The Invisible Standard: Redefining Your Best in a Burnout Culture
Photo by Katrina
I used to think “doing your best” meant winning. Landing the job. Getting the grade. Achieving the milestone.
But lately, I’ve started to wonder if that belief has quietly poisoned more people than it’s helped.
Because what happens when your best still leads to failure?
What happens when you’re exhausted and your best looks like surviving, not thriving?
We’re taught early to “do your best” as if it’s a fixed compass. But real life teaches otherwise.
Sometimes, what we call “doing our best” is actually a quiet form of self-abandonment. Pushing past our limits, numbing our needs, and showing up for others while ghosting ourselves. When we equate worth with output, we learn to betray our own signals: exhaustion, grief, softness, slowness. But what if honoring those signals is the truest form of doing your best?
Some days, your best is brushing your teeth, logging onto Zoom, and answering Slack messages with a brave face, while quietly falling apart.
Other days, it’s crafting a 30-slide deck, coordinating five clients, and hitting your protein goal like some Olympic-level gladiator.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Your best won’t always be good enough.
And that has to be okay.
Years ago, in my international relations class, we analyzed Kofi Annan’s role as UN Secretary-General during the lead-up to the Iraq War. It stuck with me—not because it was a clear-cut example of success, but precisely because it wasn’t.
Despite his relentless diplomatic efforts, the U.S. invaded Iraq without Security Council authorization. His efforts to prevent the invasion failed. The war went on. Many saw it as a collapse of multilateral diplomacy.
But Annan never stopped trying. He didn’t retreat from the messiness of geopolitics. He reformed peacekeeping. He brought global attention to HIV/AIDS. He championed the Responsibility to Protect doctrine—even under the weight of global indifference.
He worked within a flawed system with integrity, knowing he couldn’t control the outcomes, but he could show up, again and again, on principle.
If you judge that moment by results, it was a disaster.
But if you judge it by the courage to act with clarity in a morally grey world, it was something else entirely.
Maybe doing your best means being a steward of principle, not just a deliverer of outcomes.
I used to measure “doing my best” through progress bars: fitness trackers, performance reviews, and relationship check-ins. But your twenties teach you that those bars glitch.
A toxic work environment taught me that you can give 110%, lose sleep, and still get criticized.
A breakup showed me that love can end, not for lack of effort, but because people outgrow each other.
I remember crying on the kitchen floor of my apartment, completely empty. I had nothing left to give that day. Not to my team, my clients, or even myself.
But I opened my laptop. I answered the urgent emails.
That was my best.
That moment taught me that sometimes, your best is messy, small, and invisible—but valid.
Today, “doing your best” has been commodified—sold to us in planners, journals, and productivity podcasts. But the real question isn’t how hard you push.
It’s how honestly you show up.
Photo by QuoteFancy
The nuance most people miss is that this principle only works when you’re honest about your capacity, and compassionate with yourself when it’s small.
This isn’t about avoiding accountability.
It’s about redefining excellence as presence, not perfection.
Doing your best doesn’t mean self-abandonment in service of someone else’s version of enough. It means staying present with yourself, especially when it’s uncomfortable.
Your Best, Reimagined
So the next time someone tells you to “just do your best,” don’t default to overextending.
Don’t perform. Pause.
Ask yourself:
What’s honest for me today?
What’s sustainable?
What’s real?
Maybe your best isn’t a performance.
Maybe it’s a quiet ritual between who you are and who you’re becoming.
Maybe it’s forgiving yourself for not hitting the mark and choosing to try again tomorrow.
Maybe it’s walking the dog instead of doomscrolling.
Maybe it’s writing something that helps one person feel a little less alone.
Now, I invite you to open your Notes app—or grab a piece of paper. Here’s your reflection prompt:
What does your best look like—not to your boss, not to Instagram, but to you, when no one’s watching?
Write it down.
Let it be small.
Let it be enough.
Let that be your compass.
Let it flow.
Keep growing,
Katrina
Fundamental of the Week #5: ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST
Develop the practice of doing your best each day. As it becomes a habit, what constitutes your best will change and improve over time.
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