The Day My Own Wiring Blew Up
Man, let me tell you something straight up. I always figured I had this life thing figured out. You know, organized, efficient, planning everything three steps ahead. Everyone called me reliable, maybe a little intense, but reliable. I’ve always prided myself on the detail. If it’s not perfect, why even bother, right? That’s what I lived by. But lately, things have been buckling under that weight.
I hit a wall hard last week. I was supposed to be chilling, finally taking a proper weekend off after pushing a huge project live. Instead of relaxing, I spent four hours trying to optimize the dishwasher stacking routine. Yeah, seriously. Four hours. My partner walked in, saw me rearranging glasses for the third time, and just sighed and walked right back out. It wasn’t the first time my need for absolute order turned a simple task into a total disaster for everyone else involved.
That sigh, that absolute, tired sigh, it just stuck in my head. I started thinking, maybe my “efficiency” wasn’t efficiency at all. Maybe it was just me being a complete pain. I opened my laptop, ready to dive into some complex system logs (my usual comfort zone), but the thought of optimizing one more thing made me feel physically sick. Instead, I just typed something ridiculous into the search bar: “Why do I ruin everything by trying to fix it?”
Stumbling onto the Self-Assessment Trap
I scrolled past the heavy psychological articles and landed on this quick little thing. The title was practically screaming at me: “Do you recognize your own female virgo negative traits and perfectionism? Take this quick 5-minute self-assessment quiz!” I laughed. A five-minute quiz? What BS. But I clicked it anyway. Desperate times, right?
The first few questions were generic, easy stuff. “Do you often find yourself re-doing tasks completed by others?” Hell yes, checked that box instantly. Then they started getting personal, hitting spots I usually buried under layers of productivity apps.
- “When receiving feedback, do you immediately focus on the one criticism rather than the nine compliments?” Ouch. Checked.
- “Do you often delay starting a project until you have the ‘perfect’ setup or knowledge, resulting in missed deadlines?” Double ouch. Checked. I remembered the two-week delay on my last blog redesign because I couldn’t decide on the exact hex code for the footer background.
- “Do you secretly resent people who seem happy without needing a detailed plan for every single day?” Triple ouch. Checked. That’s when I knew this wasn’t just some fluffy online filler.
I blew right through the five-minute mark, spending nearly fifteen minutes agonizing over the nuance of each answer. Typical. Even taking a quick self-assessment became a massive, over-analyzed project.
Processing the Hard Truth and the Score
When I finally hit submit, the screen flashed. The result was laid out clearly. It didn’t mince words. It gave me a score—a surprisingly high one—and then provided a summary of what that score actually meant in terms of daily life. The terms used were things like “Chronic Self-Criticism,” “Micro-management Tendencies,” and the kicker: “The inability to separate self-worth from output quality.”
I sat there staring at the screen. That last point, the inability to separate self-worth from output, hit me hardest. Suddenly, that intense four hours stacking the dishwasher made perfect sense. If the glasses weren’t aligned perfectly, somehow, I was failing. It wasn’t about clean dishes; it was about proving I was worthy of existing through meticulous control.
I grabbed my notebook, the one I usually use for project sprints and quarterly planning. This time, I didn’t write a to-do list. I started writing down moments from the last few months where my pursuit of perfection had actively made things worse instead of better. I wrote down the time I scrapped a perfectly good draft because the tone felt 99% right, instead of 100%. I wrote down the time I refused help on a minor task because no one else could possibly do it “the right way.”
It was a long, ugly list. It showed me I wasn’t efficient; I was just creating artificial friction everywhere I went. I was the bottleneck in my own life.
The Practical Implementation: Loosening the Grip
So what’s the practice record here? It wasn’t a technical fix; it was a mental override. I decided to start small. The assessment suggested practicing “good enough.” I scoffed at first, but decided to give it a shot.
The first task I tested this on was clearing my email inbox. Usually, I categorize, archive, flag, and tag everything into oblivion. This time, I did a big, scary, brutal move: I used the “Select All” button and just archived everything older than 30 days that wasn’t flagged. My stomach churned. It felt like walking past a broken fire alarm without reporting it. But I did it. The inbox count dropped dramatically. Did I miss anything critical? Nope. The sky didn’t fall. The company didn’t burn down.
Next, I tried it with a small coding script I was writing for automating some data export. I forced myself to stop when the code worked, even though I could see five tiny, aesthetic ways to make it “cleaner.” I committed the working version and walked away. It wasn’t perfect, but it ran. And the key thing? I saved myself two hours of meaningless tweaking.
This quick self-assessment, that I initially dismissed as a joke, cracked open the armor I had built up around my negative traits. It showed me my “best qualities” were actually holding me back. I’m still organized, but now, when I feel that familiar, urgent pull to micro-manage or rework something that’s already fine, I stop. I remember that score, that painful realization, and I ask myself the new question: “Is this essential, or is this just me proving my worth again?” Nine times out of ten, it’s the latter. And I put the tool down.
