LibraryPatternsLet Go of PerfectionismI can close the books in my sleep, and I sit in every…
Problem

I can close the books in my sleep, and I sit in every big decision wondering if I'm shaping the business or just accounting for it.

Part of the pattern: Let Go of Perfectionism
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Related problems
A single typo or tiny error can consume me — I will fixate on it long after it is fixed, certain everyone noticed and judged. Trivial mistakes that others would shrug off feel, to me, like glaring proof of carelessness.Accepting good-enough work from myself or my team feels like a concession — a failure to care enough. The identification of good enough with not caring has made adequate work feel like a moral failure.Every sentence I write is edited before the next one appears. I cannot produce a rough draft because editing is embedded in the first pass. The writing is slow and the output is polished from the start but minimal.Every time I get close to my standard, the standard moves higher, so I never actually arrive. What looked like the goal becomes the new baseline the moment I reach it, and I am running on a track that extends itself with every step.Everything has to pass through me before it goes out. I have become the bottleneck in my own organisation because I cannot trust work I have not personally reviewed.I apply the same exacting standard to a quick internal email as I do to a public report. The standard does not scale with context and I am exhausting myself and my team with inappropriately high bars.

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