Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / The Burnout of Never Feeling Good Enough at Work
Transcript
- Lucas: There's this moment I keep coming back to, and it's from a conversation I had maybe a year ago with a friend who works in product management at a mid-size software company. She'd just shipped a feature that her team had been building for four months — solid adoption, good retention numbers, the VP sent a nice Slack message. And her first thought, within maybe thirty minutes of that message, was: 'Okay, but what's the next thing?' Luna: That sounds exhausting. And also... incredibly familiar. Lucas: Right. And that's what I want to dig into today — not burnout from overwork exactly, but burnout from the feeling that you're never enough, that what you just did is never sufficient. There's a specific term for this mindset: maximising. It's the tendency to keep searching for the absolute best option, the perfect outcome, the optimal result — even when 'good enough' would do. Luna: And the alternative is 'satisficing' — I've heard that term before. It's a blend of 'satisfy' and 'suffice.' The idea that you stop once something meets your threshold, rather than grinding for the theoretical best. Lucas: Exactly. And there's actually really good data on this now. The University of Cambridge's Wellbeing Research Centre published a longitudinal study last year — followed about 1,200 professionals across multiple industries over 18 months. They measured what they called 'maximising tendency' at the start, then tracked emotional exhaustion scores quarterly. The result: people who scored high on maximising — the ones who consistently said things like 'I never settle for second best' — had emotional exhaustion scores that were, on average, 34 percent higher than the satisficers by the end of the study. Luna: Thirty-four percent. That's not a small edge. That's the difference between feeling tired at the end of the week and feeling like you need a month off. Lucas: And the key finding was that this effect held even when you controlled for hours worked, for industry, for salary level. It wasn't about how much they were doing — it was about how they evaluated what they'd done. The maximisers actually worked slightly fewer hours on average, but they felt more depleted. Luna: So the burnout isn't just a function of workload. It's a function of the internal critic's threshold for 'good enough.' Lucas: Right. And I think that's liberating in a weird way, because it means we can do something about it without necessarily changing our jobs or cutting our hours in half. We can change the bar we're measuring ourselves against. Luna: But let me push on that a little. Because there are jobs where 'good enough' genuinely isn't good enough. If you're an air traffic controller or a surgeon, you don't want someone satisficing on the landing pattern or the incision line. Lucas: That's a really fair point, and it's the most common objection to this whole framework. But I'd argue that even in high-stakes roles, there's a difference between setting a minimum safety standard and constantly chasing an unattainable ideal of perfection. A surgeon doesn't need to be the fastest surgeon in the hospital — they need to follow a proven protocol and execute it cleanly. The maximising trap in surgery would be replaying every case, wondering if they could have shaved off thirty seconds, or using a different suture technique that might reduce scarring by half a millimetre. That kind of rumination doesn't improve outcomes — it just wears the surgeon down. Luna: I see the distinction. So it's not about lowering standards — it's about being realistic about what 'good' actually looks like in context. Lucas: Exactly. And a former colleague of mine, who was a nurse for about eight years before moving into healthcare administration, told me something that stuck with me. She said the nurses who lasted longest in the ICU weren't the ones who tried to be perfect — they were the ones who could do a solid, thorough job on their shift and then go home without second-guessing every decision. She called it 'professional satisficing.' Luna: That's such a great phrase. And it's counterintuitive, because we usually think the best professionals are the ones who care the most, who are never satisfied. But maybe the best professionals are the ones who can keep caring over a thirty-year career, not just a three-year sprint. Lucas: That's the sustainable-career piece. And it connects to something I've been thinking about for a while. If we've helped you think through a career move or decision — maybe you've tried setting a lower bar or had a conversation about workload after listening to an episode — we'd love it if you considered supporting the show. It's listener-supported, which means no ads, no sponsors. You can do that at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, seriously. Just