307. The Optimizer: The Fine Print of High Standards

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Marissa: What made Monica Geller, Steve Jobs, and Michelangelo great is the same thing that drove them and everyone around them just a little bit crazy. They were relentless optimizers. If you love your label maker and you always know where you have room to grow, this episode is for you

[00:00:27] Welcome to Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. I’m Marisa Hyatt.

[00:00:32] Joel: And I’m Joel Miller.

[00:00:33] Marissa: This is where we remind you of something you already know. It’s not about getting more things done, it’s about getting the right things done.

[00:00:41] Joel: Both at work and in life. And today we’re talking about the fourth of our five work styles.

[00:00:49] Today is all about the optimizer If you missed, or you’re just coming into this series halfway, but if you missed our introduction, what we’re talking about is the work style assessment. This is our brand-new free assessment, and it basically highlights five different types of work styles. The giver, that’s the one whom everyone depends on.

[00:01:14] The achiever, that’s the one who never stops moving. The juggler, the one who is carrying it all alone. Today, we’re talking about the optimizer. That’s the one who needs it done just right. And then finally, we’re gonna be talking about the improviser next week. That’s the one with, like, you know, 120 tabs open on their browser, give or take.

[00:01:36] All right. So how do you know if you are an optimizer? Well, like all of these different work styles, they manifest in different patterns. They show different patterns, and there are some telltale signs that you may, in fact, be an optimizer. Now, before we get in, we’ve said this in the past, I want to say it again.

[00:01:55] No work style is right or wrong. Everybody just is how they are, and there’s pluses and minuses to those. So anything that we say in these descriptions or as we talk about, there’s, there’s upside and downside, and it’s definitely not any kind of judgment on any particular style. We just are the kind of people that we are, and we get amazing stuff done being the kind of people that we are.

[00:02:19] So if you’re an optimizer, see if some of these things sound true to you.

[00:02:25] Marissa: Yeah. So you probably feel strongly that there is absolutely a right way to do things. You are very familiar with the word should.

[00:02:37] Joel: And its cousin ought.

[00:02:38] Marissa: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, things should be done a certain way, and there’s always a right way that things need to be done.

[00:02:47] So if you feel that or if you see that maybe in your colleagues, they might be an optimizer.

[00:02:52] Joel: That standard of right and wrong, it’s not for performance. Like, it’s not for an audience. This is something you internally know to be true about the work, that you’re less concerned about what other people think.

[00:03:04] The standards are the standards, and you’re judging yourself by those standards objectively.

[00:03:09] Marissa: Yeah, and you probably also see the flaws first.

[00:03:14] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:15] Marissa: Meaning you’re gonna spot them before anybody else, and before you notice anything else, you see what’s the problem, what’s wrong. Right. You know, where the hairline fractures are, all of that.

[00:03:28] Like, you’re looking for those things specifically, and you see really the gap between what is and what could be I have a lot of this in me, I have to say. Yeah. I notice this a lot in myself. So this is not my primary type. We talked about mine last week, but this, I do have a lot of this in me.

[00:03:46] Joel: Well, it’s part of what makes you see things and demand a kind of excellence in things-

[00:03:51] Marissa: Yeah, absolutely

[00:03:52] Joel: that stuff needs. And just as an example of showing how these two styles or how, how multiple styles work together, if you think about an achiever, an achiever is moving, in some cases, too fast to care about standards. They’re moving too fast to care about how things stack up, does it all fit together, and that sort of thing.

[00:04:11] An optimizer is a great pair, in some cases, with an achiever because they care about those things. Yeah. And if those two people can learn to work simultaneously well together, they can not only move quickly, but move excellently, and that is a unique contribution to the world.

[00:04:27] Marissa: It’s interesting, and, and maybe as you guys are starting to kind of listen more to this series and hear more of the different work styles, you’re starting to notice that you probably have more than one.

[00:04:37] We all have a primary work style, but then we have typically a secondary work style that influences a lot of our behavior. And so depending on how you’re wired, this may be your primary or your secondary, and, uh, that will influence how the other style shows up, whatever your primary or, or secondary is, depending on which it is.

