Season 4, Episode 4: High-achiever mindset - Productivity, perfectionism, and emotional health
What if your worth isn’t measured by your productivity? So many of us move through life chasing the next milestone — the next promotion, the next goal, the next improvement — believing that if we just achieve a little more, we’ll finally feel like enough. But that constant striving often comes at a cost.
In this conversation, we talk with registered psychologist, Lisa McIsaac about how perfectionism and productivity culture shape the way we see ourselves. Larn how the drive to always perform can fuel burnout, anxiety, dissatisfaction, and tension in relationships — and why the bar for “enough” keeps moving no matter how much you accomplish.
Lisa shares practical ways to begin shifting your mindset, including:
How to recognize when your self-worth is tied to achievement
Where perfectionistic patterns often begin
Why progress matters more than perfection
Simple ways to celebrate what you’ve done instead of focusing on what you haven’t
How to practice rest and self-compassion without feeling guilty
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Katherine Hurtig
Welcome to Living Fully. Each episode is a chance to talk about mental health in a way that's simple, honest, and helpful. We'll share stories, tips, and tools to help you feel supported and feel your best. I'm your host, Katherine Hurtig.
In today's episode, we're talking about the drive to always be achieving, the pull towards perfection, and the pressure so many of us feel to constantly perform. I sit down with counsellor Lisa McIsaac to explore how these patterns show up in our lives, how they affect our mental health and relationships, and what it looks like to choose progress and self-compassion over perfection.
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All right. Lisa McIsaac, thanks for joining me today.
Lisa McIsaac
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always great to talk to you, Katherine.
Katherine Hurtig
Thank you. And today we're talking about productivity, perfectionism, you know, how these things can kind of impact our mental health. I think a lot of us, I mean, me included, we kind of grow up with this idea that our value and that our worth, it comes from, what we achieve, our outputs. Where do you see that belief showing up most in your work with clients?
Lisa McIsaac
It's a great question. It shows up quite frequently. And I would say, especially in today's culture, there's a lot of pressure put on people and their performance. And I feel like that's kind of exploded. So people will often show up with issues pertaining to dissatisfaction or depression or just overall general sense of unwellness or maybe problems in their interpersonal relationships. But when you really delve down into the problem, you find out that, there's a high drive towards productivity and perfectionism. And it makes it really impossible for people to find fulfillment in their lives when they're constantly chasing and never really stopping to appreciate their accomplishments.
Katherine Hurtig
I know, because that's not really what what we're told to do, not like, look at all you've done. It's like, no, keep growing, keep building, keep changing, you know?
Lisa McIsaac
Yeah, you're constantly striving.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about what I see on social media. It's always, what can you do different to be better, not like, part of capitalism, right? Like, how can we sell you something to…
Lisa McIsaac
Make you out more.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
And you bring up a really good point when you talk about social media. Because when I was growing up, there was no social media. So there wasn't A-frame of reference for that constant comparison or that upselling, if you will, for a better lifestyle or a better look or a better product or being more accomplished. You know, like you had your communities and your people around you that you could compare yourself to, but for the most part, it was just different.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
And now social media is constantly in people's faces and you're seeing what other people are doing and experiencing and then it makes people feel like they're missing out. I guess that FOMO.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, it's hard. With your clients, like what language do you hear people use that their self-worth might be tied to productivity or their work or things like that.
Lisa McIsaac
The whole concept of not enough, right? So I feel like I'm not enough. I feel like... I don't know where I'm going. that sense of not having clear goals or direction or a lack of satisfaction, lack of well-being.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, that would all be really common. I mean, I know I've definitely struggled with thoughts of that, of not being enough, not performing enough, not working hard enough.
Lisa McIsaac
I think most of us do nowadays. And I mean, not to belabor the whole COVID experience, but I think that magnified the problem.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
Because most of us moved to a virtual environment. And then the expectation in that environment was that we were always available and that we were always on.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, you can work anywhere.
Lisa McIsaac
Yeah. And I think it's unnatural for us to always be on and always be available.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, definitely. And Lisa, what does it actually cost us? So when we think that we're only as good as what we're producing, What does that cost us emotionally, mentally?
