“If you get a C or lower, I’ll buy you a present”
Part of the problem is our culture lauds perfectionism as a case of someone caring too much or being too ambitious. That's not what it is.Perfectionism is a failure to optimize across a complex goal space, settling, instead, on ignoring the difficult (and beautifully complex) prioritisation problem in favour of over-optimizing a limited set of easily-defined goals ("getting an A") over longer-run priorities ("being a fulfilled and productive citizen").