Progress-focused

Human behavior is a puzzle that scientists are trying to understand. A group of researchers, led by Kaitlyn M. Werner of the University of Toronto, recently looked at a peculiar piece of this puzzle: perfectionism. They wondered whether frustration with our basic psychological needs – autonomy, competence and relatedness – influences the degree of perfectionism we display.

In an article in The Washington Post , Tracy Dennis-Tiwary , a professor of psychology and neuroscience argues against perfectionism. A perfectionist herself, she writes, “The standards to which perfectionists hold themselves are unrealistic, overly demanding and often impossible to achieve. And when perfectionists fail to achieve perfection? We beat ourselves up with harsh self-criticism and are less able to bounce back and learn from mistakes. We’re also unlikely to celebrate our achievements or take pride in improving on our personal best. To a perfectionist, it’s all or nothing — you can be a winner or you can be an abject, worthless failure, with nothing in between.” 

New research suggests how people may work in solitude on very ambitious goals and feel good about it.  Some famous artists and scientists from the past must have set extraordinary ambitious goals for themselves and must have worked for extremely long periods of time in solitude on their work and discoveries. For example, it is known that Isaac Newton, generally viewed as one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time, who was highly productive as well, spend many years working in relative solitude. I have sometimes wondered how such people have managed to accomplish such things and to what extent they experienced gratification about their life style. I came across two articles by Thuy-vy Nguyen which give a clue about how some people are able to lead and bear such lives.