Here’s an article that provides some food for thought: Perfectionist professors have lower research productivity.

It reports on research that found perfectionism cuts productivity.

This probably isn’t a surprise to reporters or writers who understand how easy it is to trip over a desire to get the story just right, and end up mired in a temporary writer’s block. Or is that just my own experience speaking?

“So, across several indices of quantity and quality, it looks like perfectionism – in our sample of psychology professors, at least – impedes research productivity,” said Dr. Sherry. He can’t say for certain if the findings can be generalized to other disciplines, but he suspects they could. “Perfectionism is sort of the common cold of academia. Examples abound, both good, bad and otherwise.”

This seems to confirm the common strategy. When having trouble writing, just force yourself to write. It might turn out to be better than you think or, alternatively, a bad version may provide clues to how it really should be written. Just do it.

And now there seems to be some academic verification of the idea that if you wait for it to be perfect, you’ll likely wait a very long time.

Oh, and one more thing, according to the article:

Perfectionist profs have another reason to worry: research has linked perfectionism with depression, suicide and various forms of eating disorders such as bulimia, binge eating and
anorexia.