Lisa McIsaac
I think the cost is huge. If you fast forward to the end of your life, for example, and you think about what's on your epitaph, or if you're at the end of your life looking back, what mattered, it probably wouldn't be your productivity or your work. So what it's costing us is really appreciating the value of the meaning and purpose of our lives and the value of our relationships and enjoying and experiencing this thing that we call life and why we're here to begin with.
Katherine Hurtig
So how does burnout and anxiety kind of play into these ideas as well?
Lisa McIsaac
In my work, I've experienced a lot of clients who have job dissatisfaction, stress at work, what they perceive as toxicity in the workplace, and burnout ultimately. And I think that is a pretty strong indicator that our work environments have changed and that people feel like they have to be high performing to be successful. And yet, no matter how much they're producing, they feel like they can't keep up and they're dissatisfied. So that constant expectation to perform, right? People feel like, there's no, there's just no ceiling on that.
Katherine Hurtig
You mentioned something about this in the beginning, but how does this kind of mindset, how can it potentially impact someone's relationships with friends, partners, family?
Lisa McIsaac
If you have an ideal about perfectionism and you think that that's the expectation that you set for yourself, that gets projected onto other people in your relationships. So if people see you performing and thinking that excellence is the only thing that's good enough, then how do people around you feel? Right? Like how do they measure their own performance? And especially if they don't value those same things. So you can inadvertently be projecting that onto the people around you, that your expectation is for them to excel at everything and anything less than that is not enough.
Katherine Hurtig
Right. Well, it can be like a mindset and a behavior that that you take not only into your professional life, but relationships as well. Like I definitely struggled with that, not just the beginning of my relationship with my husband, but well into it where it's like, yeah, this feeling of like, I need to be perfect, And yeah, that can put strains on things.
Lisa McIsaac
And the reality is most of us who strive for higher education have perfectionist tendencies.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
Because there is something that indicates a level of high productivity and performance just by the very nature and design of that. When I was in my master's program, I had a professor who worked with the Canadian Olympic team, and she brought in a presentation on perfectionism that we were all delighted to see, but at the time was really about us, and that was the purpose and her delivering it to us, because we all had an inclination I guess, towards perfectionism. And one of the things that she taught us and that I took away from that, which I will probably never forget, she said, what's the difference between somebody striving for perfectionism, like a 4.0 GPA versus somebody who... who might just be getting through their program with a 3.0, let's say, which is still pretty good. And went on to explain to us was the difference is, we come out with the same credentials, with the same employment opportunities, except the person with the lower GPA probably had more fun while they were attending school. And those of us that were perfectionists were probably stressed out. And she wasn't wrong. Nobody ever asks you what your GPA was.
Katherine Hurtig
I know, hey, yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
So it's really, it really is about mindset.
Katherine Hurtig
And so how do we go about shifting this? If this is resonating to someone that's listening, like, okay, yeah, I'm definitely a perfectionist. I'm, you know, I need to work this hard. I need to perform this much in order to feel like a good person or like that I'm worthy. What reflections do we need to have about ourselves? Like, what's the process?
Lisa McIsaac
Well, I think it's helpful to unpack where we learn those value systems to begin with.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
Sometimes children learn that because their parents are high performing and have tendencies toward perfectionism. So they may have learned in their childhood that productivity was, you know, equaled praise. So unpacking some of that and recognizing, well, what was missing, right? What didn't you get? Or what do you wish that you had more of? Because if a person can identify some of those things, then they can start creating opportunities for that in their own life or to show up differently, right? And not repeat those patterns. I think the other important thing to focus on is progress over perfection.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Lisa McIsaac
So are you making progress? And what does progress look like? Because sometimes it's maybe about the growth edge. Like how are you growing? Whereas performing isn't always about growth. right? Like you can have high productivity, but maybe you're not growing. You're just kind of staying the same. And something I often talk to my clients about is about celebrating accomplishments, right? So what did you do today? What did you accomplish today? And what did you celebrate today?
