What is the impact of perfectionism on time management, and a common mitigation?

• A. It can cause delays; mitigate by embracing good-enough, setting time limits, and using iterative improvement
• B. It increases speed and reduces planning
• C. It has no impact
• D. It guarantees high-quality results without time cost

Answer: (C)

Perfectionism often slows time management because the urge to get everything flawless leads to over-analysis, endless revisions, and hesitation to finalize tasks. This extra scrutiny can eat up time, push deadlines, and make you procrastinate on starting or finishing work because you fear it won’t be perfect.

A practical way to mitigate this is to set a good-enough standard and cap the time you spend on each task. Timeboxing—giving yourself a fixed amount of minutes or hours for a task—forces you to finish rather than chase perfection. After you complete a usable version, you can revisit it later if needed, which is the idea behind iterative improvement. This approach keeps momentum, reduces wasted effort, and helps you allocate time more effectively across tasks.

So, perfectionism tends to delay progress, while embracing a practical standard, binding time limits, and iterative refinements improves time management.