Tired of Giving it Your Best? Avoiding Burnout By Challenging Perfection

Too often people think they have to give their “Best Effort” every day to be productive, worthy, or even lovable. Unfortunately, this mindset is a quick road to burnout and backsliding. Learn how to be Good Enough to reach your goals in a sustainable, healthy way.

Levels of Effort

The following is a personal understanding of how people could view the amount of effort put into something for the level of reward you get back. I’m not fully satisfied with my labels yet and I think my theory will probably evolve over time. Feel free to give each level a name that makes more sense to you.

By sharing this theory I’m hoping more people will be able to find a healthier path for reaching their goals. 

1 ) The lowest level of effort is Vegetate. One definition of vegetate is to live in an unchallenging way. It is an idle way to spend your time and your life and is often accompanied by feelings of apathy. This level of effort can keep you in the same place or lead to sliding backward into a worse situation.

2) The Bare Minimum effort is a level of effort that focuses on maintaining the status quo. You’re doing enough to not get fired by your boss or broken up with by your partner. This level of effort could potentially go on indefinitely. You may not starve or be lonely, but you may also not feel satisfied. It may feel neutral without high highs or low lows. 

3) Good Enough effort is the kind of effort that gets you where you want to go at a pace that feels sustainable. Good Enough effort can make you feel productive without feeling as if you are sacrificing your own well being. You may feel satisfied, interested in growing more, and able to enter flow states while working on projects.

4) Your Personal Best Effort can quickly become a trap that leads you to give too much of yourself too often. Your “best” effort is a rare thing that cannot be replicated every day. If you try to give your Personal Best to everything you do then you will likely find yourself feeling jittery, overwhelmed, and spread thin. It isn’t sustainable to try to achieve perfection everywhere. You are more likely to notice spikes and dips in productivity. Spikes in productivity due to excessive effort trigger a sense of accomplishment while the dips may trigger a sense of failure and worthlessness. Trying to be too perfect too often will lead to the next stage. 

5) Burnout Effort looks like a human attempting to act as if they are a machine. They overextend themselves past all healthy boundaries to give themselves over to their task. They often become numb and may stop taking care of themselves. Basic human needs are often ignored in the name of productivity. They may become irritable toward others and their relationships are often the first things sacrificed. Many individuals who reach this stage then cycle backward into a Vegetative level of effort once their human self runs completely out of batteries.

Bell Curve of Productivity

Too much or too little effort gets inconsistent results and often leads to a whole host of unhealthy outcomes. Learning how to put in Good Enough Effort will lead you to be more productive more consistently in a healthy way.

There is value in consistent results. I'd rather go to a restaurant that makes food that is consistently good instead of one that sometimes serves perfection and other times serves slop.

Suggesting that you only need to put in Good Enough Effort is easy to say, but hard to do in practice. It's a skill to find your balance. Learning how to create and maintain healthy boundaries is not easy. It can be hard to overcome some of the things you have probably been taught about who you are and what you are worth. You don't need to be perfect. You can learn how to be healthy and Good Enough.