A senior executive brought up a coaching topic – ‘I want to improve my health. Then I set a goal to finish a half marathon but not progressing at all”.
I asked him, “Then what happened?’
“I used AI to create an elaborate training plan for 16 weeks. But I keep procrastinating”.
I got curious and asked – “So you have never attempted to train even a single day?”
“Of course I did”, he responded. “I tried it a few times but some or the other work comes and I don’t focus”.
I learnt that whenever a travel or an urgent assignment came up, he dropped the training entirely. He then waited for the right time and restarted the training where he thought he could train consistently without breaks. However something or the other came up every few weeks and he “couldn’t progress”.
My next obvious question was – “You could always restart from the day you stopped. “If you followed the plan for 7 days, took a 3-day break because of work, why can’t you simply continue with Day 8 when you are back?”
He felt uneasy and for the lack of words, he replied “That won’t be cool”.
After digging into what ‘cool’ meant, I learnt that completing the training felt satisfying only if he could do it the way he had planned — consistently, at the standard he had set for himself. Missing a few days made the whole thing feel imperfect. And rather than continue imperfectly, he would rather start again from Day-1 or not do it at all.
The whole thing made sense looking at his career. He had built his reputation around excellence and sets high standards for himself. He doesn’t like doing things half-heartedly.
That mindset has a strange downside.
The same standard that helped him succeed at work was now stopping him from making progress in something as simple as exercise. He was protecting the idea of doing it perfectly at the cost of actually doing it.
And this happens more often – .
1. High performers might find it difficult to learn something completely new
2. Some postpone a family trip because they have not arrived at a “perfect vacation plan”
3. Postponing important career decision to get to the perfect job
4. Parents who always feel guilty about every small parenting mistake they make.
In the executive’s case, we had to first work on his priorities and figure out where the training fitted. Then a reframe of the goal helped. His new goal was – “Keep coming back”.
We don’t always need to lower our standards. But we need to learn where those standards are useful — and where they quietly get in our way and block progress.
Where has a strength that helped you succeed in one part of life started becoming a weakness somewhere else? Please share in the comments.
