Always More

We spend years building the careers we want. Then we spend just as much energy convincing ourselves we're still not doing enough.

This week, the same idea kept showing up in different forms.

On Tuesday, I sat at a table with 15 impressive women, many of whom still credited their success to luck, timing, or someone who believed in them.

On Wednesday, I shared the first Off the Record confession - a COO who walks into the office every morning and acts like she has the answers. (Have a story of your own? Share it anonymously.)

And yesterday, at Rollercoaster, a festival in Brussels for women building companies and careers, one speaker said something I wrote down twice: always more leads to doubt.

I know that pattern well. I've always been a perfectionist (very Virgo of me, I'm told). For a long time, my way of building confidence was simple: do more, do it better, leave no room for anyone to find a flaw.

And honestly? It worked. High standards built my career. I'm not giving them up.

Perfection is a different story, though. My career taught me that it's a brake on velocity. I'd much rather ship something at 80% than wait for it to be perfect - and most of the time, that's the right call. It's a lesson I've genuinely learned, and one I still apply.

Still, it was a good reminder to hear it again yesterday - especially now, while I build what's next on my own. Because perfectionism is just another version of always more: there's always one more thing to fix before you let yourself feel done.

That's where high standards can turn against you. Pressure isn't the problem. The problem starts when your sense of having earned it depends on whatever you achieve next.

I touched on this in Memo No. 3: I finally got what I'd been building toward for twelve years, and the feeling of "done" lasted about a week. Then I was already looking for the next goal. And if you only feel successful once you reach the next goal, you never stop long enough to appreciate what you've already done.

That's how you end up as the COO who acts like she has the answers. Or the woman who has done the hard thing a hundred times and still calls it luck.

Sometimes the cost of always more is physical, too. Another speaker yesterday was a former professional athlete who pushed her body until it burned out - and then rebuilt her life around those hard lessons by becoming a Pilates entrepreneur. Her line stayed with me: building something is a rollercoaster - but your health shouldn't be the price of the ride.

I can relate to that one, and I actually love the gym as an analogy for all of this. I tend to push myself a lot - every session turns into a small competition with myself. But if you push your body too hard for too long, eventually it pushes back. You get hurt, and the training stops doing you any good.

I think ambition works exactly the same way. Having a cadence, challenging yourself, wanting more - that's all good. But every now and then, you need to take a minute to appreciate where you are, actually enjoy it, and then keep going in a direction that's good for your mind, your body and your soul.

Not everything has to be a competition. Not everything has to be about being the best.

The Pilates entrepreneur described movement as something you build into your life like brushing your teeth - not a performance, a practice. That's exactly how I want to see it, at the gym and beyond.

I'm not interested in becoming less ambitious. I'm interested in sustaining that ambition without turning everything into a test I have to pass.

And maybe part of sustaining that ambition is learning to let go of the plan sometimes.

One more idea from yesterday that I keep turning over: the detours you never planned are sometimes where your best results come from. A need for everything to go according to plan can make you miss them.

That one is hard for me. I love control, I love to perform, and I'm very resilient - I don't let go easily. But resilience will only take you so far. At some point, it's okay - and sometimes necessary - to stop pushing, change direction and move on. Honestly, I still find it hard to tell where resilience ends and stubbornness begins.

What helps me most is my gut. At some point, it tells you: okay, that's enough, stop pushing. But when your gut and your energy are still driving you forward, I think that's a good sign. Keep going.

And sitting in that room yesterday, I noticed something about who impresses me most. I love hearing from women who've built huge careers and stepped all the way up - I don't think I'll ever get tired of that. But I'm almost more impressed by the women who seem at peace with their own ambition. The ones who've figured out how to keep pushing themselves without making ambition the thing their entire lives revolve around.

That's what I'm trying to do. If that makes sense?

Maybe the next stage of ambition isn't doing more. Maybe it's learning to tell when "more" is genuinely moving you forward - and when it's just keeping you busy proving something you've already earned.

What would you do differently if you already believed you'd earned it?

See you next Friday, -Laurie 🤍