We should aim for perfection -- and stop fearing failure | Jon Bowers 

The anxiety of being concerned about perfection will cause more damage then not being perfect we should seek to always be improving.

I can understand this talk when the word ‘perfection’ is subbed by ‘excellence’. We should always strive for excellence, but not perfection, cause only the latter is impossible. Adam Grant speaks on this

Brilliant speech and idea behind it. The thing is that trying to be perfect is often walking hand in hand with comparing ourselves to others (because in certain cases that is the only way to measure perfection). And once we start doing that, we are no longer trying to be perfect and the best self, we are trying to be better than people around us, which is giving us a feeling of accomplishment (if we reach it) or failure (if we don't).

Exactly! I hate it when anyone tells me “you did better than me at least” or “it’s okay” because it’s not! Let me stress out! If I never stress I’ll never care if I do or do not improve. Seeking perfection is not wrong and should not be seen as an obnoxious trait because it is a goal that drives me to take concrete steps at an exponential rate than a person who is “okay” with their results. If the world was just okay with everything and stopped seeking perfectionism then nothing will improve because no one will care!

I've been saying this same thing to anyone who would listen my entire life. That guy had the balls to give a speech on it, I give him all the credit in the world. Perfection is not a popular topic in general society.

Seems like "perfection" was the wrong word for what he was really trying to get across. I think that there would be fewer objections if he had simply said "improvement", rather than "perfection". I think that most of us can agree that our fallible, human nature will always leave us room to improve and correct mistakes.

This is a loaded topic for me, as someone who suffers from anxiety, with one of the causes being perfectionism, which was instilled with sayings like "do it right or get out". Just by using the word while claiming to have changed the definition, you're already giving excuses to repeat that. The most important thing I agree with: yes, the striving, improving, accepting failure as part of learning, focus - those are positive, necessary for a healthy person. But putting so much attention to things like perfect dress code, flawless attention at all times, just to drive the point home seems damaging - considering we're, you know, human beings, with limited attention, energy and brains, and putting too much strain on any of it in the wrong way leads to stress, to bad health, and to generally lowered points of "best effort" anyway. So, how about instead of trying to force a mentality of flawless, mechanical precision - especially in a context of self-driving cars doing just that in your profession, but better - you could try to work on changing opinions on failure versus success, or figure out "healthy perfectionism"? Because your lecturing can result in people deciding, for example, that they'll never be good enough doctors - while with how overworked every one I know is they need all the help they can get. I wonder which is worse: seeing a "good enough" doctor who cares and tries, a "perfect" doctor who's too tired to even read your name, or not seeing any doctor at all?

seeking perfection is an imperfection..

Good talk. “Why don’t we try defining perfectionism as a willingness to do what is difficult, to achieve what is right” Definition of a “Professional”.

Even when people strive for perfection there will be a margin of error. Saying others aren't striving for perfection because there is a higher failure rate somewhere doesn't mean those industries aren't striving. Now if the rate is unacceptable then yes there should be a change as he states and I do agree with. Also associating all successes with your ideal without anything backing it up is a little bs also. There are systems that need to be bettered but to say there is no effort is a little absurd. I'd say reacting to failure with change in more the focus here.

This guy makes so much sense. I don't know why some people are hating in the comments probably because they can't aspire for perfection. I totally believe in perfectionism.

I don't doubt Mr Bowers' intentions, but his correlations are spurious and he seems to be inserting his personal biases into the workplace without any proof of beneficial outcomes. Most accidents involving transport trucks are not the fault of the truck driver but of smaller passenger vehicles. Where the truck is at fault, the cause is usually due to driver fatigue/ poorly secured loads or poorly maintained vehicles. So, being a jerk and micromanaging the drivers' attire is not saving any lives. Paying drivers more per mile to allow them time to sleep, road design improvements (including rumble strips, wider intersections and increased turn radii) and proper maintenance - that saves lives. Shiny shoes or nice starched uniforms don't stop blow out or jack knifing.