[00:04:58] And it’s also interesting to see how you can use this to collaborate with your colleagues or be in a relationship with the people that you care about. So hopefully this is really helpful. Now, one of the other telltale signs of an optimizer is you find it hard to ship good enough work.

[00:05:18] Joel: I have a friend who is a journalist, and if you asked him, like i- in journalism, everything is on a deadline, and it’s like it’s already late the minute you thought of it.

[00:05:27] You know? Yeah. Like, you have to move very quickly. His expression when asked if a piece was good would be, “Well, it has the general quality of doneness.” And that would not work for an optimizer.

[00:05:41] Marissa: No. You know, the thought of doing anything less than your best kind of makes you die a little bit inside. Mm-hmm.

[00:05:48] You know, what’s interesting, I think my mom has a lot of optimizer in, in her. She’s kind of always seeing what needs to be fixed, what could be better, all that kind of stuff, but she gave this phrase, and I think I’ve shared it maybe on the podcast in the past, which is, “Don’t let the best be the enemy of the good.”

[00:06:06] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:07] Marissa: This is probably, like, every optimizer listening to this is, like, cringing at that thought, and it’s probably the thing that if you could adopt that mindset, it would actually help you quite a bit.

[00:06:18] Joel: Another one of these telltale signs is that if you are, in fact, an optimizer, it’s quite possible that you have tried every app and life hack out there because it’s not just about optimizing your work, it’s about optimizing your whole life.

[00:06:33] It’s about optimizing yourself. And we all know people like this. And by the way, if you do know somebody like this, share this episode with them. They will love to hear the way they are in the world kind of validated as being something meaningful and having something to contribute. Because the truth is, optimizers do have a ton to contribute in a work environment, but however, as we have also said with all of these styles, there are, there are trade-offs.

[00:07:02] And in this case The high standards is in fact a double-edged sword. What makes you exceptional is high standards, but what makes you exhausted is also high standards. Yeah. So let’s talk through this.

[00:07:15] Marissa: Yeah, so like we’ve talked about the other work styles we’ve gone through so far, this is like your superpower, the why behind why everyone else loves that you’re an optimizer.

[00:07:26] You have really, really high standards. Your projects will be done super well with excellence-

[00:07:34] Joel: Mm-hmm …

[00:07:34] Marissa: and everyone else on the team knows it.

[00:07:37] Joel: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:07:38] Marissa: Like, they know that if they want something done with a level of precision and perfection that is very hard to come by, they’re gonna be calling you.

[00:07:48] Joel: And you’re also, this pings off of something you said a, a few minutes ago, you’re also the kind of person that can see the gaps in a process or a product or anything along those lines, and then identify how to improve it and therefore make it better, make it grow, make it produce more revenue for the company or whatever it is.

[00:08:07] Marissa: The nice thing, too, is that if you were a leader of an optimizer, they require very little oversight. It’s

[00:08:16] Joel: a low-maintenance plant. You know, there’s not a- Yeah … you know, not a lot of fuss here.

[00:08:20] Marissa: Yeah, these people come with batteries included.

[00:08:22] Joel: Right.

[00:08:23] Marissa: So, like, you don’t have to worry about it. You hand them a project, you hand them a task, you don’t have to think twice about it.

[00:08:28] You know so-and-so has got it covered, ’cause they’re an optimizer. That’s just how they are.

[00:08:33] Joel: And the only way they’re, they’re gonna get something wrong is if you, the leader who’s delegating it, have somehow failed to communicate what you want at a level of clarity that you need, because they’re gonna go do it, and it’s gonna be excellent.

[00:08:47] And if it somehow differs from your vision, it was 100% your fault for not communicating exactly what you wanted.

[00:08:54] Marissa: And usually, an optimizer will get as much clarity on the front end as they possibly can because they want to make sure-

[00:09:02] Joel: Yeah …

[00:09:02] Marissa: they do it the right way. Yeah. Right? Up to your standards. And so usually, they’re gonna ask a lot of questions.

[00:09:07] They need the context, which is super helpful.