a way to keep these conversations going. Luna: Yeah, and it genuinely helps. We don't have a big marketing machine behind us — it's just us, a microphone, and the people who find value in these episodes. So thanks to anyone who's ever chipped in. Lucas: Alright. So back to the research — and to something practical. The Cambridge study also looked at what satisficers actually do differently. It's not just a personality trait — it's a set of habits. One of the biggest was something called 'time-boxed decision making.' When a satisficer faces a decision — say, which vendor to pick, or what format to use for a report — they give themselves a fixed amount of time to gather information, and then they decide. They don't keep researching until they find the perfect option. Luna: I've tried that. It's harder than it sounds, because there's always the feeling that one more data point could tip the scales. But I've noticed that the decisions I agonise over most are usually the ones where the options are very close anyway. Lucas: Right. And that's the dirty secret of maximising — most of the time, the marginal benefit of the extra research is tiny. You're spending an hour to improve a decision by maybe two percent. In some contexts, that hour is better spent on something else — or just on rest. Luna: Another habit I've seen in the literature is 'defining done before you start.' That's a big one for me. If I don't decide what 'finished' looks like ahead of time, I'll keep tinkering forever. Lucas: That's a great one. And it's surprisingly concrete. When you sit down to write an email, decide upfront: 'I will write three drafts maximum, then send.' Or 'I'll spend twenty minutes on this, then it goes.' The constraint itself becomes a forcing function for satisficing. Luna: What about the social side? Because I think maximising isn't just internal — it's reinforced by the culture around us. If your boss constantly says 'this is good, but could it be better?', that trains you to never feel satisfied. Lucas: It absolutely does. And there's a really interesting dynamic there. A lot of managers think they're pushing for excellence, but they're actually creating a maximising culture that burns people out. The antidote, I think, is explicit framing. A manager can say: 'This is a B-plus project — it needs to be solid, but not perfect. Don't spend extra time polishing it.' That gives the team permission to satisfice. Luna: But that requires the manager to be aware of the cost of perfectionism. And a lot of managers aren't — they just think they're being demanding in a good way. Lucas: Exactly. And that's where the data becomes a useful conversation starter. You can say to a manager: 'The Cambridge study found that maximising cultures have 34 percent higher burnout rates. Do we really need that level of polish on this internal memo?' Luna: I love that. It reframes the conversation from 'I'm not working hard enough' to 'Is the marginal gain worth the emotional cost?' Lucas: Right. And to me, that's the core insight of this whole episode. Burnout isn't just about how much you do — it's about how much you demand of yourself in the doing. And the good news is, you can change that demand without changing your ambition. You can still want to do great work. You can just redefine what 'great' means in a way that leaves some energy in the tank for tomorrow. Luna: So the question becomes: how do we start? If someone listening is thinking, 'Yeah, that's me, I'm a maximiser,' what's one thing they can try this week? Lucas: I'd say pick one recurring task — something you do every day or every week — and set a hard time limit. Fifteen minutes for a routine email, thirty minutes for a weekly status update. When the timer goes off, you send it. No revisions. See how it feels. Chances are, the world doesn't end. Luna: And if it does end, you can always go back to maximising. But I suspect most people will find that the world not only doesn't end — it doesn't even notice. Lucas: Right. And that's the liberating part. The standard you were chasing — the perfect email, the perfect slide deck — most people weren't expecting it. They just wanted something clear and timely. Satisficing delivers that. Luna: Alright. So experiment this week with a time-box. And maybe ask yourself at the end of the day: 'Was what I did today good enough?' If the honest answer is yes, try to leave it there. Lucas: That's a good practice. And I'll leave listeners with one more thing. The Cambridge study followed people for 18 months. The satisficers didn't just have lower burnout — they also had higher job satisfaction and, interestingly, slightly higher performance ratings. Because they weren't wasting energy on marginal improvements, they had more bandwidth for the things that actually mattered. So the question isn't whether you can afford to satisfice. It's whether you can afford not to.