Ditch perfection and manage energy results beat face time

The dishes gleam, the slides gleam, and you’re exhausted. You stay for the last two hours in the office because everyone else does, even though the work is done. The next morning, your brain feels like wet wool and the small mistakes creep in. Your coffee turns cold on the desk while you fix a typo that didn’t matter.

You try a different filter. You pick three must‑win domains: safety, key decisions, and family dinner twice a week. You create a stop‑doing list: a recurring meeting that never decides anything, a weekly report no one reads, and ironing kids’ shirts. You set a quiet block for deep work and protect sleep like revenue, even when the group chat is still buzzing at 11:47 p.m.

A micro‑anecdote: one week you left at five thirty two days in a row and shipped more than usual. Another week you stayed late polishing a deck until nine, slept five hours, and under‑delivered the next day. The pattern was obvious when you looked honestly.

The science is unromantic. Perfectionism increases anxiety and reduces throughput. Sleep loss impairs cognition like low‑grade intoxication. Judgment by face time rewards optics, not outcomes. Set clear results with your manager, share how you’ll keep work visible, and then execute. Let “done is better than perfect” be a tool, not a slogan.

Choose three domains where excellence matters most and define “good enough” everywhere else. Kill or batch low‑value tasks and protect a weekly deep‑work block alongside 7–8 hours of sleep. Align with your manager on two or three measurable results for the next cycle and how you’ll keep work visible, then let yourself leave when the work is done. Try two early departures this week and notice what changes. Put it on your calendar now.