Katherine Hurtig
And focusing more on that instead of what you haven't. Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
That's right. So being in the moment, right? So if you're building a house, you know, you can celebrate the foundation, right? And the fact that you're making progress and moving towards that goal versus waiting until you have the full product to be able to fully enjoy it.
Katherine Hurtig
I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, so I apologize if this is repetitive for anyone. So I got into running a few years ago and it's honestly like taught me so many things about mental health, and when you were talking about progress over perfection, that really resonated. There are so many days where it's like, that was a really bad run. That was really hard. I was a lot slower than I wanted to be. But it doesn't take away from the fact that's still building my stamina. It's still an improvement. It's still like, you know, it's just one piece of the whole training plan kind of thing. Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
It's about showing up.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
Or celebrating what happened and not focusing on what didn't happen, right? So I ran today, not, I didn't run at my best today. You know, that perception and that focus, really makes a difference. Also, what happens when people focus on excellence and perfectionism, like the target keeps moving. So like the bar keeps moving. If you go back to your running example, like maybe your timing, your run and your distance. And if you don't have a perfect day, you could beat yourself up over the time or the distance instead of celebrating the fact that you got out and you did it. Maybe you were a little off that day, maybe you were a little tired, maybe you were sick and you did it anyway. Like that's amazing. But also, if you're hitting your time and you're hitting your distance, you're probably going to want to reduce your time and increase your distance, right? Yeah, so that's what perfectionism does. The bar keeps moving, and what happens when the bar keeps moving is that... Our satisfaction doesn't improve or increase, right? Our expectation just keeps increasing and that creates neuroticism. Like it just makes people neurotic because you're never satisfied with the outcome. You just keep moving the target.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. We can do the work on ourselves to try to have a different mindset and to focus more on the whole journey and not just these outcomes. But, what if we're surrounded by others who really value that perfectionism? I'm thinking like, if you have a boss that is, really drills that into you, that it's just more and more, better, better. Or, a partner who thinks that way. Does that make sense?
Lisa McIsaac
Yeah, it does. It makes perfect sense. It's challenging and hard because we don't always have control over our environment.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, like we can control what we do and how we react. We can't control anyone else.
Lisa McIsaac
And that really contributes to stress and burnout, you know, in people's careers nowadays because there does seem to be a stronger emphasis on productivity and people can't always control the demands and the expectations that are outside of them, whether it's your boss or your partner. But some of the things that people can do is they can set their own expectations for themselves. They can be a stronger self-advocate. They can do research. They can present to their boss their rationale for their boundaries or limitations or behaviors. You have to ask yourself, is the cost of doing business too high? Is this the right place for me? Is this the right partnership? And those are hard questions. At the end of the day, we have to do what's right for us. And those things can be hard to navigate, but there's always options.
Katherine Hurtig
So what are some practices or tools or homework that you give clients who might be dealing with the things, some of the things that we've been talking about?
Lisa McIsaac
It really depends on the person in front of me. Oftentimes I will say to people, when was the last time you made a mental inventory of the things that you've accomplished in your life? And usually the answer is, I've never done that.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
So I will often ask people to make a mental inventory of the things that they've accomplished in their life. Like what are the things that you do well? What are the things that you have accomplished? When is the last time you celebrated those successes? How can we set you up for success so that you can take time every day to think about your intentions for that day and to celebrate your successes? If you have priorities, write them down, write the most important priorities in bigger letters, and when you accomplish those goals or those tasks, scratch them off. And always do the most important things first because they're in the bigger letters. So you'll see that and that'll be what stands out is what you accomplished and not what you didn't accomplish.
Katherine Hurtig
Love a checklist.
Lisa McIsaac
Yeah. And it's always a good idea too to scratch off today's list, what you didn't do today and put it on tomorrow's list. It's a visual. So then if you scratch it off, it’s not going to be standing out and glaring at you.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
That you didn't accomplish it. You're going to scratch it off and put it on tomorrow's list. So it's not that you didn't accomplish it today, it's that it's now tomorrow's work.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, I like that. So for someone who is, a high performer, driven that way, I'm assuming like the idea of rest can be difficult. It feels unproductive. There can be a sense of guilt around that. Can you talk a bit about this?
