You probably know, if you’ve watched my videos for any length of time, that I am a recovering perfectionist. In 2015, I started to understand how my perfectionism was a major roadblock to getting to, and maintaining, a healthy weight. That was also the first year I started setting a goal to read 52 books a year, which averages out to a book a week. I’ve hit that goal every year since then.
This year, I am woefully behind. We are in week 24, so I should have read 24 books by now. Instead, I just finished #10.
My perfectionist tendencies are a thing I still battle on a daily basis. Being this far behind can quickly morph into feeling overwhelmed. And feeling overwhelmed can easily lead to quitting. This is how my weight problem felt when I was obese. The number of pounds I needed to lose felt too large, and I always felt behind. When I inevitably made some weight-loss related mistake (eating the “wrong” foods, eating past the point of fullness, skipping out on a workout, etc,) my self-talk would sound like this: See! This is why you’re never going to lose it. And even if you do, you’re going to gain it right back. Because you always screw up like this. Why don’t you just quit?” And so many times, I would.
At the end of 2015, even though I had worked on getting my perfectionism under control, I was on the verge of quitting. I looked at my spreadsheet and saw what I thought were pitiful results. At first, my self-talk went like this, “You’re obese and you should be losing weight so much faster than this. If you would’ve just buckled down and done a better job, you could’ve lost 5 pounds a week and and you would have been done by now. But you’re never going to get done at this rate.”
It was around this moment when I finally started to get it through my head that this type of perfectionist thinking and negative self-talk was not serving me. So, I endeavored on the long and slow process of battling perfectionism. This means I constantly pay attention to my train of thought and try to correct it when it take that perfectionistic turn.
That December, I realized my weight loss timeline goal wasn’t serving me. I took a step back and I realized that I didn’t care about fast weight loss. What I truly wanted was permanent weight loss that was enjoyable. I decided that if the results could be permanent, I was okay with it taking years. I also looked up whether or not my 5-pound-a-week goal was reasonable, and realized that it was not. A pound a week, as it turned out, was a better goal.
In 2016, I moved forward towards my goal with a general timeline in mind, but with the Big Picture firmly in view. I got in the habit of focusing on just the next pound, lest I get overwhelmed at the prospect of the task that lay before me. By November, I was at my goal weight.
Which brings us back to my 2025 reading goal. Have I mentioned that I am woefully behind? Well, that’s my old perfectionist self-talk bubbling up to the surface. That self-talk would like me to focus on the negative. “You’re 14 books behind. You’ll never catch up! What don’t you just quit?”
Instead, here’s what I’m choosing to focus on. First of all, despite 2025 being quite a difficult year so far, I have managed to read 10 books. There were many years in my adult life when I had very little going on, and I couldn’t manage to finish one book. Even if I finish no more for the rest of this year, 10 books is still a good accomplishment. Next, my “why” behind the goal isn’t so that I can just say I’ve read 52 books. My “why” is so that I can expand my worldview and enrich my life. The book count is secondary to that. I also ask myself why I haven’t read more books this year. And I realize that, in fact, I’ve been reading more than usual. It’s just that the nature of my reading has been in tutorials and material related to computer programming and cybersecurity. In short, the “why” is still being satisfied, even if the technical numbers are not.
I did some quick figuring, just for curiosity’s sake. To hit my goal, I need to average completing 1.5 books a week for the rest of the year. Will I be able to swing that? I honestly don’t know. I do know what my strategy going forward will be. Each day, I’ll try to read a little bit. Those few pages here and there will accumulate over time. This is precisely how I tackled my weight loss goals. It works. I’ll keep chipping away at it. In the end, if 2025 comes to a close and I have read fewer than 52 books, the world will not end, despite my perfectionistic self-talk trying to convince me otherwise.
I hope that by sharing this, it helps someone else out there who struggles with perfectionism. It’s worth the fight!
