If you had suggested to 12 year old me that I aim for 85% in school in order to get the most out of the experience and avoid the stress and anxiety that comes with constantly striving for perfection, I would have looked at you as if you had just told me you were from another planet. Well, perhaps that isn't entirely true since I've believed in extraterrestrial life for as long as I can remember, but you get the idea. I would have quickly pushed back and given you plenty of good reasons why I needed to work harder than everyone else, and that anything less than 100% was unacceptable.
We all learn the importance of excellence at a very young age. The industrialized economy has created an urgent need for high output, high efficiency perfection. We equate more work with better work because time is a very easy metric by which to judge ourselves against others. If I'm the first one in and the last one out, clearly I'm working harder than everyone else. If I've agreed to sit on 10 different committees and my calendar looks like a speed dating program, there should be no question that I'm putting in 100%. Counterintuitively, though, this constant demand for 100% effort and the time that comes with it leads to less productivity and higher rates of burnout, dissatisfaction, and turn over.
Quiet quitting, vacant positions, continuous training and onboarding, and enormous amounts of time spent recruiting and hiring are all the byproducts of unrealistic expectations that cause burnout and rapid turnover. A recent Harvard Business Review article suggests that we stop asking for 100% effort and instead ask for 85% effort from ourselves and others in order to optimize performance, well-being, and overall team cohesiveness. This idea struck me as quite powerful in it's simplicity.
In this article, McKeown offers several things managers can do to set boundaries and discourage overwork and the constant demand for maximum effort and perfection. He suggests that managers and supervisors set a clear stop time for the day. This encourages people to remember that the work will almost always be there the next day, but the rest of their lives are waiting for them now. I'd take this one step further and encourage true lunch breaks away from the desk. When it's possible, step outside for some fresh air and sun. Exposure to sunlight lowers your cortisol levels, which in turn will lower your stress levels.
When we take this question of scheduling one step further, we realize that we should be more focused on outcomes than the path to get there. The pandemic taught us that people didn't need to be in the office from 9 to 5 in order to get their work done. They could do much of their work on their own schedule, and in a way that supported their other life commitments (family, friends, hobbies, etc.). Industrialization created a surveillance state where we needed to be in the office for 8 hours a day and constantly observed in order to demonstrate our worth. When we trust people to do the job we've asked them to do and they've agreed to do, they want to repay that trust. I don't need to see you in your office for 8 hours to know you're working.
The 85% effort rule is thus a natural extension of this trust. Once we allow team members to consider what 100% effort looks like and feels like, we can ask them to shift that to 85%, which ensures that burnout is far less likely, and that folks are eager to come back the next day to continue the work. In a knowledge economy, we are rarely working solo either, so the fact that more people will be able to come together to achieve the goal ensures it will be completely successfully and that folks will then be eager to tackle the next task. Asking for 85% effort also takes much of the pressure off of individuals who are perfectionists. In much of our work, perfection is not needed and good enough will suffice just fine. We need to make that clear to folks.
In order for this approach to be successful, of course, we need to look at new ways of assessing folks and the work they do. Time "clocked in", emails sent, and number of projects completed are all very simplistic metrics by which to measure an employee's success in the role. Once we look to the 85% rule, we can start to look more closely at the actual work taking place, the community being developed, and the trust being built amongst team members. We need to stop rewarding "busy" and start rewarding relationships. No single task will take two people the exact same amount of time so setting arbitrary metrics only ensures that a consistent percentage of your population won't meet that arbitrary standard and will burnout trying to do so.
As a runner, I know that rarely am I putting in 100% during my training. If I did so, I'd be dealing with a constant string of injuries. In order to perform at 100% when I want to, I need to put the work in at 85% or less effort most days. This ensures I have the energy and passion to return to the training the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that. 85% effort ensures we keep coming back for more, and are eager for the opportunity to do so.
