Young Men Turning to Online Role Models

Yesterday was an interesting day because it was fairly boring and I didn’t do much. I remember reading an article by Victor Pride about how to deal with perfectionism to create success. When I read Victor’s article and thought about my performance at work, I started to realize that I am a perfectionist, but this is not a good thing. It actually makes me very slow and unproductive. Victor cites a Business Insider article that has the following to say about perfectionism:

Burns defines perfectionists as “people who strain compulsively and unremittingly toward impossible goals and who measure their own worth entirely in terms of productivity and accomplishment”. 

In the workplace, perfectionism is often marked by low productivity as individuals lose time and energy on attention to detail and small irrelevant details of larger projects or mundane daily activities. 

Adderholt-Elliot describes five characteristics of perfectionist students and teachers which contribute to underachievement: procrastination, fear of failure, the all-or-nothing mindset, paralyzed perfectionism, and workaholism.

I think I will digress for a moment now and say that I owe Victor Pride a lot. I think this happens considerably nowadays but young men (although I am in my early thirties now, so am I really young?) are faced with a crisis in that they tend to grow up in broken homes, and this shatters the respect that they had for their father as authority figures. I am projecting now because this is what happened to me! I should talk for myself. Basically I respected my parents, but when the marriage broke down, I pretty much became lost, and this was especially the case throughout university when I was struggling to figure out what I should do for the rest of my life. Couple with this the fact that gender roles are being questioned and attacked (for good or for bad) and young men are really lost about how to behave. Thankfully, there is the internet, and Victor Pride really helped me in the early days, although there are many other internet role models. Basically the internet has opened my eyes up to many different ways of thinking, and YouTube in particular allows you to receive wisdom and motivation from others. The bottom line is to receive your wisdom from many corners of the internet because there are so many viewpoints on the internet, and there may be no correct viewpoint. Just be exposed to many viewpoints and make a decision for yourself.

Back to the topic of productivity at work. On Friday morning, it took me about two hours to send out two emails because I was checking everything. I had to make sure it read well, I had to make sure it was sent to the right person, I had to make sure I didn’t say anything that was wrong, etc. I suppose there is nothing wrong with this. I cannot make mistakes. That would be horrible, so I guess I don’t really have a choice, but I am a slow worker. This may also explain why I work so much. I come in early sometimes and stay in late, and I take work home over the weekend.