This Is Why You Aren’t Progressing as a Student (And What You Can Do To Start Growing Again)

You’re probably failing, aren’t you?

You’re probably not hitting the goals you wish to hit.

You’re probably getting really frustrated with yourself and the world around you. For whom is to blame for this feeling of yours?

Yourself. Let me explain. Through a little story. By the way, at the end of this blog post, you should be rid of that feeling, and you may also walk away with new ways of tackling your goals. Whatever they may be.

Harold & Peter

I want you to imagine you have these two students in your classroom. Harold and Peter. They are both stars in their respective subjects and often set goals for themselves. They love acing their exams and feel good about themselves whenever they do.

They just have one glaring difference.

Say they both take English class. And they both aren’t as good as they would wish to be when it comes to writing fictional stories.

The class is often tasked with reviewing and commenting on each other’s work. This happens today.

Harold loves constructive criticism and often asks his peers where he went wrong and how he can improve. He actively goes out of his way to look for people who will tear his work into pieces — just to find those few wonky ones.

Peter, on the other hand is afraid of sharing his work. Whenever the class points out a glaring issue with his work — or even the slightest of errors — Peter’s mood drops. Hard. He sees every error as some sort of mistake from his part and feels as if his work isn’t good enough if it won’t earn him a 100% (which is near impossible for most of the English courses taught in high school — this fact will be important later on).

What’s the difference between these two students?

Harold is a healthy striver, whilst Peter is a perfectionist. This is probably what’s stunting your growth. The Desire of Perfection.

Perfectionism Is Sabotaging Your Success.

The Perfection — Productivity Paradox

There are a lot of perfectionists at the top of the human status ladder:

Steve Jobs

Demi Lovato

Michelangelo (the painter, not the ninja turtle)

Emma Watson

so on and so forth. So, it's kind of easy to conclude that those are perfectionist are more productive than those who aren’t — and by extension, are more successful in the long run. But according to World Expert Professor Thomas Curran and his studies, there really is no correlation between perfectionists, performance and success. In fact, being a perfectionist is probably more damaging than it is helpful.

If you are a perfectionist, you’ll probably relate to this:

Peter goes on with his English studies, but throughout the year, finds it really hard to cope with the constant criticisms and short comings. Over time, he stops putting in as much effort and right at the end of the year, he quits the course completely — arguing he will fail the final exam, anyway.

You may not relate to throwing away an entire year’s worth of learning, but you may relate to the feeling of wanting to not even try anymore.

Perfectionists have this tendency of not trying their best — or at all — when presented with the possibility of failure in any shape or form — Not passing an exam the first time around, seeing their peers fail, etc. They don’t like that it’s an option, so, instead of taking the steps necessary to “pass” or at least “avoid failing”, in their minds, they drop it and never touch it again.

This often leads to a habit of procrastination, which is the product of not feeling/being good enough to complete the task perfectly and the possibility of failure. At least, in the perfectionist’s mind.

Procrastination formula for the average perfectionist = Not being good enough x Fear of Failure.

The Perfectionist Trap

Where does perfectionism come from?

Most people will agree that perfectionism comes from the internal want to prove that you are “good enough”, to prove that you “belong”. To either other people i.e. your family, your workplace, your school, or to yourself, as a form of self-validation or as a way to feed your ego.

How do they prove this? By saying or thinking the following. Highlight or write down any of these if you’ve said it to yourself.

I must be top of the class.

I want my 100%s.

I must excel.

I can’t afford to miss any marks.

I must have high standards.

Now, it’s okay to set high standards. Actually, it’s the best thing to do for yourself as a learner. It cuts out the mediocrity. However, perfectionists often set standards that are way too high.

Peter tries again.

After Peter drops out of English class, he picks up a new class to compensate. One he thinks he’ll be good at and interested in: an online quantum physics course (which is way out of reach for his current level of understanding).

He tells himself this is where he will shine, seeing as he dominates his normal physics class back at school. As he sits down, he tells himself he will not see anything lower than a 90% throughout all his course work.

This is step 1 in the perfectionist trap. A cycle he is repeating all over again. He’s set his standards way too high.

Now, when you set your standards way too high, you increase the likelihood of you not actually reaching them.

This, of course, increases your chance of failure.

And when you do fail, feelings of stress, low self-esteem and shame overwhelm you.

You then set even higher standards and goals to compensate, and this spiral goes on and on and on and on.

Notice how Peter didn’t meet the high standards he set for himself (100% in the English course) and then went through all the steps, just to set even higher standards for himself, which he will not reach (staying in the 90% — 100% range throughout his quantum physics course).

Identity Loss

Most perfectionists lose their sense of self after consistently failing to achieve what they set out to achieve. They imagine themselves as some fine marble statue meant to be seen by the masses as the greatest art ever created. And view every failure as a hammer chipping away at their perfect frame.

Eventually, the “chipping hammer” cuts away at so much statue that its shape is distorted and ugly to look at. So much so that the statue (the perfectionist) hides in the shadows. Not willing to come out and brave the elements or the hammer in fear of losing any more of themselves to it — eventually leading to their stunted growth and eventual mental death.

Sounds depressing, huh?

Luckily, you can work on that. What if I told you, you can still be a perfectionist, without any of the pain that comes with it?