[00:09:10] Joel: If you’re an optimizer, you also are the kind of person that makes plans, maybe really exceptionally detailed plans, and unlike maybe a lot of the rest of us, you actually stick with them. Like, your plans are your agenda, and you’re gonna make it happen exactly like you’ve planned it, to the best of your ability, which is pretty significant.

[00:09:31] So you’re gonna be getting much further compliance with your own effort than the rest of us are. Your high standards are also what leave you feeling exhausted. You’re often unsatisfied Even with really work that would impress other people, like you see the gap, you see what’s missing it, with it, and therefore, like you never really quite get to the point of satisfaction.

[00:09:54] You keep refining processes, products, projects long past what’s necessary. You know, the idea of a minimal viable product is not really three words you like to ever string together in a phrase.

[00:10:06] Marissa: It’s a curse word.

[00:10:07] Joel: It’s a curse word, right. Longer than four letters, unfortunately. But it’s just not what you want.

[00:10:13] Flaws in your work, this one is… This one may be hard. Flaws in your work can spark the narrative in your own mind that you are not good enough. This is related, in fact, to the same challenge that the achiever has with identifying their worth with their output. In your case, it has more to do with identifying your worth with the work product itself, like the quality of the work product.

[00:10:38] So if you’re forced to ship things that don’t rise to your standards or reflect who you see yourself being, it can, it can indicate bad things about yourself.

[00:10:49] Marissa: I think it’s important, too, um, for those of you who are leading optimizers, when you provide feedback to an optimizer, it’s important that you do it about the work itself, not adding identifying words onto it, like you were sloppy or you’re lazy or whatever, you know, fill in the blank.

[00:11:08] You can say it about the work or the, the output, but being careful about how, like what words you’re actually choosing for an optimizer is important because they’re most likely going to internalize everything you say-

[00:11:21] Joel: Anyway …

[00:11:21] Marissa: as some kind of flaw about them, some kind of, um, reflection about who they are, their capability, not about the work itself.

[00:11:29] And so this is really good if you’re leading optimizers. Listen up to this because you don’t want to make this mistake because it potentially can backfire on you. But you still can provide feedback, just do it in a way that isn’t about their identity.

[00:11:44] Joel: They’re going to do that on their own, so be careful.

[00:11:47] Another thing is that the pressure to do everything excellently can lead to a lot of unfinished tasks Just because you can plan doesn’t mean you can plan accurately, and that means things take longer than they do, as Megan often says. Things ju- like, this is the planning fallacy, right? We very often underestimate how long things will take.

[00:12:08] And when you’re doing them to a very high standard and you will not accept the general quality of doneness, what that means is sometimes tasks pile up, so done feels further out of sight. The task list never quite clears out, and that can mean that you just always have this sense of feeling behind.

[00:12:25] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:12:26] Joel, I feel like this is another one of these work styles that we hear a lot from our coaching clients.

[00:12:32] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:32] Marissa: Inside of Double Win Coaching, I hear a lot of them talk about they’re struggling to get work over the finish line. Like, it’s just not quite there. I don’t feel fully good to put my name on this or kind of- Right

[00:12:44] to back this product. And we’ve talked about this in past episodes a- about different work styles, but sometimes you need to define done.

[00:12:54] Tina: Right.

[00:12:54] Marissa: And so rather than just saying it has to be perfect in order to ship it, you say, “It has to be up to this level. Like, this is the criteria it has to meet, even if there’s some part of it that I don’t feel quite, you know, 115% perfect about.”

[00:13:10] That’s okay. And just like what I was saying earlier, sometimes the best really can become the enemy of the good. Right. And so we don’t ship it because it’s actually good, but it’s not the best that it could be.

[00:13:23] Joel: If any of this, by the way, is resonating, if you, if you’re hearing this and you’re feeling like, “Oh man, I’m an optimizer,” you might well be.

[00:13:29] Take the assessment. Go to fullfocus.co/ws, fullfocus.co/ws, and find out for yourself. Like Marissa said, sometimes for every work style, there is a s- primary and a secondary. So you may be hearing elements to this that sound right, but maybe not quite. That may be because the optimizer may be a secondary for you.

