiz only has five or six questions with no claim to either validity or reliability, but I can’t get energetic about these protests because a) Katherine agrees, saying that *none of these categorizations mean anything unless they mean something to you* (p. 297), and b) the book is superb, right up there with [[Oliver Burkeman]]’s *Four Thousand Weeks* in impacting how I think and act. See, for example, Burkeman’s [[Twelve Dismal Guarantees and Their Positive Counterparts]]. ### Messy Perfectionism Messy perfectionists love new beginnings. I certainly do and always have. There’s so much possibility in a beginning that the more of them, the better, as far as I’m concerned. I enjoy new beginnings every Monday, at the end of every month, start of every season, whenever there’s a new moon or a full moon, at my birthday, the morning after a bad day…. You get the idea. We messy perfectionists are naturally enthusiastic people and we have a LOT of ideas. I was protected from the worst of messy perfectionism when I was working and had to be accountable, but now that I’m retired and have developed so many new interests in the last half dozen years, I’m chagrined to admit that the ‘messy’ label does apply. Katherine explains it as attempting to do a million things at once, while pretending that I’m a mortal for whom normal limits of time and energy don’t apply. (Hence why Burkeman’s books have rocked my world.) New beginnings produce a wonderful and natural high, which is followed by a crash when trying to actually execute on the beginning and take it through to a conclusion. Honestly, this has been wearing me out. Katherine explains it as a problem of loss. I have trouble focusing on one thing because, thanks to my age and Oliver Burkeman, I’m daily confronted by the fact that I won’t ever be able to have all of the different lives I want to live or be able to immerse and develop expertise in many of the areas that so fascinate me. This reality has left me feeling very stuck. I try to choose one thing, which is a challenge because I’m never quite sure I’ve chosen the most important thing to me. ### Procrastinator Perfectionism kicks in. I want conditions to be perfect before I start so for each new beginning, I make complex plans. I organize — my vault, studio, calendar, bookshelves. I “clear the decks” by cleaning up my email inboxes, making the phone calls, setting up appointments. I justify all of this by saying that my environment has to be organized for my brain to feel organized, and that is true. However, the hesitation that accompanies so much preparation means that I don’t do the things I most want to do. I’m aware of this and it causes me immense frustration with myself. Katherine describes this form of perfectionism as another avoidance of loss. Unlike the messy perfectionist’s avoidance of the loss of possibility, the procrastinator perfectionist experiences anticipatory loss — What if this thing I want doesn’t work out? Then what? And, in my case, what if this isn’t the ‘right’ thing, the thing I’m ‘meant’ to be doing in my third act. ### The Other Three Messy perfectionism and procrastinator perfectionism are the big ones for me at this point in my life. The other three types that Katherine describes still show up, but they had a lot more play when I was in the workforce. **Intense Perfectionists** have an off-the-charts work ethic driven towards perfect outcomes. Hello, massive burnout, my old nemesis. **Parisian Perfectionists** want ideal connections with other people and with themselves. People-pleasers unite! **Classic Perfectionist** is reliable, consistent, and detail oriented. The chaos of emotions is avoided in favour of structure and routine.