Lisa McIsaac
Yeah. So retraining yourself to learn how to relax, like learn how to slow down, find ways to have balance in your life and structure your time differently. I've heard people say, oh, I don't know how to slow down. I don't know how to stop moving. And that is relatable to me. I mean, my own kids have said that to me, that I'm more active or more productive than they are. And when they say that, that's kind of a warning sign to me. It's like, oh, I need to reevaluate. I need to take a look at my own life. So asking yourself, how can I insert self-care?
Katherine Hurtig
Okay.
Lisa McIsaac
You know, when am I taking moments for quiet reflection? You know, how can I slow down? What are some things that I can do? Can I go for a walk even 20 minutes without my phone, without music, without a podcast? You know, just listen to the natural sounds around me, you know, feel the sun and be present.
Katherine Hurtig
I'm definitely trying to be more intentional with that. Like, I find, I always have to have, I always have to be consuming something like a podcast on the way to work, or even if I'm just doing housework, I'm having like a show on in the background. But yeah, having those intentional moments of really disconnecting and not being fed anything in the ears, and just to listening to what's around you. Yeah, I think that's important.
Lisa McIsaac
Well, it's really easy to become habitual. And I think we've become habitual with technology. So it's important to go back and create habits where we're just mindful and present, focused, you know, and I don't mean focused in the productivity way. I mean, kind of focused on what's going on in our body.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
What do we need right now? If you need Sleep, sleep, get outside, disconnect from your phone, practice being mindful, practice paying attention to your own body's noises and sounds, right? And when I say that, I don't necessarily mean like... Audible sounds, I just mean, whatever it is that you intuitively sense and feel that you need. And being connected to other people, making time for other people and making sure that you don't have any distraction or thinking, when's the last time that I did an act of self-care or had a massage or did something that I really value that has no external value. Just something intrinsic to you.
Katherine Hurtig
Lisa, does self-compassion play into this at all? Like as you're working on your perfectionism, if you're practicing self-compassion, would it kind of feel like lowering your standards? Does that make sense?
Lisa McIsaac
I would say 100% self-compassion comes into play. For most people who are perfectionists, I think they lack self-compassion. They lack the ability to practice self-care and to be kind to themselves. I mean, in a sense, it's almost self-abusive to be constantly grinding and never giving yourself any relief or reprieve. So if you think about somebody who is very dictatorial or demanding or militant, for example, it doesn't paint a pretty picture in your head about that. But that's almost what you're like in relationship with yourself, right? Like you're just constantly placing unrealistic demands on yourself without any reprieve. So there in of itself, that is a lack of self-compassion.
Katherine Hurtig
In your work with clients around these topics, after they've worked with you, what have they noticed? Like what's changed? What has improved for them? How do they approach things differently?
Lisa McIsaac
The biggest shift would be perhaps learning how to be softer and gentler with themselves. So more self-accepting, increased awareness around some of the values and belief systems that may have been instilled in them, without them really being conscientious about it. So doing without really being aware of how those belief systems came into play. I think that there's a degree of self-awareness and insight that needs to happen for people to be able to shift their perspective and to want different things for themselves and see the value in it. Because nobody's really going to buy into anything if they don't see the value in it. So you have to see the value in happiness and in choosing happiness and choosing balance and understanding that your performance and productivity isn't the be-all, end-all in your life. It's not everything.
Katherine Hurtig
I would imagine that if that belief, though, is so ingrained that it can be difficult, it can be quite the challenge to make that change, to shift to a more balanced view.
Lisa McIsaac
It's like anything in life, really. I mean, when you want to adopt a change, you have to have a sense, a desire and a willingness to do things differently. So when you can draw the connection between a person's lack of fulfillment and their current behavior, then it's easy to start shifting that perspective and say, well, what would be different in your life if this were to change?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
So some of the ways that I will do that with people is instead of belaboring, you know, what they're currently doing is I might shift the focus to say, hey, what would your life look like five years from now if nothing changed? You know, if you kept doing what you're doing, how do you see your life five years from now? And I mean, I think that's pretty evident for most people. If they don't do anything different and they're not happy, they're probably not going to be happy five years from now. It's probably going to be worse, right?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Lisa McIsaac
And then if you ask them, what would your life look like five years from now if you were happy and if things were going really well and what would be different? And initially, when you start those conversations with people, they're a little bit apprehensive. and not entirely sure, but what you start unpacking is not doing what they're currently doing. And it starts opening the door on a new perspective and incorporating small changes into their life that can start movement towards that. And that usually means something that's more fulfilling and something that can generate happiness.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. What tends to come up for people when, someone who is a perfectionist, high achiever, what tends to come up when structure is, suddenly removed? That could be like, job loss or injury or retirement, things like that.