[00:13:53] The work style assessment will tease all that out. It’ll give you a very robust report. And again, it’s free, doesn’t take very long to do, but it’s very illuminating in terms of how we work. Also, if you happen to work with an optimizer or live with an optimizer, share this episode with them. See what they think as they hear themselves reflected.

[00:14:25] Marissa: We’ve talked about thinking about the optimizer. There’s good things, right, about being an optimizer. There’s reasons that we love you for being an optimizer, and there’s also a lot of challenges that come with that. Some kind of blind spots, if you will, that come with that. And unfortunately, those can compound over time.

[00:14:44] Mm-hmm. And so, sometimes it’s your standards don’t get lower, and you keep pushing to meet them, right? So, like, you know, you’ve got these impossibly high standards. You’re continuing to push for them. And so, that ends up leading to you never experience the relief of final completion.

[00:15:02] Joel: Instead of completion, you get depletion.

[00:15:05] Marissa: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. 1,000%. And you never truly prove yourself to you. Like, you’re constantly striving, and you have this ideal. And I think that this is really true for the optimizer. They have this ideal about the work that they’re trying to create and, and themselves.

[00:15:24] Joel: Right, ’cause they’re tied up together.

[00:15:25] Marissa: They’re tied up. Their identity is fully wrapped up in this. And so, this constant need to prove themselves, you know, to themself, right? It’s like, “Oh, I can be the best. Oh, I can be the, the strongest, the most successful, the person who is able to deliver this with absolute excellence.” That’s an impossibly high standard.

[00:15:46] Yeah. And so you end up feeling like a complete failure when you’re not able to rise or to live or to stay consistent at that level.

[00:15:55] Joel: Which is a shame because I guarantee you other people looking at the work think it’s amazing, even if it’s not up to your own standards. Whatever your standards are, they’re already 30% higher than the average person.

[00:16:07] So what the average person experiences is something great, and yet because it’s not quite perfect, it’s not quite there, and you’re not quite satisfied.

[00:16:15] Marissa: And what ends up happening is that if you’re not careful, over time, the people around you start to feel the strain of your expectations. So if, for instance, you’re an optimizer and you’re in a leadership position and your team is presenting you their work and you have these high standards, you are immediately seeing the flaws, it can take a toll on those relationships- Yeah

[00:16:40] and on those people, right? Or if you’re in a collaborative environment and you’re responsible for getting something over the finish line, and when it’s never good enough, the people around you feel that, right? They feel that sense of frustration of we’ve got to ship this thing, but it’s never gonna get there because it’s never gonna be able to meet your standards.

[00:17:01] Joel: And what that means ultimately is that work and life can lose some of their joy because you feel like, you know, you’re a machine accountable to this result, and even though it’s a game you set up, you can’t win it. And there’s nothing more depleting, there’s nothing more joy-stealing than that setup.

[00:17:21] Marissa: It kind of reminds me, you know, we’re all probably using AI at this stage in the world, and it’s like how AI has this endless bottom.

[00:17:33] Mm-hmm. Right? It’s just there’s always, like, you can always prompt it to go deeper, to do another level, to do another draft of whatever it is you’re trying to produce, and this is kind of how optimizers, if they’re not careful, can end up, where it’s like there’s no bottom to

[00:17:49] Joel: it. And by the way- Right … that analogy is really helpful, too, because it’s not necessarily any better.

[00:17:54] Like, let’s say the prompt runs through one more time, it refines the thing one more time, it may actually not be any better than it was the last three times.

[00:18:02] Marissa: A lot of chefs, you know, talk about, you’ll like this ’cause it’s about editing, but a lot of chefs will say, at some point you have to step away.

[00:18:10] Joel: Yeah.

[00:18:11] Marissa: Right? Like, if you’re making a dish and you keep adding and you keep adding and you keep adding, at some point it just doesn’t… All these flavors are muddy. It’s not any good anymore.

[00:18:19] Joel: Right.

[00:18:20] Marissa: And you have to stop optimizing the dish and actually, like, pull back and use some restraint. And so having a level of discernment, and we’re about to get here in terms of kind of your growth edge, but having a level of restraint in terms of what to optimize I think is really important.

