Man, July 2021. I remember staring at that calendar, feeling like I was going nowhere. You know how it is. Being a Virgo, you get stuck in the weeds. We are the ultimate employees—we check the details, we flag the typos, we organize the damn shared drive. But we never get ahead. We just clean up the mess for the people who actually get the promotions.
I realized I was in the trap. I was that guy. Always waiting for the perfect moment, the fully vetted plan, the project that I could deliver 100% cleanly. It’s paralyzing. That entire month, I watched three colleagues—all younger, all louder, and frankly, all messier—jump two rungs up the ladder just by showing up and talking big.
The Messy Process: Breaking the Virgo Mold
My usual routine was to draft the perfect email, proofread it five times, read it out loud, and then delete it because it wasn’t perfect. I was tired of it. I had to force myself to change the script. This wasn’t about being a better planner; it was about being a louder doer.
Here’s what I actually did, step by messy step:
- I grabbed the hot potato. There was this ridiculous project, the Legacy System Migration. Everyone in the office avoided it like it had the plague. It was a complete dumpster fire—no documentation, conflicting stakeholder demands, and a deadline that was laughably impossible. My internal Virgo screamed, “No! This will ruin your pristine record!” I walked straight into the VP’s office and volunteered. No plan. Just, “I’ll handle it.” I nearly threw up right there.
- I stopped asking for permission. I identified three major bottlenecks in the migration process. Instead of writing a formal proposal (which would have taken three weeks to get approved), I just called the people who needed to fix it. I didn’t use jargon. I literally said, “This is busted. Fix it now. I don’t care about the budget meeting.” I moved resources. I cancelled pointless status updates. I broke the process.
- I focused on 80% and shipped. This was the hardest part. I told the team, “We are aiming for functional, not flawless. We hit the core target, and we ignore the rest until launch.” I pushed the go-live date forward, not backward. It was buggy. It was rough. But we delivered the core functionality three weeks before the official deadline.
- I took the credit, loudly. When the VP asked how it went, I didn’t say “Well, the team worked hard and we had some challenges, but we got it done.” I said, “I took a disaster and turned it into the only on-time delivery this quarter. Next, I need a bigger team and a seat at the quarterly strategy table.” I stated my demand, I didn’t ask for it.
It was a total mess. The project had rough edges for months. But suddenly, my name was in every meeting. I was the guy who gets things done, not the guy who points out things that are wrong.
The Real Reason I Finally Pulled the Trigger
Now, why the sudden change? Why did a lifelong, meticulous Virgo suddenly decide to act like a reckless idiot in July 2021? You wanna know the real dirt?
It wasn’t some self-help book. It wasn’t an online course telling me to manifest wealth. It was the rent, plain and simple.
A few months prior, I had been planning to leave the corporate grind and start a small consulting gig. I gave my boss a polite, two-month notice. The very next day, a major client of the company pulled their contract, and the company froze all severance payments for anyone resigning. My timing was unbelievably bad. My meticulously saved “safety net” was tied up in a bank account that I couldn’t touch for another six months due to a fixed-term CD I had set up when I was feeling secure.
I found myself suddenly with no income stream, no severance, and watching my lease on my apartment expire. I was scrambling to renew the lease, but without proof of employment or the promised severance, the landlord said no. I literally had to move into my buddy’s cramped spare bedroom for three weeks. Sleeping on an air mattress and listening to him and his wife argue over whose turn it was to walk the dog was my reality.
I called my old boss, begging to come back—even just for contract work. They told me I was “unreliable.” Unreliable! After seven years of 12-hour days and perfect paperwork! That whole ordeal shattered my illusion that hard work and perfection guarantee security. I realized that being perfect was just making me disposable.
So, when I finally landed this new job a month later, I vowed to never let that happen again. I refused to be the silent workhorse. July 2021 was when the fear of being homeless on an air mattress finally overrode the Virgo fear of making a professional mistake. I didn’t care about polish anymore. I just had to win.
That messy project bought me the visibility, and six months later, it netted me the promotion and the raise I had waited seven years for. Sometimes, you don’t get ahead by being better; you get ahead by being louder and willing to break things that everyone else is scared to touch.