He put good thought into it but he has a very black and white view of the world and dosent realize that seeking a state of almost robotic thought will destroy the spiratic part of ourselves that makes us human, also he needs to watch American Psycho and see how a idea of a perfectionist turns out

I've been fighting my perfectionism for many years. It burns me out and slows down. So, I allow myself to reach at least 90% of what I feel I can, and then move on to the next piece of work (video editing, recording, design). Consider your field and find the balance in it. I mean, video editing is not driving at 55 miles/h. He's a good point, but only for the fields where 99,999999% is vital.

Humans are intrusively imperfect. We live in an inherently imperfect world. I can empathize with the point he’s trying to get across. I certainly think we should all strive for the best in our work, in our relationships, but constantly chasing “perfection” will just make us weary and anxious. I feel like this man doesn’t understand human nature lol

The only issue here is how to measure perfection. It is impossible to count in percentages some things in life. Each person has his own standard for work, family, friends. Seeking perfection is ok, but how to stop doing one thing and switch to another if it’s not perfect. Your shirt in the morning is never perfect, you iron it but you get wrinkles in one place when you try to get rid of them in the other. Usually you’d say:”I did my best”, but now you can not even go to work, because you’re a perfectionist. Who is the judge of perfection? People can never adequately judge themselves. We are always better or worse than somebody else. We never know what’s perfect.

Even though perfection is something that has to be achievable by every productive process that exist, the way that he presents "his method to achieve it" is something that is tipical of persons that doesn't understand how complex interactions with systems usually work. Complex systems by themselves have flaws (not only drivers, medics or services), and if perfection is something that we should strive for. Understandment of the phenomena is more important than "pointing what is wrong"; because in this talk, i only listen "why should things should be perfect". Instead of "how we can achieve perfection in processes that lead to perfect behavior" then the lack of method only implies a rant about, why things are not perfect and what the cost of those imperfections could be, then we could ask. How we can encourage people to more be concious that their actions impact the whole system?. Anyway he has a lot to learn about his imperfect way to see motivation and continous development. Bottom line, please do not compare things that are "my personal experience"., With proceesses that are really complex and with a lot of people involved in them. Because somehow... all the people involved understand that, failures cost lives and, we are aware of what a "mistake" cost can be.

Thank you so much for this talk. I am currently working tward a new career that requires perfection, taxes. I appreciate your view on failure and learning from them. Thank you.

Its great to aim for perfection but can a employer expect perfection on minimum wages. Big business want perfection but don't want to pay a living wage. They want perfection but don't want to pay tax, Apple, Google, Amazon, Starbucks, Facebook etc. This guy wants perfection from his drivers but does he pay "perfection" wages or as little as he can get away with?

I agree. Progress is always the best. This is why we always make multiple drafts when writing a paper.

I believe he is saying that to strive for perfection is what allows us to improve, and in the end, we achieve more than we first thought possible. Striving for perfection will take humanity farther than ending at "good enough". To put effort into the things, people, and society we care about can be stressful and rewarding at the same time. Not all stress is bad stress.

Today I was telling about perfection to some people, where I remarked being a perfectionist may cause suffering in life as one sometimes tries to outperform his physical or mental abilities as well as take everything too close too heart being quite sensitive. Though a failure has been mentioned going hand in hand with success, your point is effective and encouraging as the failure is an indispensable part of success in any area of life... Thank you, Jon.

I love this talk thank you! Literally it's so funny how emotional people are getting in the comments by someone speaking of "perfection". I had no idea there was this much hate against the idea of perfection in our society. They really have no argument.

This is perfect ❤️ irony those who are against perfectionism want a perfect car, perfect home, perfect mobile phone etc. No one will accept a damaged phone or damaged car or damaged home.

This is an interesting take on perfection. I know I'm not alone when I say perfection has caused a great deal of stress in my life. But he makes some fair points, where imperfection has directly led to catastrophe including death. I think the issue with this talk is the way in which the term "good enough" was used. Perfection as a whole is certainly unattainable, but perfection in some instances can be possible. Writing code for instance, or making sure every sensor has been checked properly. These are things that CAN be done perfectly. But "good enough" is not as low of a standard as he makes it out to be. The definition of "good enough" changes depending on the context. Good enough is just a term used for the acceptable amount of imperfection in a given situation, which at times may not be any. When many lives are at stake, perfection and good enough can often be synonymous. But when it comes to adding the perfect amount of salt to your next meal, the divide between perfection and good enough is considerably larger. Perfection, in most cases, whether possible or not, is impractical and imposes unnecessary stress. There is nothing wrong with "good enough". We just need to understand what that means in different situations.

