Stop Trying So Hard

Let’s take a quick inventory of the low-grade anxiety humming in the background of your life. There’s the pressure to not just have a job, but to be crushing it, while also cultivating a thriving side hustle. There’s the pressure to not just feed your kids, but to serve them organic, locally sourced, gluten-free snacks cut into the shape of endangered animals. There’s the pressure to not just exercise, but to optimize your biometrics, close all your fitness rings, and post about it with an inspiring caption.

We are living in the Age of Optimization. We have been sold a beautiful, shimmering, and utterly exhausting lie: that with enough effort, the right tools, and a sufficiently detailed bullet journal, we can achieve a state of perfection. We can become the perfect parent, the perfect employee, the perfect partner, and the perfect, well-hydrated being with perfect gut health.

The only problem is that it’s making us miserable. This endless pursuit of the ideal is a recipe for burnout, a fast track to feeling like a constant, nagging failure.

So, what if we just… stopped?

What if we collectively decided to opt out of the perfectionist Hunger Games? What if we embraced a philosophy that is quieter, kinder, and infinitely more achievable? What if the goal wasn’t to be perfect, but just to be… “good enough”?

This isn’t a call for apathy or a permission slip to let your life fall apart. This is an invitation to join the ‘Good Enough’ Revolution, a radical, deeply philosophical act of self-kindness in a world that is constantly demanding more.

Why a Perfect Parent Is Actually a Terrible Parent

This brilliant, life-altering idea didn’t come from a modern wellness guru or a productivity hacker. It came from a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst named Donald Winnicott, who was studying mothers and babies back in the 1950s.

Winnicott noticed something fascinating. There were some mothers who tried to be “perfect.” They anticipated their baby’s every need, rushing in with milk the second the baby even thought about being hungry, soothing every whimper before it could escalate into a full cry. They created a frictionless, perfectly responsive world for their infant.

And it was a disaster. These babies, whose every need was met instantly, often grew up to be more anxious and less resilient. They never had a chance to learn that they could survive a moment of frustration or that they were a separate person from their all-powerful parent.

Then there was what Winnicott called the “good enough mother.” She was loving, attuned, and responsive. But she wasn’t perfect. Sometimes, she’d be in another room when the baby started crying. It would take her a moment to get there. In that tiny, manageable gap of frustration, the baby learned something profound. It learned that it could feel a need, get a little frustrated, and then trust that the need would eventually be met. It learned that the world wasn't a magical extension of its own desires. This is how resilience, independence, and a basic sense of security are built.

The perfect parent, by trying to eliminate all struggle, accidentally robbed their child of the chance to develop coping skills. The good enough parent, through their loving imperfection, gave their child the gift of reality.

Applying the ‘Good Enough’ Theory to Your Burnt Toast

Our modern culture of optimization is trying to turn us all into the anxious babies of the “perfect” parent. It promises a frictionless, flawless life, and in doing so, it denies us the chance to build resilience against the messy, imperfect, and beautiful reality of being human.

We can apply the “good enough” principle to almost every area of our lives where we feel the pressure to be perfect.

• Your Job: The “perfect employee” narrative tells you to be a productivity machine, to answer emails at 10 PM, to treat your Key Performance Indicators as holy scripture, and to make your job your entire identity. The “good enough employee” is a revolutionary. They do their job well during work hours. They are reliable and competent. They also set boundaries, log off on time, and have hobbies, friends, and a personality that exists entirely outside of their job title. They are good enough, and that is a huge success.

• Your Relationships: The dominant cultural script is the search for a “soulmate,” a perfect partner who will complete you, anticipate your every need, and never have an annoying habit. This is a fantasy that sets us up for failure. The “good enough partner” is not a mythical creature. They are a real, flawed human you love, who has some annoying habits (just like you do), and with whom you can build a real relationship based on repair, forgiveness, and mutual support, not perfection.

• Your Creativity and Hobbies: How many of us have wanted to learn guitar, or paint, or write, but we stop ourselves because we’re afraid we won’t be amazing at it? The pressure to be perfect kills creativity. The “good enough” approach is to give yourself permission to be a beginner, to be awkward, to be bad at something. Write the terrible first draft. Paint the lopsided portrait. Strum the wrong chords on the guitar. The goal is not a masterpiece; the goal is the joy of the process.

This Is Not an Excuse to Never Wash Your Dishes

Now, there’s a crucial distinction to be made here. The “good enough” philosophy is not the same as slacking off, being lazy, or having no standards. That’s the cynical objection from the Church of Optimization.

Slacking off is rooted in apathy and avoidance. It’s saying, “This is too hard, so I’m not even going to try.”

Being “good enough” is rooted in intentionality and wisdom. It’s about discerning what actually needs your A+ effort and what just needs to get done. It’s about strategically allocating your finite energy.

It’s the difference between saying, “I’ll never have a perfect body, so I’ll just eat fast food on the couch forever.” That is slacking. And saying, “I’ll never have a perfect body, but I can probably manage a nice walk three times a week and eat a vegetable occasionally, because that’s good enough for my health and sanity.” That is revolutionary wisdom.

A Practical Guide to Joining the ‘Good Enough’ Revolution

So how do you actually do this? How do you unplug from the perfectionist matrix?

1. Embrace the Power of the B-Minus. Not everything in life requires an A+ effort. In fact, most things don't. Consciously give yourself permission to do a B-minus job on low-stakes tasks. That reply to a work email? A quick, clear B-minus response is infinitely better than an A+ masterpiece you agonize over for an hour. Dinner on a Tuesday night? A B-minus bowl of scrambled eggs is a perfectly nutritious and acceptable meal.

   
   

2. Define Your “Enough” Point. Before you start a task, especially a creative or work-related one, decide what “done” looks like. Perfectionists never feel done; there’s always one more tweak, one more polish. Set a clear, reasonable goal. The objective is not to keep working until it’s flawless. The objective is to get it to the “good enough” point and then, crucially, to stop.

   
   

3. Celebrate Small, Imperfect Victories. Our brains are trained to see the gap between our current state and the perfect ideal. We need to retrain it. Did you get out of bed today? Victory. Did you water one, but not all, of your houseplants? Victory. Did you fold one load of laundry that’s been sitting there for a week? Huge victory. Acknowledge small, completed actions instead of focusing on the mountain of things you haven’t yet perfected.

   
   

4. Radically Lower the Stakes. Most situations in life are not as critical as our anxiety-riddled brains tell us they are. That slightly awkward thing you said in a meeting? I promise you, no one else remembers. The cake you baked that’s a little lopsided? It still tastes like cake. Constantly remind yourself that the stakes are usually incredibly low. This diffuses the pressure to be perfect.

The Joy of Being Perfectly Okay

The pursuit of perfection is a trap. It’s a glittering promise that leads only to a dead end of anxiety and burnout. The “good enough” life is not a sad compromise. It is the destination. It’s the wiser, kinder, more sustainable, and ultimately more joyful way to be a person in this world.

It means trading the exhausting fantasy of a flawless, optimized existence for the real, messy, beautiful, and deeply satisfying reality of being a human who is simply trying their best.

So go ahead. Make the slightly burnt toast. Send the email with the typo in it. Be the good enough friend, the good enough partner, the good enough person. In a world obsessed with being the best, choosing to be good enough is a quiet, powerful act of rebellion. It’s more than enough. It’s everything.