While digital content creators focus on the “bones” and “meat” of their assets, worrying about the info comprehensiveness and other factors critical for visibility and higher rankings in search engines, they often forget about its “skin.”

Yes, content is king in digital marketing, but it’s the retinue that makes the king. Speaking of digital content, this retinue or “skin” is web typography.

How much attention do you pay to content formatting? Do you go beyond headings, short paragraphs, and visuals throughout the text? Did you know that math proportions in a web page influence usability and can hold visitors off when imbalanced?

Below are tiny yet critical mistakes in text formatting that can ruin a positive impression of your content, no matter how deep and helpful its subject may be. Let’s learn some math that improves the reading experience and helps your website visitors better perceive your content, even if it’s AI-written.

7 Killers of Digital Content Usability

1. Wrong align
2. Wrong spacing
3. Hard-to-see headings
4. Poor color-contrast ratio
5. Wrong font size
6. Complex text structure
7. Large text fields

1 — Wrong Align

It’s crazy how many websites don’t care about aligning or continue aligning their text content center. Some try to align words by hand, while others apply a full justification. None of these methods works for stellar formatting:

Words are of different lengths, and even if you adjust the text to your device — it will fail at other screen resolutions. As for the justification, it leads to unlikely word spacing. As a result, your content looks amateurish and hard to read: Users “stumble” over that random spaces, the text flow suffers, and it brings nothing but frustration.

The best option is to align your digital content left.

First, it’s natural for most users to read texts left to right. Second, it fits the F-shaped pattern online users consider when scanning your page and deciding whether they want to read it.

Frayed right-hand margins serve better usability than the random spacing between words. The latter doesn’t allow readers visually perceive the information you share in the content.

2 — Wrong Spacing

This blunder is about spacing before and after subheadings in your digital content. While it seems insignificant, and most web admins don’t pay attention to this detail when choosing a website theme, here’s the rule:

Spacing before a subheading should be wider than spacing after it.

Such formatting helps users understand what paragraph the subheading represents. Plus, it makes the whole content asset visually clear.

3 — Hard-to-See Headings

Digital writers know their content is useless without good headlines. Not only do they help with SEO writing and serve better visibility in search engines, but they also assist users in scanning your content to understand its context.

Back to the F-shaped pattern here:

Users need 10 seconds to check through the content and see what it is about, and subheadings serve this purpose best. They won’t encourage web page visitors to keep reading if they are poorly composed and hard to scan. For better usability, design your subheads as follows:

• Use a different font size or color.
• Make them bold.
• Write informative subheadings for readers to understand the outline of your content.
• Make them concise and clear.
• And yet, do your best to craft subheadings that will be intriguing enough to motivate visitors to keep reading.

4 — Complex Text Structure

Let’s face it, it’s super challenging to create original content today: Competition is crazy, and everyone tries hard to craft comprehensive assets that meet E-A-T (Google’s factor of expertness, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) and user search intent and serve as ultimate guides to answer all questions.

But there’s a catch:

Chasing high-quality 10x content, creators craft long-form assets with complex structures. These structures include many subhead levels, hurting usability and making it challenging for readers to perceive all the information. Instead, they’ll get lost in your content.

Today, the attention span is shorter than ever, and online users won’t spend hours investigating your text blocks. The more steps they have to take, the bigger are chances they’ll leave your web page fast, therefore hurting its dwell time, bounce rate, and overall behavioral factors.

Let’s compare:

1. Title – H2 – H2 – H2
2. Title – H2 – H3 – H3 – H3 – H2
3. Title – H2 – H3 – H4 – H4 – H3 – H2 – H2

The first text structure is concise and clear, so it works best. The second one is also fine: Readers understand the flow and each text block’s belonging. The last one is harder to grasp, requiring readers to concentrate and remember what and where they’re reading each moment.

For digital content usability, follow the rule, “the simpler, the better.”

5 — Poor Color-Contrast Ratio

It stands to reason you won’t place yellow or red text on green or blue backgrounds. However: The color-contrast ratio is critical in web page design as it improves readability, helping users perceive information.

