The Hidden Cost of Doing Your Best

We’ve been taught our whole lives to “do our best.”

To make things impressive.

Exceptional.

A-plus worthy.

But what if constantly trying to do your best is actually the thing keeping you stuck?

In this episode, I’m talking about B-minus work, perfectionism, minimum baselines, and why so many brilliant people never begin the things they care about most because they’re afraid to do them imperfectly.

We explore:

- why perfectionism creates procrastination

- the hidden emotional cost of A-plus standards

- why consistency matters more than intensity

- how social media can actually become a practice ground for showing up

- the power of “minimum baselines”

- why tiny repeated actions change identity over time

I also share a story from Atomic Habits by James Clear about a photography professor who discovered that the students focused on quantity—not perfection—ended up producing the best work.

This episode is for the overthinkers, perfectionists, creators, entrepreneurs, and humans waiting to feel ready before they begin.

Maybe your life changes not because you become fearless…

but because you become willing to participate before you feel exceptional.

If you’re interested in working together, you can book a free consult with me here:

www.tamarcoaching.com/consult

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Hey everybody, how you doing over there? Welcome back to the podcast. Hope you're doing good. We're gonna jump in and do some cool conversations today. But before, I just wanted to say, did you guys hear about my very awesome bonus that's happening in the month of June? Which is that anyone who signs on coaching with me will receive a awesome hard copy of this beautiful, I have to say it's really beautiful, beautiful scheduling workbook that I have created that takes you through the steps to create a sustainable and super loving schedule for yourself so that you are making things happen, getting things done in your business, but you're also making things happen and getting things happening in your life. So and you get that as a gift for me and hard copy. I mean, hard copy guys, how many hard copy things do you have in your life anymore? So, anyways, just want to let you know about that. I will put a link in the show notes so you can check that out. And now you have to do is really sign up for a consult, which is free, and see if we are a match and see if I am what you're looking for. And if so, that will be sent to you right directly to your home address. So, anyways, we got some conversation to talk about. Today we're talking about the hidden cost of doing your best. And I'll tell you, I was like sitting in my office and I was like, okay, what should be my next podcast topic? What do people want to know about? What do we want to hear about? And I have these, if you are a client of mine, you know what I'm talking about. I have these really beautiful, what's called soul of your business, kind of like tarot cards. And I use them with my clients and I use them for myself. And so I was asking for a little direction from the soul of my business to help me what the next topic would be. And I chose the card and it said, Your B minus work is the exact medicine someone needs today. And I was like, bam. And first I was like, okay, great, let's just get going. Don't, you know, second guess it, don't like overthink it, all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, wait, well, maybe let's maybe this should be the topic, basically, right? Like your B minus work, this is what kind we're talking about today. So here we are. I'm like, took I took the soul of my business very seriously, and that's what we're talking about today. And, you know, it's really about trying to do your best all the time and how it's actually ruining our lives. I mean, no, that's kind of dramatic, but how when we uh, you know, we get the message all the time, try your best, try your best. And this is a conversation, this is a piece that we spoke about in a few weeks ago's po episode about unlearning different lessons that we learned in school, right? Just do your best, just do your best. And in truth, I do believe that this idea has really kind of messed with us in many different kinds of ways. So that's what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about B minus work, minimum baseline, perfectionism, you know, the hidden cost of always trying to do a plus kind of work. You know, all the goodies, guys, everything that we everything that we are. I know that I'm speaking to my people because I know that you guys are just like me, and all these words are like such a significant part of who you are. So, you know, as we know, right, school teaches us the overvalue achievement, right? That we just should be achieving and doing our best. And everything you were talking about, you know, we spoke about a few weeks ago in the last podcast. And you know, sometimes doing your best is actually not the best strategy, right? Like I I I forgot if I had mentioned this particular example on that on a few weeks ago's podcast, but a great example, if I haven't, just to remind you, is that, you know, I had gone to Australia my junior year abroad. And at NYU, where my university was in New York City, I worked my ass off in the library all the time. I just, you know, I was a really hardworking student, and it was all about the grades and achieving and making it happen, all those kinds of things. But when I got to Australia, I was like, I do not want to overachieve in this part of the way. I want to be in the world. Now that I'm saying this, I'm thinking that I absolutely gave this example. I intentionally was like not optimizing. I was intentionally not overperforming because my goal was different. My goal was being out there in the land with all the people, and that just wasn't my plan, right? So, but today I I want to speak about another