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Your kid tells you the room is clean. Your intern tells you the project is finished. Your business partner tells you the email is ready to send. And then you look closer and it is very much not done. If you have ever stood over a pile of craft supplies that got shoved into the middle of a bedroom floor and been told, with total sincerity, that this counts as clean, you already know exactly what this episode is about.
This week Sami and Angela get into the messy space between perfectionism and excellence, and why so many of us confuse the two. We talk about what it actually means to set a standard of excellence, why that standard is not the same thing as chasing perfect, and how a seven-year-old’s version of "done" turned into a full parenting standoff over a pile of craft supplies. In this episode, we dig into:
- Permission to have a personal standard without turning it into judgment of everyone else's home
- A simple way to define "done" so people around you actually hit the mark the first time
- Relief for recovering perfectionists who think having any standard at all means the addiction is back
- A gut check for knowing when one more hour of effort is actually worth spending
- Freedom to say no to a volunteer ask without over-explaining yourself
Sami tells the story of her son Henry insisting a three-foot-wide pile of craft supplies in the middle of his bedroom floor was, in fact, clean. Angela admits to a recurring email mistake that has some longtime colleagues questioning her credibility, and talks about the intern who once said, out loud, that a client would have approved work Angela had sent back for a redo. They also get into the cart corral (Sami has feelings), the intern who spent 30 hours on a project budgeted for four, and the volunteer situation where Angela had to get honest about what she actually agreed to do.
By the end of this one you'll have a real answer to the question perfectionism never lets you settle: when is something actually finished. You'll hear why a standard of excellence, not perfectionism, is what lets you sleep at night, delegate without micromanaging, and let a hobby like embroidery just be a hobby. You don't have to be excellent at everything. You get to decide what excellent even means.
Press play on this one before you finish another task wondering if you did enough, or before you hand something off and brace for it to come back wrong. Sami and Angela are in your corner on this one, craft pile and all.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Brené Brown’s "painting done" concept, from her book Dare to Lead
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