Too little contrast and wrong color combinations exhaust readers, frustrate them, and make them leave your website, no matter how informative and persuasive content you have for them. How to prevent that:

• Regardless of your brand colors or those you consider for your website based on color psychology, choose a light, calming color for the pages’ background. It will make it comfortable for users to read your digital content.
• Use instruments like GitHub to adjust the correct color-contrast ratio to your web pages. Make it no less than 5:1. Why do you think black texts on white backgrounds look best? There’s the greatest color-contrast ratio between black and white.

6 — Wrong Font Size

Users won’t read your digital content if they have to take pains for that. Too small fonts on your website — 12px or less — is a surefire way to demonstrate disrespect to visitors.

General rules to follow here:

• Use 14px font size (minimum). Some experts insist that 16px to 18px (editors dotcom) is the best for the web, but the content readability doesn’t depend on the size itself: The balance of font, line height, and light width matter (more on that — in the #7 blunder description).
• Avoid placing more than three font sizes on one web page.
• Consider fonts that reflect your brand’s personality: According to typography psychology (nickkolenda dotcom), different fonts evoke particular associations and emotions from readers, so it’s your chance to influence their perception.

7 — Large Text Fields

And last but not least detail many web admins ignore when formatting pages:

The line height and length for text blocks.

It’s a web typography rule based on the golden ratio: All three dimensions (font size, line width, and line height) should relate and look pleasing to the human eye. It improves usability and reading experience by far!

The golden ratio is 1.618, but you can calculate the perfect one for your website based on the font size you use. Consider GRT calculators for that: The bigger size, the wider and higher lines you need to use. Another formula comes from Robert Bringhurst, the author of The Elements of Typographic Style:

Your font size (x) 30 = a golden ratio for your web page.

The optimal line length for a text column is 50–75 characters. A longer one makes it hard to focus on the content and gauge where it starts and ends, and a shorter one makes the eye travel back too often, hurting the reader’s rhythm.

Another problem with too long lines is they look like there is more work to do, thus scaring readers. Too short lines may also stress visitors: They begin on the following line before finishing the current one, thus skipping essential information you wanted to share.

Those who learn to blog also use a line width trick by Derek Halpern from Social Triggers:

If you can’t make the full text’s line short enough, you can still hook readers in the text’s introduction. Half-width images below headlines can help here, like this:

Large text fields can also be a result of writing too long paragraphs. Web writers know that it is among the key indicators of readability for users: Visitors scan a text and consider it unstructured and challenging to perceive if they see too massive text blocks.

Most websites struggle with this problem by keeping paragraphs no longer than 3-4 sentences or even 1-2 sentences. It’s a nice rule to follow if you don’t have the resources to calculate the above-mentioned golden ratio for your web pages. (the above dimensions: font size, line width, and line spacing).

But the optimal number of sentences in your paragraphs depends on your page’s font size, line width, and line spacing.

Takeaways

Digital content subject and quality matter for users, but webmasters and designers shouldn’t also underestimate the role of its usability. No matter how expert and comprehensive your texts are, no one will read them if they are visually displeasing and challenging to perceive.

Content moderation is a must. And a little math behind web text design is worth considering for better content usability and conversion. For that:

• Align your texts left.
• Pay attention to spacing before and after subheadings.
• Avoid complex text structure.
• Make all the subheads visible.
• Ensure that the color-contrast ratio of your text and web page’s background is no less than 5:1.
• Use a minimum 14px font size for text content.
• Calculate the golden ratio for your web page based on three dimensions: font size, line height, and line width.

Yes, we all know that everything of genius is simple. But only those who make fewer mistakes win.

Featured Image Credit: Provided by the Author; Pexels; Thank you!

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In today’s digital world, where all spheres of life happen online and are in open view, perfectionism breaks new ground:

While encouraging authenticity and diversity, some individuals still experience a terrifying fear of imperfection. Known as atelophobia, it paralyzes them from actions, kills digital productivity, or (what’s even worse) makes them talk a good game about their skills, income, and credentials.