[00:18:36] Joel: Yeah. Well, let’s jump into that because every one of these, every one of these work styles has several growth strategies. By the way, your work style assessment, the report has a whole bunch of them. We’re sharing just one for each right now, but one of the key growth strategies for, uh, an optimizer is to ration your excellence.

[00:18:58] Like, ration it. Put a cap on it.

[00:19:02] Marissa: Here’s the deal: you’re likely applying the same standard to work of wildly unequal value.

[00:19:10] Joel: Right. Like, the low ROI stuff gets the same attention that the high ROI stuff gets.

[00:19:15] Marissa: Yeah. There’s no discernment being exercised in this. It’s just everything has to be done to this level.

[00:19:22] There’s always more to kind of tweak and to get right. But again, if you’re not rationing this in, in a strategic way, if you’re just doing it to everything, first of all, you’re gonna be completely exhausted and just wiped out, and stuff is never gonna end up being finished because there’s always more to do.

[00:19:40] Joel: So you need to decide which lower leverage tasks don’t merit that level of excellence and refinement. You know, like finish them, notice the gaps, and send it anyway.

[00:19:53] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:19:54] Joel: There is a self-publishing guru from way back in the day, I think his name is Dan Pointer But it’s been a long time since I, I don’t quite remember.

[00:20:04] But he was dealing with this with self-published authors, so he’s coaching self-published authors, and a lot of times he was finding that self-published authors, they would get 95% of the way done on their book, but they just couldn’t quite finish it, and that’s like an editorial refinement problem. And he always used to say, “When it’s 95% done, it’s done.

[00:20:24] Just ship it. You can always make other changes on the second edition. There is such a thing as a second edition.” And I think that’s really good advice here. When it’s 95% done, it’s done. Like, it’s okay to ship it at 95%.

[00:20:39] Marissa: You know, the truth is you’re probably going to sacrifice a little bit of perfection, a little bit of like perfect polish on certain tasks when you use this strategically.

[00:20:51] But the truth is if you can do this in a way that you’re specifically rationing and not giving that to those low leverage tasks, nobody’s gonna notice. Nobody’s gonna notice. And so it’s actually really strategic for you to put more energy or time or, um, thinking on th- that high leverage work so that everybody can notice that, right?

[00:21:17] Right. The people can see- The

[00:21:18] Joel: important

[00:21:18] Marissa: stuff … your level of excellence on the important stuff. But you don’t need to do it on every single little task.

[00:21:25] Joel: Let’s go ahead and hear from some actual optimizers about what their experience of being an optimizer is like.

[00:21:41] Tina: My name is Tina. I live in the Raleigh, North Carolina area, and I am a group practice owner for mental health therapy. So I have a practice with about 25 therapists in it, and then I just sold my, um, teen intensive outpatient program. So I was working a ridonkulous number of hours, and now I get, I get 30 hours a week back.

[00:22:02] So, um, now we’re trying to figure out what to do with my time now that, that I’m not doing that anymore.

[00:22:07] Marissa: Well, that’s one way to, to slice your hours in half, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:22:10] Tina: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:11] Marissa: That’s amazing. I would love to hear, as you got your results back on your work style, what was eye-opening?

[00:22:18] Tina: I’m an Enneagram 2. I was expecting to be a giver- Yeah

[00:22:21] and, um, the optimizer actually fits me better. I’m a perfectionist in my quality of work. I’ve taken tests like that before where, where it comes up. It really was in line with my maps, and the optimizer is really about that high quality output. So I, I actually have my maps that we’ve done and put it into Claude, and I threw this in with it and said, “Com- compare this,” and they w- the Claude was just excited and was like- Wow

[00:22:48] this is what we’ve been missing on this because it’s not that I’m, I don’t wanna do the work. It’s I wanna do it really well.

[00:22:56] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:22:56] Tina: And so it’s changing some of like, I, I put this in every day. I, you know, like doing those maps have been like a game changer for me.

[00:23:04] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:23:04] Tina: And so I put it in and then it can tell me like these are, you know, h- It can work with me on not having to be the perfectionist at the job.

