Finding Work-Life Balance
I’m used to living with impossibly high standards. Now I’m trying to ease my perfectionism and improve work life balance.
When I was in middle school, I saw this picture in a magazine and decided to clip it and save it. I didn’t know it back then, but I think the picture spoke to me about how I felt at that time: like everything was an impossible upward struggle. I was going through difficult times living with my parents, I was emotionally lonely, my classmates were coupling up and I felt like that would never happen for me. My parents were critical of me every day and I developed a perfectionistic approach to my work and life. I was stuck in that state of mind for so long that I think it became a habit. I just assumed that life was like this, always an upward struggle to meet impossibly high standards. I operated under this assumption for many years.
In one of my first work experiences, I had a particularly bad day and drove home from work crying. I was feeling lost, insecure, and underpaid at that company. I was asked to write a report one day. I read all the material and approached it as an assignment where I could summarize the topic and add the company’s perspective on it. My boss reviewed it and sat down with me at the end of the day to tell me that it needed to be re-done because it wasn’t factual enough. My coworkers were there and heard everything. I felt really embarrassed and like a disappointment. Not sure what to do and feeling frustrated, I just copied what was in the reports I read. I gave my report back to my boss. He said that was great and to just keep doing that.
Instead of making me feel better, his directions made me feel even worse. It hit me all at once that I was making my job way harder for myself than it had to be. I could have gotten away with synthesizing several reports and simply copying (and paraphrasing) what they said. I was doing more work than was needed by trying to make it more creative. Yet, I liked creative writing and that was why I was doing it in the first place. The job just didn’t need that and I was a bit disappointed I wouldn’t be able to use that skill there. I also was worried about the impression my boss had of me after that incident and still feeling stressed that my job wasn’t paying as much as I would have liked.
All the pressure and judgement I put on myself was extremely frustrating. I felt alone, hopeless, and like a fool, as I drove home that day. It was a lot. I didn’t have much emotional support. Having moved back home after college, it was much more difficult to see my friends who lived in a different area. I couldn’t talk to my parents about these kinds of things. Tears were streaming down my face as I made the long commute home in rush hour traffic.
Looking back at it, I was putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself which made things harder than they needed to be. The job was a lot of copying and synthesizing. I wasn’t being asked to come up with original content. I just needed to learn what was relevant in the material I read and put it together in a coherent way. My boss probably wasn’t judging me as much as I thought since he knew that I was still new in my position. It was difficult but I didn’t need to be so concerned with what my parents thought. I could have benefitted from having more self-compassion and patience with myself. Finally, I should have shared more of what I was going through with my friends to get support.
The thing was, I was used to life being like climbing a vertical ice mountain. I was used to things being that difficult — nearly impossible — in my life and assumed that work would be the same. I assumed I had to come up with original content without much background knowledge when that was not the case at all. My bosses knew my experience. They were giving me assignments that were manageable for me. I was making it harder by assuming I needed to work at a higher level than I was expected to. Somewhere deep down, I knew that I could do the job I was being asked to do. The fact that I wasn’t delivering as I could have killed me. I felt like a pretzel twisted around by all the conflicting emotions inside me. That’s what caused the tears.
It would be many years later until I learned the lesson that professional work does not and should not feel like climbing a vertical mountain every day. It should not be so difficult that I lie awake in bed at night, stressed and fearful that I might not be able to do my job. Work that matches my level of experience and skillset can be easy. I could take on assignments feeling relatively confident I can deliver. I could take a couple of stretch assignments that are just beyond my capability, and in those instances, my manager (if they are a good one) will be there to support me through it and give direction if I needed help. I started getting used to doing things that are manageable, more like walking up a hill with a slight incline than having to ice pick my way up the side of a mountain.
More importantly, I realized this is what normal and healthy people do. They do not try to do impossible things. They take pride in a job well done, big or small. They are fine with being average. They do not need to have done something extraordinary in order to feel like they accomplished something of value. Smaller accomplishments are also worthy of praise and are valuable. If this was the healthy way to do things, I wanted to follow that model. I developed more self-compassion.