In other words, such people sugar up reality online. And it’s not because they want to cheat subscribers, business partners, or potential future employers. (Although such cases take place quite often for sure.) Instead, it can happen because of their irrational fear (phobia) of looking imperfect in the eyes of others.

The flip side of the coin is that atelophobia makes people avoid social and professional activity in the digital world, thus preventing growth and success. They are afraid of looking bad, making or saying something wrong, so they choose to keep silent and do nothing rather than fail. It causes tons of emotional distress and anxiety.

So, it appears that not only can atelophobia diminish our life and well-being, but it can also weaken our health, influencing both physical and mental conditions. These are some of its causes and symptoms, as well as tips on overcoming them in the digital world when it’s close to impossible to live a productive life with no online presence.

What Is Atelophobia?

In plain English, atelophobia is a fear of imperfection in oneself. Some may refer to it as perfectionism, but psychologists and psychoanalysts specify it’s an irrational fear of looking imperfect or making a mistake. Atelophobia makes us feel that everything we do is wrong, “encouraging” us to give up tasks, avoid conversations and challenges, and choose a low-stimulus environment over the risk of failure.

Atelophobia doesn’t go hand in hand with mental conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder, or others. Also, it has nothing to do with character traits like introversion or shyness, for example.  

Unlike other phobias, where external objects or situations trigger, atelophobia’s stimulus comes from within. For example, let’s say I’m afraid of spiders, so I know that everything I can do to avoid this phobia is to go away from them. But if I fear my possible flaws, I take this fear everywhere with me and can’t prevent an anxiety response anyway.

The point I’m trying to drive home:

Atelophobia is quite challenging to diagnose, and some may consider its symptoms nothing but another personality trait. That’s not so. We need to be mindful of this disorder and treat it if necessary to prevent its damaging health effects.

Three Symptoms You May Be an Atelophobe

Atelophobia has both physical and psychological symptoms. The former include:

• headache
• muscle tension
• sweating
• dry mouth
• stomach pain
• shaking
• hyperventilation
• nausea

As for the latter, psychological ones, the symptoms are as follows:

• lack of focus
• procrastination
• feelings of powerlessness
• avoidance
• extreme anxiety and dread
• reassurance seeking
• excessive checking of your work for mistakes
• indecisiveness
• fear of losing control

Sure enough, you can’t stick the “I’m atelophobe” label on yourself every time you feel stressed and physically weak. Just be mindful of your behavior and try to use your emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and self-reflection components in particular. Doing so, you may notice the following three symptoms:

1. Your Impossible Standards

Is your motto anything like, “I’d rather do nothing than do it wrong?” Have you mastered all the creative ways to avoid tasks and situations that scare you? Do you often procrastinate at work, waiting for a better moment to complete the job so that it would meet your quality standards? Are you looking for mistakes all the time?

Enormous self-imposed demands may be a symptom of atelophobia. Though self-criticism is OK to practice from time to time, applying your impossible standards to all kinds of situations and putting them off can cause work and personal life problems.

2. Your Terrible Fear of Flaws

Many people are afraid of making mistakes, but there’s a big difference between getting nervous but still doing and skipping a situation entirely in panic. If the latter is your case, you have a problem.

Try to understand how strong your response to the thought of imperfection is. Are you capable of facing and dealing with it when necessary? Sure thing, you may dislike public speaking and get nervous before it; but it’s not your nature but atelophobia that makes you give it up and run in panic and fear you might fail.

3. Your Escape From Everyday Tasks

It may be challenging for some people to make a phone call or talk to others because they are shy. But it’s not shyness that prevents them from writing an email to teachers, a business message to a colleague, or publishing a book: The drafts will never look good enough for them, and they may spend days or months thinking of how they could write it better.

Another example:

You avoid cleaning your room because you know it won’t be clean enough anyway. You escape from meeting a university friend because you judge yourself for not becoming good enough after graduation.

Causes of Atelophobia and Health Problems It Brings

This disorder can be biological, meaning that it’s your genetic propensity to be so sensitive and perfectionistic. But more often than not, it’s a result of some traumatic experiences from childhood or adolescence.