Lisa McIsaac
Fear would be the first thing that would probably pop up. Fear of failure, not knowing. If you think about perfectionism, The word omnipotence comes to mind, being all-knowing. You feel like you always have to have the answer. You always need to know what's going to happen.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, prepared for everything.
Lisa McIsaac
Or what the outcome's going to be. So if all of a sudden you don't know, there's that fear, right? Fear of not knowing, fear of failure. It's also an opportunity. It's an opportunity to lean into that and to discover, you know, what potential options could be there that you hadn't considered before.
Katherine Hurtig
And yeah, that's the difference. Hey, it's the mindset and kind of how we choose to think about situation.
Lisa McIsaac
Yeah, exactly.
Katherine Hurtig
If productivity isn't the measure of worth, what can success do? look like instead.
Lisa McIsaac
Think about holistically the bigger picture. Again, if you fast forward to the end of your life, looking back, you know, what do you think most people would value at the end of their life? Is it their work and their career? Or is it their relationships, the connections that they have with people? Is it the contributions that they made to other people's lives or to their community? Like what is it that a person would really value at the end of their life? Have conversations with older people. Ask them what they wish they had done differently.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. And yeah, I doubt many of them are going to say that they wish they worked harder.
Lisa McIsaac
No. And I think as you get older and is that as people get older, they tend to put less pressure on productivity and they tend to be more satisfied and more at ease. And for some of those reasons, they start realizing that where they put their emphasis and their energy was misplaced.
Katherine Hurtig
So if someone's listening to this right now and they're kind of realizing that they're worth it, that they really are tying it to what they put out there, to their productivity, to what they achieve. What's one small thing that you'd suggest they start with right now?
Lisa McIsaac
I think turning inward and thinking, how do you want to show up? Right? Like what kind of person do you want to be? And how do you want to be remembered? Is your decision making and your performance actually congruent with how you want to move through the world. Are you leaving the footprint that you want to leave? And do you like who you see in the mirror?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Hard reflections, but important for sure.
Lisa McIsaac
Yeah, I think so.
Katherine Hurtig
Thank you so much, Lisa.
Lisa McIsaac
Oh, thanks, Katherine. It's always a pleasure.
Katherine Hurtig
You've been listening to Living Fully, a Calgary Counselling Centre podcast. Thank you for tuning in. This episode was produced by Luiza Campos, Manuel Montano, Jenna Forbes, and by me, Katherine Hurtig. A special thanks to Lisa McIsaac. Tune in to our next episode on March 10th. We'll be talking to counsellor Joel Zimmerman about how laughter and having a sense of humor actually support our mental health.
Joel Zimmerman
Well, it's a both and perspective. This both sucks and we can talk about it or we can be okay about it. And one of the ways that we can talk about it, like I say, is through humor, seeing the levity in a difficult situation, seeing the irony, seeing the contradiction. And that's, I think, one of the things that humor does is, you know, it reframes without denying. It allows us to have both be in two places at once. It provides the ability to have some control.
Katherine Hurtig
To stay up to date on our latest episodes, be sure to subscribe. We're available in your favorite podcast app. Living Fully is a production of Calgary Counselling Centre and recorded in Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. Living Fully podcast is not a substitute or alternative for professional care or treatment. Calgary Counselling Centre and Counselling Alberta provide effective counselling to anyone in Alberta with no wait list and no financial barriers. Find us online at calgarycounselling.com and counsellingalberta.com. For help across Canada and the United States, call 211. If you are outside of Canada and the U.S., seek help from your general medical practitioner.