Perfectionism

Perfectionism - The striving for flawlessness that leads to overly critical self evaluation that breeds feelings of inadequacy. Can it be a good thing? Can it be overcome? What do you do when it becomes a roadblock?

I'm a machinist perfection is my job, cutting a piece of steel to +/-.0005 inches is not uncommon. Working for weeks on a single piece of material, hitting every dimension brings me satisfactions. The patients and the detail,  the compensation and calculation to account for variations in each setup. One piece of dust or invisible speck could ruin everything.  Running an dial indicator along a the edge of a freshly ground surface and watching the needle bounce knowing it's measuring nearly 1/40th of a human hair is so captivating I cant take my eyes off of it.

But what happens when I don't meet the expectations I have for myself? Its not a good thing, I think that it leads to me having no pride in my work. The healthy kind of pride that a person should have when the complete something or make something. Others may think my work is just fine, its acceptable, its better than what they expected. When someone else's opinion of my work doesn't align with mine I actually judge them I think that they don't have enough wherewithal to wither tell the truth or not enough knowledge of the subject to have a valuable opinion. 

How do you overcome perfectionism? I can't say I have the answer. work harder? do better? or maybe you just need to embrace the fact that its not perfect and roll with it? like this blog post, I think its awful but I'm gonna post it anyways. Which is hard for me to do. but if i don't just post it, it will become a roadblock.