Say my parents were too demanding and requiring perfection from me, encouraging the highest grades only. Or, I faced harsh criticism from teachers and negative comments from peers at school. Any of those situations could become a trigger. After all, no one taught me to tolerate and accept imperfection.

People who compare themselves with others all the time are prone to atelophobia too. It’s especially true in the digital world where we see “successfully successful” people everywhere on social media, applying their success to ourselves. Sure, it’s OK to have a mentor or a role model to inspire you and encourage your self-growth; but moderation is everything here. The constant desire to compare ourselves to others is discouraging. After all, there will always be someone better than us.

Atelophobia brings numerous health problems, leading to headaches, heart attacks, breathing problems, weakened immune system, skin problems such as dehydration and eczemas, diminished sex drive, and more.

Seeking extreme perfection in today’s fast-changing digital world can lead to sleep disorders and memory problems. But apart from physical health, this anxiety destroys our productivity, progress, and success: Remaking everything all the time in the hope of getting better results or giving up the work because “it’s not perfect enough,” we are never satisfied and don’t complete anything.

Can We Do Anything With It?

Atelophobia is not that simple to overcome. As well as in the case with other phobias, it needs treatment such as psychotherapy. A specialist helps us relax and let imperfection in our life.

Exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy are two things that can help to deal with this phobia or, at least, reign in its influence. The former helps confront fears and adapt the mind to react less aggressively; the latter modifies our negative thought patterns and behaviors. 

Energy psychology, meditation, and group therapy can help to overcome atelophobia too.

Takeaways

Atelophobia, aka the irrational fear of imperfection in oneself, can harm personal and professional life, physical and mental health, and overall well-being. Its appearance doesn’t depend on a personality type. But for people with particular inherent qualities, it may become a bigger problem as they can write it off for some common character traits and ignore it.

That’s why it’s critical to be mindful of this problem, listen to our inner selves, and don’t hesitate to ask for professional help when needed. Psychotherapy and meditation can help to manage atelophobia well.

Image Credit: digital-world-atelophobia; thank you!

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In today’s rapidly changing world, we are in constant search of instruments and techniques that would make us more productive. We understand: do more, better, and faster if you want to succeed in business and life.

Productivity influences our self-esteem.

We believe: the more productive we are, the more others will respect us and consider us professionals, able to balance work and life and, for all that, stay sane and happy. So we crave for stellar productivity. We want to join those “perfect” people, who’ve conquered the digital business world, mastered the art of time management and discovered the “in perpetuum” of energy in ourselves.

But the devil is in the detail. In chase of superduper productivity for stellar business management, we sometimes miss another attribute that, if left unattended, can nip all endeavors in the bud.

Perfectionism.

When I decided to write this article and thought on its working title, the first coming to my mind was “Why Perfectionism Is a F**king Evil.” Such a connotation occurs due to my negative experience with this personality trait. Now I understand that excessive perfectionism was the reason for giving up my business idea and startup launch: I compared myself to competitors rather than the yesterday me, which made me lose motivation at long last.

Now I’m looking for it again, combining the process with the research of perfectionism and its direct influence on our overall productivity.

What’s Wrong With Perfectionism for Productivity?

I must confess that every time I face a new feature or phenomenon — I go to Wikipedia and read a very first paragraph to understand if I need this new knowledge, actually. And that’s what the encyclopedia said about perfectionism:

“A personality trait characterized by a person’s striving for flawlessness and setting high-performance standards, accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others’ evaluations.”

Such a definition doesn’t explain if perfectionism is good or bad, but we can’t blame Wikipedia here. Psychology itself has no uniform response to this question.

In his book The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson says that DSM provides so washy criteria today that every person can find about ten mental disorders during self-diagnosis. The same story is with perfectionism: one can judge about its harmfulness only by its concentration in a human body and how much it affects that body’s functioning.

In other words, perfectionism can be healthy and unhealthy.

Everything is more or less clear with unhealthy perfectionism: it can either bring you to a mental disorder or is the symptom of that disorder. Or, it can take a more complex form and combine both. Perfectionists are more vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and insomnia.