The bad habit of putting too much pressure on myself picked up again when I started a new job recently. Within a few weeks of working, I was trying to learn the ropes as quickly as possible and feeling disappointed when I didn’t understand things instantly. My manager and teammates commented, “Wow, you picked up the process really quickly!” When I ran my first meeting, my manager was blown away and said, “Great job! You conducted it really well!” I have to admit I did enjoy the compliments and recognition. However, I was laser-focused every day, wasn’t taking many breaks, and prioritized work above other commitments. I knew it wasn’t sustainable nor was it how I wanted to work. I was expecting too much from myself again.
After a few months of working intensely and letting my perfectionism run my work life, I had to remind myself, “This is not a race.” I did not need to learn things impossibly fast or take on an inordinate amount of work to prove myself. If I did, I’d risk burn out only a few months into my new job. I didn’t want to put myself on that path. I started looking for ways to dial back a notch to a sustainable pace where I had more breathing room. I wanted to spend energy developing the other areas of my life outside of work. It’s easier to pull myself out of work when I have some commitments outside of work that are engaging and will pull me out of the work mindset. Exercise is a great activity to have planned after the workday to get my body moving to shake off the stress of the day.
I faced a conflict when I started pulling back at work though. I realized that I would be receiving fewer “well done!” compliments when I took on fewer assignments. That was something I will need to get used to. I needed to be able to feel fine even when I don’t receive an abundance of praise for everything I did. I was worried I might fall behind. Even more difficult, I had some coworkers on my team who were in the mindset of running as fast and hard as they could. They were younger, hungry to prove themselves, and happy to put in a bunch of overtime. This was in direct conflict with what I was aiming for. What’s more, I had to constantly partner with some of these coworkers.
This led to an internal dilemma. I had to consciously tell myself to not compete with my overachieving coworkers or compare my work with theirs (even though I definitely did). I tried to actively lower the number of assignments I took on, even as they signed themselves up to do everything. Sometimes, it meant letting them take the lead on important assignments I would have liked. I had to let them take the lead because I was exhausted from another assignment I had just wrapped up and I prefer to take a break instead of jumping directly into another sprint. Logically, I knew there would always be important assignments coming up and I could not handle all of them. I needed to occasionally take the backseat for longevity at my job.
The last time I decided to take a backseat on an assignment to give myself a break, I wondered if I was making a mistake. I had doubts in my head, “What if I’m giving up a great opportunity? I can keep going if I really need to. What if I fall behind because of this?” While I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than a break, I went back and forth in my head about whether I should still take the assignment. Even after discussing with my colleague that they should lead instead of me, I had a moment of panic where I wondered if I was making the right decision. Yet I knew that I would hate the project and become resentful if I didn’t rest when my body was screaming at me to slow down. In the end, I stuck to my decision.
In the context of American hustle culture, I am choosing to redefine success for myself. I feel I am successful when I enjoy my life, including my work and relationships. I don’t want or need to be a superstar or the #1 employee; I just want to do a good enough job and work at a pace that is sustainable for the long term. If I find myself wondering, “Why am I doing this? This is a waste of time” then I don’t think that’s a successful workday. I will measure my success based on whether the choices I make every day match the values I defined. Success is when I have a high quality of life and give myself permission to relax. It is when I have the right work-life balance to be able to manage my career and still have room for my significant other, pets, family, and friends.
My manager will notice that some of my coworkers are putting in more hours than me, and that is fair because some of them actually are working more hours than me. I cannot control what my coworkers do or what my manager thinks. All I can do is do a good job in my own right. I choose to work smart, take on what I think is a manageable amount of work for me while consciously picking some choice important and challenging assignments, and take my vacation and sick days when I need them to maintain my work-life balance. I don’t know what will come from walking this path, but I can be happy with the choices I made at the end of each day. If I follow this path consistently, I think I’ll end up happy with the outcome whatever it is.