[00:23:12] What are the things that I can do? How can I actually ask for help in a way that doesn’t have to be at my standards? So it’s been, I, I think it was really helpful. Yeah.

[00:23:22] Marissa: Good. Well, and for those of you who are listening, in case you’re wondering what the Maps profile is, this is a synthesis of personality assessments that my dad, Michael Hyatt, created, and we utilize this with each of our Double Win coaching clients.

[00:23:36] We take them through a whole process where they take all their different, uh, assessments, personality assessments, whether it’s Enneagram or their DiSC profile, their, uh, Kolbe assessment, your work style, all different kinds. And we put it into really a, a synthesized report that not only kind of takes all those things and make them make sense, uh, and give you kind of a, a more comprehensive profile on yourself, but really to help you understand how you’re wired specifically to work in the role that you’re in.

[00:24:06] Um, and so it’s, we, you know, we’ve heard glowing reviews. Um, and so what Tina is talking about here is that she’s been able to take that to the next level and kind of fill in some of those holes, then potentially the Maps and the other assessments that she, you know, filled the Maps with that were not necessarily fitting.

[00:24:24] And so this is super fascinating to hear. Mm-hmm. So it sounds like, based on what you’re sharing, a lot of what this has cost you, you know, being an optimizer, you mentioned your health, you mentioned that you are a dead last on your list. Um, is there anything else that you feel like being in this style has cost you?

[00:24:44] Tina: Relationships. You know, just being able to, um, have time for myself or friends, different things ’cause everything comes, you know, like all my… Everything comes before what I need to do. I’m looking at this, and this is just a recipe for burnout. Just having- Yeah … to be perfect at it and then wanting to take care of everyone, and which is why I came and found you guys to start with.

[00:25:05] Yeah. And, you know, using this and the Maps has just, um, r- really helped me understand what my strengths are. Yeah. ‘Cause I thought it was doing the day-to-day, and it’s the strategic planning. So I am utilizing that new time that I have back to do the things I’m better at. Yeah. Um, and then it’s not burning me out so much, and I have, I’ve got my kids off the bus every day at 4:00, and being more with family.

[00:25:30] I’ve been reaching out and talking to friends. Mm. So, so it’s, um, just been much better, more well-rounded than 60-hour weeks.

[00:25:40] Marissa: What would you say to a younger version of you who maybe doesn’t have that knowledge?

[00:25:44] Tina: I think the biggest thing I’d s- we all have strengths. And if you, you know, there’s that, what is that?

[00:25:49] You can’t make an elephant breathe underwater, you can’t put a fish in a tree. And that’s what I was trying to do. I was trying to be somebody I’m not. And if I ha- having this information now, I get to be the optimal version of myself, where I see what my strengths- Right … and my weaknesses are, and I can have that awareness to make decisions about how I choose to work, how I choose to spend my time, and when I’ve pushed myself too hard or, you know, when, when I’m putting too much into something.

[00:26:21] And so I think, you know, if I were to go back to even the 20-year-old version that was in grad school and said, “Hey, you, you can be really good at things, and it doesn’t mean you have to be good at all the things, and focus on the things- Yeah … that you are good at

[00:26:38] Joel: Zoe, what does it mean to you to be an optimizer?

[00:26:42] Zoe: From what I understand from the report, uh, an optimizer is someone who naturally looks to improve systems. So they’re people concerned with reaching a best threshold, um, in not just one output, but in systems of excellence. So, uh- Mm-hmm … it matters to me not just what I do, but how I do it, and then finding, like, the best processes for doing something, the best output possible given constraints.

[00:27:15] Joel: Did that resonate with you?

[00:27:17] Zoe: Absolutely. Yeah. I am definitely, as long as I can remember, been really concerned with doing things the right way. It has always bothered me when I feel like people– I remember being in elementary school and seeing, like, classmates who don’t do their homework or don’t study that, you know, would get the same grade as me, and I’d be like, “How is that even possible?