aspect of that, which is, you know, the idea that we overdo things that we don't care about, also. We sometimes overdo things that we do care about, and we overdo things that we don't care about because, you know, they we think that everything has to be kind of extraordinary, right? There's this notion of everything being extraordinary, that God forbid that we are not extraordinary and maybe we won't be remembered. And there's a lot of different I won't go down that that rabbit hole, but there's this notion, right? So this idea of like that perfectionism, you know, really can create this paralysis, really stop us in our tracks, right? It what happens is that when we think we have to do our best. That's when we procrastinate and we avoid and we get so fearful of visibility and even success. And, you know, this whole notion of like, what if I can't do it again? There's so many examples of famous writers and famous painters that were like a one, what are they called? A one horse, or what do they call that? A one whatever it is. You know, they're just like really good, and then that's it. You know what I'm talking about, guys, right? You know me. I do not remember those little sayings. It is a thing that me and my dad both have. So a one-shot pony ride or pony winner, I don't know. Anyways, you can write, tell me if you know what I'm talking about. Please tell me. Send me a DM, an Instagram message, whatever it is. But people just will stop. And I had this experience myself actually recently when I was running my national networking dance party event, and it was freaking awesome. Women were obsessed coming up to me and then also messaging me, like, we gotta do this again. This is so amazing. Uh just wow, right? And I was all like, Yeah, you know, first. And then like my entire like nervous system tightened up and was like, wait a second, maybe I can't do this again because if I do this again and it's not good, then like what's gonna happen? And I just like went into this mode of like, I don't know if I can do this again, just like I'm sure every famous author and artist and musician, whoever it is, who did an unbelievable who you know, who was like top, you know, the the top of the top, right? The ones who were like completely became famous because of what they what they do, and then they just like stopped and they just got kind of go into a cave literally, sometimes literally, and don't show their faces again, right? This like horror of like, I what if I can't do my best? What if I can't be extraordinary all over again? So the thing is like once something becomes so precious, right, ourselves, our nervous system becomes so scared to touch it again, because again, what could we what what happens here? But you know, I remember I was reading two days ago, I was rereading, truthfully, because I love this book, Atomic Habits. If you guys haven't read it yet, you should, by James Cleary, an amazing book, amazing author. And he shares this story in the book that I think about all the time, and I was rereading it, so it was like fresh in my memory again. And he taught it's it's a story about a photographer, like a photographer professor at the University of Florida, I think his name was like Jerry something. And on the first day of class, he split his photography students into two groups. One group was going to be graded entirely on quantity. So basically that the more photos they produce, the better their grade. A hundred photos, you know, got an A, 90 photos got a B, and so on. And the second group was going to be graded entirely on quality. They had they only had to produce one photo all semester, but it had to be incredible. It had to be, you guessed it, extraordinary. And what ended up happening was so fascinating. At the end of the semester, the best photo overwhelmingly came from, can you guess, the quantity group. Not because they were more artistic or talented or anything like that, but because they spent the entire semester actually taking photos. They were experimenting, they were messing up, they were trying things, they were probably taking it not too seriously, they were learning, lighting, learning, composition, failing, adjusting, do it again, like super light and ah, whatever it was. And meanwhile, the quality group spent most of the semester thinking about it, like trying to perfect it, planning, imagining, theorizing, all those kinds of things, but they didn't actually practice enough to become great. And I think this is such an important metaphor for life and business and creativity, and honestly, just being a freaking human because so many people are trying to create the perfect something. The perfect podcast, the perfect offer, the perfect Instagram posts, the being the perfect mother, right? All anything what you want to do what you do, just like really, really perfect. And meanwhile, the people actually growing are often just the people willing to make more things, to do it more often, right? If you're dating, if you're wanting to find your person and you're willing to be messy and you're willing to go out on a million different dates, like literally a hundred dates, right? It's gonna be like you're gonna, it's you're gonna have some terrible dates. And you yourself are gonna have a lot of awkward moments and weird things happen and all those kinds of things. But I guarantee you that you're gonna find your person after that because of the amount of opportunities you gave yourself to be messy and quote unquote fail and try all the kinds of things. And I think this is the hidden cost of always trying to do your best, is that when, you know, it it's like you cut you hold yourself back. When every single thing has to be amazing, suddenly every single thing becomes like emotionally, I in the best way I can say it, emotionally dangerous almost. But when you allow yourself to make B minus work, you finally allow yourself to participate in all of it. You