But in the case of trading, he seemed exceptionally committed to finding something that would meet his standards. He'd abandon a lot of good ideas before testing them, and those he did test, no matter how well they turned out, did not meet his exceedingly high standards. In fact, he had several good systems that he was trying to trade, but he could not get himself to trade a system that wasn't perfect. Eventually, Elmer's wife left him and Elmer found himself broke, without a family or even a trading system that met his standards. Unfortunately, these unreasonably high standards sometimes keep them from ever coming close to achieving them.
Production seems to go down in perfectionists.
Businessmen make less effective decisions, traders make less money, and athletes perform poorly mostly because of the unreasonably high standards they set for themselves. But the perfectionists' problem is not just created by unreasonably high standards. You can have high standards without being a perfectionist. But perfectionism becomes a problem when perfectionism means that those standards are tied into your self-esteem. The perfectionist has trouble tolerating a mistake or a distraction.