The Healthy Perfectionist

Believe it or not, there is a way to be a perfectionist without the pain. Perfection is an ideal. An ideal to work towards. In my mind, perfection is an ever-moving finish line. One that keeps speeding up the closer we get to it. This is how.

1. Start Somewhere & Set Reasonably high Standards

In my opinion, it’s a very good idea to set high standards. But in the form of goals.

Say you wish to reach the top 10 of your class, be the best or even consistently score 100% throughout your academic year. The first thing I’d have you do is get a piece of paper or open a word doc and write it down. There are studies that show that those who write down their goals somewhere (and review them consistently) are more likely to achieve them compared to the ones that don’t. Then write down the steps needed to reach said goal.

Having a goal without a system doesn’t get you very far. It’s the same idea of trying to find a certain restaurant within a city you have never visited (goal) without a map or mode of transport (system).

Without systems, we tend to shoot blindly into our goals with maximum effort. Over time, we reach a region where the same effort doesn’t grant us the same results. Then eventually, due to the lack of results, we stop trying as hard and eventually give up.

Systems not only help us overcome this by showing us our work through feedback, but also make it easier to keep going by giving us a sense of direction in terms of what to change to improve.

When it comes to studying and improving my grades, I like to use the google sheets application in a variety of ways. One way is writing down all my syllabus topics for a particular subject on one sheet and then writing down the date whenever I study that topic next to it. I also colour code that date block. The colour indicates how well I did during my revision of said subject. I try to reach as clean a sheet as possible (a clean sheet is one where the colour representing 90%-100% is supremely dominant).

An example from @AliAbdaal.

Doing this lets me see which topics I haven’t studied in a while, whilst also showing me how well I know them. This way, I work towards a perfectionist goal, whilst seeing the constant improvements I make along the way — effectively neutralising my want for perfection (is doubles as an excellent spaced reputation and active recall tool — bonus!)

This is an example of a system directed towards a goal.

2. Wabi — Sabi, 侘寂

In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi is a world view centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature.

In my mind, I understood this teaching as, “it’s okay to be imperfect for now” and “enjoy the climb”.

These are the same words I’d give to myself two years ago — a younger version of me who was suffering from perfectionism, and often saw himself as flawed, not worthy and often times not deserving of what he had.

I’ve said this before — perfection is an ideal, henceforth, can never truly be achieved. However, as long as it does not turn toxic, the pursuit of perfection, not just in studying, can be a very fulfilling and rewarding journey.

When sought after correctly, perfectionism can only make one better at what they study, provided they do indeed accept they are not perfect and need to put in the work to get themselves closer to perfection.

It’s a journey of constant learning, breaking down the character to create a stronger one, learning, breaking down the character to create an even stronger one, and so on and so forth. The only bi-product to healthy perfectionism is becoming a better person in whatever field you desire to be perfect at — not just studying.

3. Failure is not actually failing.

Another thing I’d tell my younger self is that failure is a normal part of life. It’s natural. And it’s not going anywhere. If you take a look at all the human marvels that have come to pass (mobile phones, space rockets, Harry Potter), and actually read up on their history, you’ll notice that each one of these failed massively at some point. And I mean massively.

However, the creators of these soon-to-be-marvels did not actually view these setbacks as failures. From them, they gathered data. Data that was used to constantly improve their work and get it to the near perfect state they needed to be in order to actually succeed.

You see, in the mind of the healthy perfectionist, every failure is actually a building block towards perfection. This is why some of them (even those students you think are crazy for this) are grateful for failure.

Failure shows what needs to be corrected, what needs to be studied, what needs to be changed. What is needed to sculpt that image of perfection we all crave to display.

“Failure” is just the call for improvement.

4. Step out of your comfort zone

In the context of school, it would help the student quite a lot if he/she was to step out of their comfort zone and actually ask for criticism from others, feedback from teachers, ask for help whenever needed with a certain topic, and actually raise a hand whenever the teacher asks if there is anyone who doesn’t understand what’s going on.

This one may be tough & maybe a bit embarrassing in the beginning — as doing all things outside your comfort zone are — but the more you do it, the easier it gets, the better grades you get, and the better student you become.

The key with this one is to realise that no one actually cares about if you step outside your comfort zone or not. No one actually thinks it’s embarrassing to raise your hand in class. No one thinkings embarrassing to ask for help. And your teacher definitely doesn’t think it’s embarrassing for you to be asking for feedback.

In fact, you may be helping a lot of your students by doing so, seeing as it gives them the chance to improve, too, by going through the course work with you.

Do you see what you are doing here? By implementing these techniques consistently, you inch ever closer to perfection as an academic student. Throughout the year, you may see your grades improve, your attitude towards perfection change, and your relationships with your fellow students and teachers blossom.

Simply because you chose to accept that perfection is an ideal.

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📗 You may also want to have a look at:

The SIMPLEST Way to Stay Productive as a Student: Lessons I learned + Tools.

How to Become Better than 99% of Students in 6 Months: Atomic Habits + Project 50

Class, Exams, Paralysis and Wrong Answers: My Thoughts

Learning with Purpose: Discovering Your Path

The 10X Rule: Summary + Personal Thoughts