know, it's just, it's just it blows my mind every time. And it's something that I have to remind myself as well. But you know, I was I'm I have a new client right now. Love her, love her. And she came to me because for the past literally, I think five years, she's been trying to create a workshop. She's been trying to do a workshop, she's been wanting to create a workshop for her business, and it just hasn't been happening because she's just kind of been holding herself back and she's not sure. And what if it's not what they want? And I'm, you know, like it's been all living in her brain, right? And so when I say trying, by the way, it's not really, it's like we we don't try. It's either like we do it or we don't do it. And in between is like just thinking about it, agonizing over it, all those kinds of things. And that's what she was doing. And because of that, she's come to me a few years after, like, you know, after she once she wanted to create it, to thank God now she's trying to create it. But it took her a very long time. The people who are willing to be messy are often the people actually out there building. They act fast, they act quickly, they take what's going on in their mind and they just put it into action, even if it like doesn't totally make sense, even if they're not totally ready. I think what surprises a lot of people is how often folks, I think entrepreneurs, successful ones, will start marketing a new offer before they even really understand it and get it themselves. They're kind of like figuring it out along the way. I'm not really sure exactly what this is gonna look like, but and I remember the first time I learned that from my own coach, and I was like, you can do that? You can like not really know what you're selling here and like tell people about it and market it, get people in the door, and then meanwhile, you're kind of like, you know, back in your office, like writing out the details of it. She's like, yes. In fact, oftentimes that's the best way because as you're marketing, marketing it and telling people and sharing, it becomes more clear. And I love that. I thought that was so freaking awesome. And you know, I think that social media and showing up in social media can be really the same. It's a real, it is such a beautiful opportunity to practice be my work. Like not doing your best because you have so many opportunities to show up to the to your feed, to the screen, to, you know, you can literally post as many times as you want to every single day. And you can like focus on just like being repetitive, right? And your nervous system exposure and visibility reps, right? And working on your identity and stepping into you as a professional, as an expert in your field. And it's such a great opportunity. Whenever someone kind of put you know, points their nose down to social media, and I get, I get it, right? I definitely get it, but I always point out what a beautiful playground it is. That even if you were to never make one sale on it, what it could do for your identity as a expert, as a con as confidence in what you do, how you share, is like just so tremendous. It's like this thing that's out there. I know myself, I'm in the middle of a 30-day yap challenge, you know, talking videos, and which I have done I've definitely done here and there and all those kinds of things, but not well. And I'm now like in it, and I'm like, there's lots of cringe happening, and I'm like messy, and I'm like just posted something yesterday. I'm like, I can't believe I just posted that, but I had to get it out because it was like every day. And it's been amazing. It's been amazing for me in these ways. So, you know, every imperfect post will teach us like I can survive being seen imperfectly over and over again. Every picture that's not perfect can do the same, right? And rando thought any like awkward reel. I was just thinking about my very first reel, oh Lord. I was like dancing and it wasn't even dancing with the music that I I was dancing to actual real music, and then I put on music and I was not in the same rhythm as that. Oh my god, it was it was it was not good. But guess what? I'm still showing up to the reels because of that. Because I was like, oh, it can be awful and I can st and I'm okay. I've survived. No one, no one came after me for any reason. So yeah, okay, the goal here is becoming someone who just shows up, which is a whole nother kind of identity base. So, you know, one one kind of solution or one tip I want to give to you guys that you can take to kind of start this process, because I know it's kind of easier said than done, especially if you've been living as a perfectionist for your whole life. But there's a practice that I like to do called the minimum baseline tool. Okay. And the idea is that you just are doing smallest, the smallest, smallest, smallest, rapid repeatable commitment possible. You want to make it really small so that you like cannot fail, right? So for example, in your business, maybe it's going to be you decide you really want to have you know visibility, you want to show up, you want to start to show up. And so maybe you're creating three posts a week, or if that's not small for you, then one post a week. But all it is is like all you're committing to is choosing one photo and three words. And you're not even allowed to go past three words, right? And so you kind of give yourself a timeline, okay, for the next week, next two weeks, next month, that's what I'm doing. Or let's say you're wanting to like, you know, create a yoga practice in your life. You're only committing for the week that you wake up and you put on your yoga clothes. You don't even go to yoga, you just put on your yoga clothes. And then maybe the next week is that you wake up, you put on your yoga clothes, and you do yoga for five minutes. That's it. You put timer on. When the five-minute timer goes off, you you stop with the yoga.