You can be a darn near perfect driver even if you wear wrinkled clothes ... or hardly any clothes at all :-) Perfectionism is the goal but it shouldn't be pursued in a stressful, anxious way. If you're passionate about something, seeking perfection will come natural. I think the moral of this TED Talk is that we should aim high. The 30% valedictorian class, is an example of bright people who settled for less. Part of the reason is that nobody encouraged them to try harder. The other reason (more important, I think) is that schools don't reward the pursuit of passion. We reward getting highest grades across all disciplines, but very few of us are passionate about all disciplines. It's good to study all disciplines. That's the mark of a truly educated person. But we usually get passionate only about a few ideas. That's where we should aim high and not see failure as a disaster, but as a stepping stone towards "greatest ever" ... or something like that. :-)

"Failure" (making mistakes) is a good thing. It helps us learn what to doing and what not to do. Otherwise, if we don't learn from our failures, we will repeatedly make the same errors. "Perfection" is impossible, but we can get close to it.

This hits so hard, it’s a smack of truth despite how you feel about it. If you get anxiety from seeking perfection perhaps we need to deal with anxiety rather than lower our standards.

Thank you! You simply remind people like me to keep on striving and believing to oneself no matter how hard it seems.

This guy is a maniac, I never, never in my life would want to work for someone like that. We are Human not robots!

I like how his shirt is wrinkled...

My number one job duty is literally to keep airplanes from crashing. My job demands perfection far beyond any scope he is portraying... yet, this is my least favorite ted talk, period. He is missing the point. Perfection and progression are not synonymous.

Perfection is an immutable system. You need that 1% to learn something new... And grow.

Dangerous message. I'd put it differently: Strive to be and do your best, and there is no failure. I realize this is a different message, but as someone who has been struggling with a perfectionist mindset for decades, I can tell you that aiming for perfection leads to more harm than good in more ways than one, regardless of if you embrace failure and learn from it or not.

“Healthy striving is about striving for internal goals, and wanting to be our best selves. Perfectionism is not motivated internally. Perfectionism is about what people will think.” - Brené Brown

If you seek to improve it's because you aim to perfection. If you seek it you do achieve better results than by not even trying. Each time you try you improve, you get closer to perfection, not further away. Don't punish yourself for failing, punish yourself for not trying.

I find it funny how he complains about the acceptance of "99%" as not being good enough, while praising someone who succeeded 77 times in a row as perfection to aspire to. 77 in a row is 98.7%. And getting a jump shot right is only a single task that lasts a second. A doctor performing a difficult surgery might be called upon to perform over a hundred tasks in a row, all correct to perfection over a period of hours in order to get a successful end result and we, as a society, only judge that doctor on the end result, not on all the steps performed to get it. So that 99% success rate in surgery might be the result of 10,000 successful tasks in a row. Perfection can be exhausting, and there is practice required, but it's important that people have the mental energy in order to be able to spend it on what matters. We wouldn't want doctors to spend an hour before surgery making sure their gowns are well pressed, that all their clothing is immaculate. Those are things that don't matter, and if they exhaust themselves focusing on the irrelevant, they'll tire out before surgery finishes. Instead, they spend a minute or two before surgery focused on things that do matter, like washed hands, fresh surgery gloves, a well positioned mask. When it comes to training for perfection, it is important to focus on practicing what's important and relevant. That basketball player didn't get 77 shots in a row because he practiced getting his uniform perfect and focused on achieving perfection. He attained it because he practiced making shots until it was an automatic reflex. You don't attain perfection by practicing the effort to be perfect, you attain perfection by practicing the skills you want to perfect. Want drivers to cross intersections perfectly? Practice. Want to change lanes perfectly? Practice. Practice until every desired step is an automatic reflex. Because when you have it practiced, it becomes effortless. But here's a question for those drivers: When you have them trained for being "on time" as high importance, when they are facing bad weather, will they choose to drive safely and be late, or take risks in order to be on time? Are you making the roads more dangerous in the pursuit of time perfection?