[00:27:38] You don’t deserve it.” I mean, as an older person now, I realize, uh, most of my professional life has been concerned with giving feedback on people’s writing to help them become stronger communicators. That’s what I do as a professor, and that’s what I do running a writing center. So I think I’ve professionalized in how I naturally like to work, which is finding what’s great and making it better.

[00:28:02] Joel: When you are faced with a constraint and you have this tendency to make things perfect, how… or to optimize them, how do you wrangle that? ‘Cause that’s a tension. Like, if you had more time, you could conceivably make it better.

[00:28:16] Zoe: Yes. But having a hard deadline is freeing because instead of optimizing forever, there’s a done date that you can reverse engineer.

[00:28:28] So, like, this really clearly shows up with creative writing in college, right? We can fuss around with what we think is the best way to say something, but at the end of the day, the semester ends, the paper’s due. And so instead of viewing that as like, “Well, can I negotiate? Can I turn something in?” You can’t turn something in after the semester’s over.

[00:28:47] So then you go, based on the time that I have, what is the best possible path for completing something to the excellence that I want? I don’t think that as an undergraduate I wrote amazing papers. I think that deadlines were one of the only things that motivated me. So procrastination as an optimizer, I think, is pretty normal for, for me at least.

[00:29:08] But as I’ve grown as a writer, I think setting more deadlines, right, learning how to optimize my process. Deadlines are one of the biggest motivators for writers to get things done because, you know, there’s a publication date or whatever. So, so yeah, it, it almost forces me to put aside perfectionism and to just say, “This is, this is what I’m going for, and it has to be done by this time.”

[00:29:34] Joel: What about the downsides of your work style? How do those show up?

[00:29:39] Zoe: It’s really hard for me to know when I’ve done something good enough. I have a pretty strong gut when I’m working, um, especially in something that I haven’t done before, my instinct is usually what draws a path that then I can optimize.

[00:29:55] So I start working on something, I go, “Yeah, this is going well or no, it’s not.” But with, um, teaching, which is what I do with most of my time and with mentoring students, you don’t have a lot of time before you’re just forced to act with imperfect information. And so my optimizer voice will leave class and go like, “I’ve just thought of 10 more things I should’ve done today instead of what I did,” or, “That one conversation in class I know was really important because people were confused.”

[00:30:25] That actually happened yesterday. But my entire plan for the rest of the week now has to change. And so I think that- People maybe don’t notice that, but those are very loud voices that are really hard for me to turn down. And so it’s kind of like ignoring a really loud radio. So it’s, it’s exhausting. And I’d say that that’s probably the biggest thing, is I’ll just leave and rerun classes and conversations, especially ones that I feel are really important.

[00:30:55] In fact, when I, even when I look at my writing, I can clock it. It takes me about five months to look back at something I’ve drafted and to be able to revise it, because it takes that long for me to be able to step aside from everything that I see wrong to start working with what has gotten better.

[00:31:13] Joel: If you had to coach yourself going forward, how would you do that?

[00:31:17] Zoe: Well, I’m in the Double Win coaching program right now. So I have a sticky note taped to my desk right under my monitor that asks the question, “What is mine to do that drives to results and matters now?” Mm-hmm. That has been big. I, I actually also have taped to my wall, ’cause I, I’m quite, I tend to be quite bovine.

[00:31:37] Like I, like a cow, I just get really into what’s in front of me. So I literally have- Okay … taped around me things to remember. But I have a list of six things that are my highest value work that I offer, ’cause I could be doing a lot. I’m excellent at a lot, but really these six zones are where I add value to my organization, at least based on my understanding right now.

[00:31:58] So whenever I have to choose what I’m doing in a day, if it doesn’t fit in those six categories, it’s not getting done.

[00:32:12] Joel: One of the things I love about optimizers is I love the quality of their work And I love the fact that I don’t actually have to think about the quality of their work. It’s just gonna be great. It reminds me sometimes of what I love about seeing live music. Whenever I go hear live music, it almost doesn’t even matter the style it is, or if it’s a band I like or a singer I like or whatever.