But we often use perfectionism when describing a hardworking and ambitious person, striving for self-growth and success. Here perfectionism serves as a virtue. “I’m a perfectionist!” we say proudly, forgetting about a hidden feeling of dissatisfaction that follows perfectionists in footsteps. As a result, we grow the habit of looking for gaps in our work because we consider perfectionism a must-have for personal and professional development.

But what we really do is killing our productivity at its very source.

Yes, perfectionism itself can be the effective instrument for digital productivity growth; but its mechanisms are toxic: in plain English, a perfectionist bullies himself and experiences stress. For a person with an unstable psyche, this can lead to disease.

Somatics is here too: there are, as a minimum, 20 ways stress can affect our bodies, including heartburn and high blood pressure. For those with stronger nerves, constant stress doesn’t do any good either: guilt feeling for own imperfection disappoints, makes unhappy, and slows us down.

The problem with perfectionism is that it’s difficult to control. Good things come in small packages, and if you allow perfectionism to get the better of you — you’ll lose a war for success. Your positive self-image is scientifically proven to influence productivity. If you want to live a full, happy life — make sure your perfectionism is healthy.

Nine warning signs that your perfectionism is not healthy.

1. You are Always Unhappy with the Result of Your Work

The difference between a desire to do business well, putting the most efforts to succeed, and perfectionism lies in your striving for the artificial ideal. We all know that it is impossible to reach the ideal (it does not exist), but there’s a world of difference between knowing something and using this knowledge in practice.

Perfectionists often face the situation: no matter how hard they try and no matter how creative they are, they feel they could do it better or faster. Other times, they understand they did everything great but blame themselves anyway: “I had to spend so much to do this!” For perfectionists, “ideal” businessmen are those doing tons of tasks fast and with minimum efforts.

Sounds familiar?

Stop it. Productive doesn’t mean “Jack of all trades.” Don’t devalue your experience and don’t be afraid to admit you’ve done a great job.

2. You Value Others’ Opinion Above Your Own

One way or another, we think about what to do or how to behave if we want to look good in the eyes of competitors. You’ll hardly find a person who would 100% screw a public opinion. But again, there’s a world of difference between thinking of others but yet respect own desires and valuing their opinion above your own.

Is any of these thoughts yours?

• “Okay, I’ll work extra hours tomorrow. Everyone is waiting for me to do this, right?”
• “I need to check this document one more time — funds won’t come to those mistaking.”
• “I need this yet another tech to try: it’ll make me look more active, smart, and up-to-date.”

Thinking like this, you move closer to the moment when you don’t understand which decisions are yours and which are made just because “this is the way the things are done.”

If you see that you sacrifice own comfort and well-being for what other people think about you, it’s time to stop and wonder if your excessive perfectionism is worth it.

3. You are Afraid of Imperfect Results, so You Can’t Start Acting

Some call perfectionism among the top reasons for procrastination: sometimes we fear failure so much that we put off doing work until it is too late. And while some experts disagree with this statement, many of us are familiar with it: the paralyzing feeling that nothing will work and the fear of a big project.

As far as you understand, such a situation is self-defeating:

The longer you postpone, the more you risk to take it at the eleventh hour and sacrifice the quality because of short deadlines. Just remember that doing something “imperfectly” is anyway better than doing nothing at all.

4. You Do Everything Longer than You Could

This feature seems to have nothing to do with perfectionism, but still…

People who are prone to perfectionism often place high demands on themselves and everything they do. And it happens to lead to the opposite results: instead of doing it well, a person re-checks everything over and over again, tries hard to fix every minor bug, and eventually spends longer time on a task.

And what do we have as a result?

Productivity suffers, you are in stress, the impostor syndrome sneaks up on you… It can be difficult to let the situation go. Just try to understand: your departure from perfectionism doesn’t mean you’ll do your job bad. Sometimes it’s enough to do it passable rather than correct it time and again.