I understand his point when u chase for failure realising you can never get it u will find excellence and he even said no one is perfect doesn't mean we should stop striving but we should all not be scared on of the most important thing in life failure

if everything was perfect there would be 0 room for improvement and innovation.

i do not think that anyone can be perfect.

It should probably be made really clear that he's is not talking about body image or much about quality of life, those are more of a different story. Instead he's talking about ambition, goal setting, industry, and business. He also mention "So if you can't get the little things right you're going to fail when it counts, and you're driving it counts." But in situations when it doesn't count like social interactions or social events for example, probably shouldn't need to seek perfection at all times. And I think his idea should really be applied and magnified into areas such as professional driving, medicine, engineering, manufacture, and maintenance which is when it really counts and "perfection" is necessary. It could also be noted that trying our best might be good enough for the small things like elementary school tests but with the big requires more then our best. And his idea of utilizing failure as a motivational force should support this argument well. Also, if this kind perfectionism still causes bad stress, why not try and find ways to remove this bad stress while still making improvements? I kind of don't understand why people say nothing can be flawless no matter what is done. For example, the first time you build a machine it will most likely have flaws. But if you carefully proofread it, try to spot and fix as many flaws as you can, then it will be nearly flawless. In short, a machine can't be flawless from the start but it can be nearly flawless by the end right? He even says we know that imperfection exist all around us so that proves he's still aware of imperfection. The another ironic point could also be that as much as he might care about mental health, he mentions how this kind of atitude is what gives us scary healthcare, which mental healthcare is probably included. I can't really understand why many actvists advocate against this kind of perfectionis and influences messages like to stop following your dreams and accept everything just the way it is no matter how bad it is!

I really liked his 'new' definition of perfectionism. Lowering standard will not help you, especially in today's world where consequences of any mistakes is getting larger than before

I just want to say they give the Ted talk podium to everyone nowadays :(

Some people don't seek perfection, nor they do their best ! They're just following the flow, doing easy tasks with high benifits ! Without caring about anyone else .

i just love it u chnage the way i think and i will work to seek perfection, thank u

Anyone named John Bowers is already perfect, lol

I feel like the people who do not like this video are just okay with being mediocre and they're feelings are hurt that someone is calling them out.

Interesting that hes really talking about precision and not perfection. Precision and excellence are relative and can be realistically aimed for while not trying be to perfect.

Understand where he's coming from, and all the examples support it. but reaching for perfection like that just CAUSES the illness.

I'm going against the crowd on this one by agreeing with Bowers. We all have lapses but striving for perfection everyday is my ideal whether I am giving advice to a client, hosting a Thanksgiving dinner or just driving. It is always in the small details.

I think the only perfection that we should try to pursue is trying to be better then yesterday. The world is already too stressed to focus on perfection.

People should also be properly compensated for reaching that perfection. No one will put in the extra effort if they get the same salary regardless of how well they do it. There needs to be a tempting-enough reward to motivate people to give their all. This is especially true for low-paid jobs.

This guy is extra af

this is the first and hopefully the only ted video i call bullshit upon. perfection is impossible, because humanity. period.

The line is very fine between being a Perfectionist and a Obsessive-compulsive. You never know when you will cross it. I would prefer 'give your BEST' attitude instead.

Who is smart, those willing to learn from everyone.

Were perfect the way we are.We don't need to change ourselves to be beautiful.Everyones perfect if we don't change ourselves.

You can tell he has had a traumatic experience that has hurt his heart , to bring him to this way of thinking. But what makes protection possible , man or Father God? God bless you all

Idk man I liked the talk…the comments ive read just seem to me like you guys are trying to justify your lack of seeking perfection - its important to take pride in the work you do - really important. You create the world around you by your actions, and if you start letting yourself off the hook now, you might never stop. It was a good talk.

I think people are misunderstanding the point of this talk. you don't have to be perfect in your personal life or even your job. but when your work is having mass effect then you should aim for 100%.

you were 99% successful in your exposition of ideas in that you failed to pronounce correcly a couple of words and had to correct yourself. Your TED talk was a failure but don't worry: now you can strife for perfection on your next TED talk.

