Are You OCD?

Think back to a time that you have been frustrated by someone who wanted things done a very specific way. They may have spent 5 times as much effort to get it exactly right as you would have, and still not been completely satisfied with it.

Next, back to a time when you had high expectations for something. It might have been an event you were looking forward to for a long time, or perhaps it centered around an item that held high intrinsic or sentimental value. Chances are, not everyone else cared about it as much as you.

Some people are clinically diagnosed with OCD: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. These people feel the need to have everything clean, neat, and in it's place, as well as doing things with a standard of perfection that is beyond our mortal capability. Even if you are not OCD from a clinical standpoint, chances are that there is at least one area of your life where you want things to be "just right". For me, I love to plan. I plan trips, I plan events, I plan speeches. When I am planning, it seems like my whole world can be consumed with making that trip, event, or speech perfect. I constantly add to or adjust the plan until it's just right, and even then I continue to find ways to improve, especially after the event. If the event is a recurring one, I give careful thought to what went well and what could be improved for next time.

Does anybody else care about all the planning I do? No. Planning is a skill that everyone should have, but they can get along just fine without spending hours and hours on it. They can just make a plan and do it.

So I was trying to think today whether there is any area of life that you can objectively say that everyone should be OCD about. Let me clarify: I wasn't looking for something that everyone already is OCD about; rather something that they should be OCD about. Here's what I came up with:

Many people have strict procedures and policies at their jobs. Although these procedures and policies may not be perfect and could often stand to be updated, I believe that it is important for all employees to comply with them to the best of their ability. For example, a hospital's standards for cleanliness must be a top priority, and a construction company's standards for precision in measurement must be a top priority. However, cleanliness and measurement do not necessarily need to be a top priority in every facet of life. I could not think of anything that everybody should be OCD about, because I think that it depends on where you work, etc.

So what? Why does this matter? Because the next time I care deeply about a particular way of doing things and get frustrated that others do not share the same heartfelt desire to be perfect in this particular area, I need to remember that I shouldn't expect others to be as concerned about it as I am. That doesn't mean that I should stop caring about it, but changing my expectations about what I expect others' priorities to be will probably save me a lot of frustration over time.

On the other side of the coin, the next time that someone is OCD about something that I couldn't care less about, I want to be a little more sympathetic toward them, even if I don't care about the topic, because I know what it's like for one thing to seem really important.