Constantly raising the bar - a high-performer trap

When talking to high-achievers, I often hear recurring themes and struggles. Patterns that on one hand contribute to our success and high results. At the same time, they create strain and unnecessary pressure on our progress.

Imagine two trees. One of them grows naturally, taking water and nourishment from the ground and circulating it through the trunk, branches and leaves. The other one grows by constantly straining upward with significant effort. They might look the same from the distance. But the first one is healthy and growing sustainably, while the second one is pulled by tension. That’s exactly what happens with some high-achievers: they make progress, constantly demonstrate strong results, they raise the bar, their responsibilities expand, the image is composed. On the outside. On the inside however, there is a mental load, second guessing, over-preparing, difficulty to delegate or decide, and growing worry how progress can be maintained while this overdrive takes over thoughts, emotions and actions. Let’s explore one of the typical patterns that show up with many high-performing professionals.

The bar is a constant moving target - high-performer trap

Sarah works at a consultancy firm. Her job comes with high responsibility, high visibility and super exciting and impactful projects. Every new assignment is an opportunity to prove herself beyond the point she already showcased. She doesn’t settle for the same level of output, she has to expand, upgrade, and reach further. That also means, once a project is closed, she stops for a moment to take it all in: it wasn’t easy, there were moments she was in panic and moments where she knew exactly what needed to happen, and now she handed it back to the client. There’s a brief moment of pride, relief, and joy. But the very next moment, she thinks about the next assignment and in what ways will she nail it even better, even faster, even more successfully.

High-achievers have the tendency to never stop. They take every opportunity as a challenge to increase their output and show something they haven’t done before. This is certainly great. It can lead to creative, strong solutions, lot of commitment and following through. Impressive results, great successes. But there’s a flip side. There’s no constant standard or performance target. It moves upward with every single assignment. What was good enough 5 projects ago is now too little, too late. What is an innovative, powerful solution today, will be old news in the next project. Moving the target higher might seem like high performance. It might feel like growth. And certainly it is. There’s something else too: sleepless nights, stress, overthinking, second-guessing, critical self-talk and losing joy in the process.

When we constantly push our targets higher, we force unnecessary pressure on ourselves. It is no longer about meeting realistic expectations of others or even of our own. It becomes a rigid test of doing more, better, working harder, faster - a test to prove our worth to ourselves. Because if we can go beyond, that means we are better. The pitfall is that any achievement, the moment it is achieved becomes less that good. Because you already know that the next time around you need to do more. So there’s a constant pressure during the process of achieving - because you set high standards for yourself and it is not easy. And once achieved, it becomes the new baseline, that need to be exceeded. So you are never truly satisfied with your output and never really comfortable with the amount of expectation you put on yourself.

How to overcome this trap?

Imagine you’re running a marathon and right after you crossed the finish line, hastily put the medal around your neck, go on to the start line of the next marathon (only it is 5 km longer and on a steep surface). The challenge is that this pursuit of increasing excellence is engraved into the personality, and became part of how we define ourselves (a high-achiever who always raises the bar).

To overcome this high-performer trap, it is certainly not about giving up standards, or becoming careless. But we need to find adaptive and realistic targets so when we achieve them, there’s a sense of fulfillment and objectivity about the good results. We can start becoming more aware of the following two things to challenge the belief of having to always go above and beyond:

• Costs of excellence. We tend to notice only the positive consequences of our actions: the promotions, the recognition, the results, the innovation. We tend to overlook or downplay the negative consequences of the same actions: sleep problems, tension, mental load through overthinking, irritability, lack of joy or sense of fulfillment.

  • Do a brain-writing exercise: without giving much thought to it, just start writing down all the strains you are experiencing related to your work. Write for 5 minutes. Then look back at your full list. Ask yourself: if someone achieved just as much with the psychological price of it, would you consider it a high performance? A powerful reframe here is: performance is not only about the output but the efficiency and ease that goes with achieving it.

• Value of completion. Now that we have a clear view on the price of our excellence, let’s go back to our runner’s analogy. If you start your next race right when the previous one is finished, you never get the chance to disconnect. But there’s great value in deliberately stopping for some time when a big project is completed. It’s not only about recovery, although we definitely need it after a marathon. It’s more about seeing, feeling, living, tasting, and celebrating the achievement. Giving it a proper finish.

  • Take time to review the accomplishment, to reflect on the challenges you experienced, to note down the lessons learned, share the wins with the team, allow yourself a break, allow yourself the pride - longer than 5 seconds. A closing ritual will enable you to recalibrate yourself before the next assignment. It will also allow you to acknowledge all the good and bad along the way and accept both without judgement and with a sense of joy.

Understand your bar

Doing something the 50th time, of course you want to raise the bar, because by then you have learnt all the tricks and just following the same pattern will not feel challenging or rewarding. But the key is to be realistic and objective about where that bar should really go and when it makes sense to raise it. Raising the bar shouldn’t come from a pressured ‘I need to prove my worth’ feeling. It should come from a place of trust in your own competence and drive to grow and contribute. What I often see is once a high-performer understands their reasons behind moving their bar, they can find a more sustainable balance.