Perfection is just an extreme word to get his point across. Also, he is only asking to set their goal high (perfect), he is not asking people to BE perfect. I feel his frustration because there are too many people around me are making ridiculous small mistakes yet they are all okay with that and do not have the willingness to fix those mistakes. Those mistakes add in the stress and workload on everyone else on the team and cost a lot of money to the company, yet it is the culture there and the attitude of accepting failure (in other word, they are spoiled) and therefore will never improve. Perfection is not realistic, but you should always strike for perfection. It is the attitude and the willingness to improve that counts.

This was weirdly calming. I don't understand why.

So if I understand this correctly, we should be failing more so that we can eventually fail less, and somehow that will lead to perfection. K, got it.

Can't confirm a couple of things here. 1. In many fields, perfectionism is a bane, as by sticking to it persistently, you would never be able to complete a project. Software engineering being a good example for that - there's ALWAYS something you can improve upon, so you need to be able to tame your perfectionism if you want to get somewhere. Don't mention that you are a "perfectionist" in job interviews within fields like these, as it is in fact an unfavorable trait - for good reasons. Thus, preaching perfectionism like a religion as this guy does is not helpful. 2. Perfection isn't achievable anyways (and not fearing failure doesn't change anything about that). His examples about driving made me chuckle in particular. Humans are bad drivers by nature and no amount of training or attention can change that. When you put mammals inside of huge wheeled boxes of metal and have them roll around at 90 km/h then traffic fatalities are plain simply what you get. It's the natural outcome. For human drivers to seek perfection will not enable them to overcome those limits. 3. "If our doctors were only 99.99% correct, ..." that one's even funnier though. I wonder if they're correct 50% of the time... Prescriptions are based on rough guesses. As doctors are human beings, it's simply not possible for their brains to query millions of links between medicines and symptoms within the couple of minutes they've available for that. Not to mentioned that the "correct" medicine probably doesn't even exist - just like perfection in drug discovery. But what am I saying; the mere notion that doctors exists primarily to prescribe drugs is already completely denying any aim for perfection. But in the end, it's probably down to our imperfect symbol language. A mismatch of definitions. What he means by "striving for perfection" is probably more like "striving for improvement". Though I would argue that even that wouldn't be helpful 100% of the time. Things just aren't as black and white as that. Both "improvement" and "perfection" are linear concepts, but reality is not linear. Maybe you are improving something, but it turns out that this something isn't desirable to someone else or to yourself in the future. ;) Rather than to ask "what can I do to improve this and that", I suggest to ask "what is important - how should I set my priorities". What exactly is it that you are perfecting when aiming for it blindly?

Perfect

I think the point that everyone negatively commenting on this is missing is what he eluded to in the end. There is no such thing as perfect results, BUT, there IS such a thing as prefect effort. When you ask someone who made a mistake a couple of questions you start to figure out the things they didn't do, didn't plan for, cut a corner, hoped wouldn't matter, etc., etc. The difference between the greats, the average, and the outright failures is how many questions you gotta ask before the lack of effort is illuminated. Hey look we're all human and that's excuse number one for masking mistakes, but you know what, I'd rather be Elon Musk than anybody I know in my life right now. His biggest failures are better than most people's biggest success, and that's the point of this talk. Try again, fail again, fail better. The pursuit of perfection shouldn't be feared or mocked, it should be the standard. But, it's not. And we have the exact results in this country and world that we deserve

The 'perfect being' you said... well... I have to tell you the honest truth as I see it. In this world nothing perfect exists. It may be a cliché after all, but it's the way things are. That's precisely why ordinary men pursue to concept of perfection, it's infatuation... But ultimately I have to ask myself what is the true meaning of being perfect and the answer I came up with was: nothing. Not one thing. The truth of the matter is I despise perfection. If something is truly perfect, that's it. The bottom line becomes there is no room for imagination, no space for intelligence or ability or improvement. Do you understand to men of science like us perfection is a dead end, a condition of hopelessness. Always strive to be better than anything that came before you, but not perfect. Science has agonized over the attempt to achieve perfection. That's the kind of creatures we are. We take joy in trying to exceed our grasp, in trying to reach for something that in the end we have to admit may in fact be unreachable. In other words, you may think the we operate on the same level, but you're wrong. The moment you started talking about perfection you embraced an impossible concept and you already lost to me. That is of course if you are indeed a scientist at all. - Tite Kubo

If you fail, maybe not you..., you can simply lose everything. Risk is such a huge factor. Aim for perfection is okay, but with risk, only those who can afford to risk.

