Can I tell you a funny story about the alarm I set for 4 a.m. the other night? I had also set one for 5 a.m., just in case I slept through the 4. But I woke up at 6:30 a.m. in a low-grade panic because I had a speaking engagement in a few hours, and I had not yet finished my remarks.
To be clear: I had a loose outline, my frameworks, my years of expertise, a published book, and a body of work devoted to the very ideas I was being asked to share. What I did not have was the two or three perfectly organized hours I had mentally allocated for the kind of preparation that would have made me feel sufficiently prepared.
Somewhere between the panic of waking up late and firing up my iPad, something shifted. A kind of calm settled in, and I started laughing. I suddenly understood what had really happened: I was being shown I didn't need all that time to prepare.
The Impostor Cycle
Psychologist Pauline Clance studied 150 high-achieving women and found that no amount of accomplishment resolved their self-doubt. A task triggers anxiety, we over-prepare to manage the anxiety, we succeed — and then we credit the preparation rather than our ability. The self-doubt doesn't dissolve after the win. It compounds, and next time we prepare even harder.
High-achieving elder millennials and Gen X women in particular have a very specific relationship with preparation. We build the deck, write the remarks, rewrite them, then lie awake fretting about the Q&A. We treat opportunities to show up in our genius like tests we could still fail if we don't study enough.
A generation marinated in perfectionism
Researchers Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill analyzed data from more than 41,000 people and found that socially prescribed perfectionism — the belief that others demand perfection of you — rose 33% between 1989 and 2016. The people who were teenagers and young adults during that climb are now in their late thirties to mid-fifties.
My generation didn't invent perfectionism, but we were marinated in it during our most formative years. Now we are leading organizations, raising children, and wondering why we can't stop over-preparing for rooms we have already earned the right to be in.
Our perfectionism isn't even working
A 2018 meta-analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology found virtually no relationship between perfectionism and job performance. Perfectionists work harder, stress more, and burn out faster — without better outcomes. What it does move is the burnout needle, in one direction only.
Cognitive scientist Sian Beilock showed that paying too much conscious attention to well-practiced skills degrades performance. The more qualified you are, the more over-preparation costs you.
Deloitte's research on working women adds numbers: among women who regularly work extra hours, only 23% describe their mental health as good, compared with 50% of women who work their contracted hours.
Is that really preparation, then? Or is it a very elaborate form of self-doubt dressed up as diligence?
Trust what's already in you
I did the talk, and it was great — not because I found a last-minute hour to polish my remarks, but because the material is mine, built from real coaching conversations and real women I have sat with while they figured out who they are. I needed to get out of my own way long enough to let it flow.
If you recognize yourself here, you have most likely already done the work. Your years of study, late nights, and proving yourself are your receipts. It is not somewhere in the three hours you think you need to polish the deck. It has always been in you. The work now is to trust that.
Originally published in The Rest Revolution on Substack. Subscribe there for new essays and soundbaths.