Why we continue to work late even when we want to go see the ponies

You can see the whole article at Rich Horton's blog the bit that resonated for me was

You should also ask yourself whether the standards which you set yourself are driven by objective, external standards (e.g. the customer wants it engineered to this tolerance) or unrealistic, internal standards (i.e. perfectionism) which you actually have a choice over. We’ll cover ‘perfectionism’ more fully in a future blog, however, just be aware for now that perfectionism can be highly counterproductive. Someone has said ‘The world does not reward perfectionism. It rewards productivity. And perfectionism reduces productivity. You can’t be productive if you’re trying to be perfect’ (see here).

Finally, we can fall prey to the ‘poor me’ syndrome. We like to tell everyone how busy and rushed-off-our-feet we are but what we really want is an ‘emotional stroke’ from someone. ‘Look at poor old me, give me some sympathy’. Remember the ‘Victim’ in our ‘Drama Triangle’. Instead of taking responsibility for the situation and seeking out a solution, we just seek a bit of ‘tea and sympathy’ which simply reinforces our predicament.