5. Every Mistake Seems the End of the World

No matter how hard we try, mistakes are still waiting for us in business, relationships, and other areas of life. Yes, we hardly get pleasure from them, but we know: a valuable experience comes along with failures. The main thing is to understand what went wrong and learn from it.

The problem is that the brain of perfectionists doesn’t think so.

They perceive every little mistake as yet more proof that they are “imperfect.” They may dwell on that mere defeat, think of it over and over again wondering how wrong they were and what they could do to change or save the situation. As far as you understand, such an approach doesn’t lead to digital productivity and stepping stone to success but self-torture and depression.

It’s okay to do a gap analysis for avoiding the same traps in the future, but don’t sacrifice your time for mully-grubbing. You cannot change the past, so why cry over spilled milk?

6. You are Afraid of Discussing Your Failures

Besides the fear of failure and anxiety about what others think of you, perfectionism brings another fear:

You don’t want to tell others about your business problems and worries. And though it may seem insignificant first (“My problems are my problems, why to discuss them with others?”), you risk losing constructive feedback and help we all need from time to time, and especially when going through dark times.

Others can help you test the waters from a different perspective, see the details you would probably miss yourself, take a look at the situation from a different angle, and come up with the best possible solution faster and with least loss.

7. You Expect Others to Be Perfect

Perfectionists are strict with themselves. But they often make the same strict demands to others, as well. As a result, business communication and relations suffer: far from everyone will agree to make peace with restrictions and bounds just to meet the expectations of others.

So, it’s time to think of managing your perfectionism if:

• you consider your business flimsy just because it doesn’t look like an ideal picture in your head;
• you consider surrounding people good, all in all, but you think “they could be better if they did this or that.”

The mere fact a person doesn’t fit into your certain expectations doesn’t make him bad. It makes him real.

8. When Someone Gives Credit to You, You Think They are Wrong

If you disagree with people every time they give you credit, thinking they are wrong and you did nothing special to deserve it, here’s the bad news for you:

Big chances are, you’ve lost yourself in the endless race for being ideal.

When was the last time you rejoice over a sincere compliment from a nice person? Don’t underestimate your work, skills, and goals on the way to success. Don’t compare your achievements with those of neighbors, Facebook friends, or minor competitors. Compare yourself with yesterday you, and work on better, more productive you.

9. You Overextend Yourself

This one is not about perfectionists only. It often happens to most people who can’t organize time: they seek to assign tons of tasks, do more in less time, but then miss deadlines and damn the whole world. However, excessive perfectionism may play a cruel joke here as well:

It happens when you think you can do everything and even more, faster and better, and then find yourself buried under the mountain of unfinished tasks in your midnight office.

There’s nothing wrong with your desire to grow professionally and be more productive, as long as it doesn’t prevent you from the comfort and work-life balance.

“Okay, So What Can I Do?” You Ask

Practice useful criticism and analyze your business results in view of yesterday you rather than delusive ideals. Stay ambitious and work on self-development, but change approach a little.

Let’s take the Jiro Dreams of Sushi documentary by way of example:

An 85-year-old sushi master has been cooking it for his whole life, and it comes as no surprise that his sushi is the best and most delicious in the world. But this fact doesn’t prevent Jiro from self-growth and mastering his skills again and again. Instead of the “it’s never enough” formula, he chooses the “it’s enough for today” approach.

The author of The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown approves it. She investigates vulnerability and explains perfectionism as the unwillingness to accept ourselves for what we are:

“Perfectionism is not about striving for excellence or healthy striving,” she says. “It’s the ultimate fear, a way of thinking and feeling that says this: ‘If I look perfect, do it perfectly, work perfect and live perfect, I can avoid or minimize shame, blame, and judgment.’”

So, stop it.

Besides, the popular 10,000 Hours theory claims that if you don’t lie on a sofa all day long — but, you work — regularly and consistently, with no waiting for inspiration — success will come. You must admit that it is better to learn and grow in an emotionally comfortable environment. And remember:

Tons of tasks don’t determine your value, a missed deadline doesn’t make your friends stop loving you, and “something” is often better than “nothing.”

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