[00:32:37] I just really like watching people who are excellent do excellent stuff, and that’s like a thrill to me. And so even if it’s not a thing that I would ever do myself, a style I would ever play myself, watching somebody handle their instrument the way they do, doing it excellently is kind of a thrill. And I think you get to see that with optimizers in the workplace every day.

[00:33:03] You know, like, when they polish off a thing just right and they ship it, when they finalize a project just right and they ship it, it is, like, really amazing ’cause they literally will have thought through just about everything there was to think through on that project, and that’s fantastic. I also know it carries a big weight in certain other ways, and, you know, we’ve heard about that so far, so there’s no point dwelling on that.

[00:33:26] But I think with all these styles, like, what those people bring, what these individuals bring, what you bring to your work is a gift for all the rest of us, and the optimizer is just, like, one in this suite of tools that you’ll find in any given workplace that can turn the screw exactly the way it needs to be turned.

[00:33:47] Marissa: Yeah. We’re so grateful to have optimizers on our team, and I’m sure as you start to think about whether you’re the optimizer or you have colleagues that are the optimizer, you’re probably starting to realize just how valuable they are- Mm-hmm … to the success as a whole. They, they add tremendous value to the team.

[00:34:05] Joel: Things are done well, and you never had to think about it. That’s because an optimizer made it, right? That’s ’cause an optimizer made it that way, and that’s just true all over the place. Like, there are these hidden talents. Maybe they’re not so hidden. There are these things that we all do that we all, uh, show up to in our work environments, and people rely on that strength.

[00:34:27] And, like, you should never feel bad about the way that you work. We should only look for the ways in which we can improve the ways that we work ’cause they’re holding us back. And the optimizer’s no different than any of the others, but I think it’s so important to just recon- recognize that they bring the excellence, and we benefit from that excellence all the time.

[00:34:46] Marissa: We do. We absolutely do. Well, let’s talk about why priorities specifically for an optimizer are paramount to their success across the board and why it’s critical for them to fully step in as an optimizer into, like, the healthy side of being an optimizer. Mm-hmm. So in the past episodes, we’ve defined priorities as when you know what’s yours to do That drives results and matters now.

[00:35:18] And when optimizers are clear on that, are clear on their priorities, they can give their best to what deserves it. So like we talked about, they need to ration that level of excellence. Yeah. But when they’re clear on those priorities, go all in. Give us everything you got on those. Yeah. Because it truly deserves it.

[00:35:37] Joel: And if you do that, you’ll be free to cut yourself a little slack, which- Yeah … you need and deserve. And frankly, some of the people that you work with, who maybe you’re holding to your standard in a way that’s not helpful, you can start cutting them a little slack also. Because the truth is, if everything outside of the priorities gets less attention, it’s gonna be fine.

[00:36:01] It’s like you’ve got to stay laser locked on those priorities and give those priorities what they deserve, but outside of that, there’s a lot more wiggle room, and you get to cut a lot more slack.

[00:36:10] Marissa: Yeah, absolutely. Your, your level of excellence doesn’t have to hold you hostage.

[00:36:16] Joel: Right.

[00:36:16] Marissa: So you can loosen the grip a little bit strategically, but you can loosen it.

[00:36:22] If this sounds like anyone that you know, maybe some of your work colleagues or some of your personal relationships, your friends or your family members, please share this episode with them. We would love for them to be able to learn more about why we love them, what makes them excellent, and be able to figure out some strategies to really help lighten some of that pressure that they’re probably putting on themselves.

[00:36:47] So in case you haven’t taken the work style assessment, you can do this for free. It only takes, I don’t know, five minutes or so to, uh, finish up. You get a fantastic report on the other side of it that goes into everything we’ve shared with you today and way deeper, and you can do that at fullfocus.co/ws.

[00:37:14] Joel: Thanks for joining us for Focus on This.

[00:37:17] Marissa: This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so please share it with your friends, with your coworkers, with your boss, and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen or at focusonthispodcast.com.

[00:37:30] Joel: And we’ll be back next week, where we’re going to talk about our final work style, the improviser, which if by process of elimination you haven’t quite yet figured it out, is my work style.

[00:37:42] Until then…

[00:37:43] Marissa: Stay focused.