unknown 16:21

Right?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

So you kind of, and you can do this with everything. Writing, you can do this, opening up a document, you have five minutes to write, that is it. Same thing with podcasts, and so forth, and you guys get the idea here. But the goal here is not excellence, the goal is the showing up and the showing up, the showing up in all of it, right? Just repeating it because you know, when we repeat things over and over, this is like a tiny repeated proof changes your identity piece. When we keep on showing up to whatever we're doing, then we kinda we start to think of ourselves as these people, like, ooh, every day for a week you were you woke up, put on yoga clothes, and then you next week put on yoga clothes and did yoga for five minutes, and then you kind of, you know, went up, like suddenly you're like a yoga person. You like go then grocery shopping in your yoga clothes because you're a yoga person. And the same thing as a writer or creator. If you're somebody who now is like, you know, coming to the feed to sh to share three posts a week that are still very small, like a one little picture, an imper perfect picture, three words, all of a sudden you're a content creator because you are. You're coming and you're sharing content. Right? Your nervous system trusts consistency more than intensity. Right. One giant burst of motivation does not change your identity. That happens for everybody. Anybody could do that. Anybody could do something through motivation. But tiny repeated proof, it does. It really changes who you believe and think you are, which will be such a big piece of your movement in your business or whatever you're working on in your life or in your business. You know, I think I I think that like half assing is like underrated. People think half assing means like not caring. But sometimes half assing something is the only reason you're able to stay in it long enough to become good at it. Right? Half assed consistency kind of like we were talking about, like half-assed consistency changes people more than perfect inconsistency. Right? The little bit of showing up and showing up and little tiny small steps. Like our brains literally take in like one step at a time. And so if we kind of create that for ourselves and we do it like, you know, for the week or whatever it is, more times than we have, we start to grow this identity because we keep on showing up for it. We keep on showing up for it, we keep on showing up. So maybe your life does not change because you suddenly become fearless and disciplined and extraordinary overnight. Maybe your life changes because you become willing to keep showing up before you feel ready, before you're polished and you're clear and you're confident, and you show yourself that you can do those things, that you can show up and show up and show up and show up, even if you don't have these things. Like how re like how much relief could you feel if if you were like, I don't need to be these things in order to show up. I can just I can show up however exactly however I am. Maybe the people who build beautiful lives and build beautiful businesses are like not the people constantly doing their best. And maybe that they're people willing to participate before they feel ex exceptional, extraordinary, any of those kinds of things. So that's what I want you guys to think about. I want you to think about what would happen if I w just didn't do my best? If I did good enough, if I did B minus work, could my B minus work be the exact medicine that somebody else needs? I promise you the answer there is yes. And so why not give your B minus work instead of withholding your A plus work that will never see the light, will never be able to help other people, and never change your own life. That's what I got for you guys today. I love you so much. Have a beautiful week. I will see you next time.