I like how the dude is blaming the US government for crashing a plane and blaming them for "only doing 99 percent of their job" while he works at ups

Tell this Gentleman to visit Thailand, or India or Mexico.....lol

How did he get a ted talk?

True.

Boooooo. Booooooo. He says no one shoots for perfection any more. He has perfection confused with control by the sound of his talk.

everyone here cussing about perfection's disadvantage and got their ego hurting but dont care about the 11 babies put in wrong parents each day now i know u telling me, theres no good evidence about this but what if, like what if. what if after 10 years you found out that ur baby isnt yours because some ego stroked man did his job wrong? now what? what if ur parents died in a car crash because somebody forget to check some tires? u still gotta care about your self esteem? perfection is getting things right to lessen conflict to lessen deaths because its not about quantity, its about quality. and if ur about to hire somebody, you wont accept a good enough work, cause u know thats worth a lot of dollars. cause u know its u that has the liability so shut up is it really bad to understand?

Actually nothing can be perfect,it only can be aproximatly perfect , as close to perfection as possible and to do that you need to know what perfect is ! And to do that you need to be perfect in understanding perfection. IT"S A PARADOX it can't happen!

I like how he said that the programmers created an "almost" flawless programm :D

I think, we should strive for precision, not perfection. Nobody's perfect. But the truth is that nowadays most people aren't even doing their best and don't concentrate on their jobs, because they are distracted by social media.

beautiful idea....

Perfection is a waste of time and energy on something you never you'll be able to achieve.

perfection is saying, you must YOU MUST perform like a machine. This is a factory mindset. We are not in the industrialized age.

I wonder what Brene Brown thinks about this

I would never work for a guy like this. He has no idea how human beings operate. Wrinkled clothes = failure? Wow. People like this guy don't realize how destructive they are. They make just as many mistakes as everyone around them but are too busy judging everyone to notice. My guess is he's a fundamental Christian. Only they are so hypocritical to say they love everyone while judging them.

His speech is about aiming to be perfect not being perfect it's really different.

Make failure a motivating force.

For some work you NEED perfection. The character of some people is focused on perfection. Im fine with that. But lets not 'reclame' this like something our whole human race need to achive. Lets just live the life and explore who you really are. SDWQFQ

Just listening to this guy makes me frustrated...

What he means is that if humans try to aim for perfection, then they would do much better, but he didn’t explain that well enough for most of us to understand.

Perfection is impossible

I think the examples that the gentleman mentioned can not very well support his perfection statement cuz like the nba star or programmers, they seek perfection but they cannot achieve it most of the time, as set a goal above 98% is totally enough for some of the careers. While for some carers that do have a standard for perfection, people have to really realize what they are doing and the consequence of their errors. Once we think about it and find the imperfection is unacceptable, just aim for perfection.100% of perfect is not impossible as thats what distinguish people from top tier to top 1/2.

Depends on the context. Sometimes striving for perfection is the right thing. Sometimes, doing good enough is the right thing. When I make my sandwich lunch, I'm not aiming for perfection. Good enough is adequate.

Covid: Hold my beer

Perfection is something to strive for, not achieve.

This guy should learn from the new computing way of thinking: Instead of trying to make "perfect" systems (which are impossible, due to the physical nature of machines and human errors), the new way is trying to make systems resilient (recoverable) from failures, based on redundancy (multiplicity of processors, storage locations, networks), retries and compensations. In other words, never depend in single entities (machine or human) to do something, make validations between participants, detect failures early, warn and take action at least to reach a stable state.

So I guess the word your searching for is actually improvement

"Think about it!"

I can't Like this Talk enough. Best one I've listened to in awhile

Trying for perfection in everything, is going to make you less productive and more reluctant go rake risks.

Haven't watched this Vid. But if you are a UPSer, log on the the UPSer website & search "what if" &/or "Ted"... Read the comments, there are some eye opening ideas that corporate even took the time to respond to!

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