As I research savoury macarons for my husband’s 70th birthday, I find myself reflecting on why I’ve chosen such a technically challenging canapé.

The answer reveals a thread that runs through my entire life, connecting village flower shows to government digital services, and offering insights into how our psychological drivers shape our approach to work and life.

The relentless pursuit of the extraordinary

Most people would serve pâté on crackers and call it a day. I find myself testing recipes for lemon and black pepper macarons with a smoked salmon filling. It’s not because I have unlimited free time, but because I’m wired to pursue the difficult, the unusual and the impressive.

This isn’t a new pattern. At Cancer Research UK and the Cabinet Office, I usually did very well in office bakeoffs. In my Somerset village, I entered 25 categories in the local flower show, working through the night to perfect crafts I’d never attempted before – from pork pies to Scotch eggs – and winning the trophy for most points across all categories.

The common denominator isn’t the activity itself but the approach: identifying challenges others wouldn’t attempt, mastering them rapidly and achieving recognition for excellence.

Quick-study expertise: from accounting standards to AI

This same drive manifests professionally. Within three months of becoming launch editor of Director of Finance Online, despite no prior knowledge of accounting standards, I was quoted by the Wall Street Journal on international accounting standards.

More recently, I’ve been praised by content strategy pioneer Kristina Halvorson for my expertise in AI and content strategy, a field I only recently entered.

What connects these seemingly disparate achievements is not innate knowledge but a psychological approach: the determination to rapidly master complex domains and distinguish myself through exceptional performance.

Chaos as opportunity: thriving under pressure

During lockdown, working remotely from France, I delivered two counter-fraud SaaS tools for the Cabinet Office despite our team fluctuating dramatically from 9 to 56 people and back to 12 within three weeks due to shifting priorities and budgets.

The project won the “Game Changer” award in a hackathon judged by former Cabinet Office permanent secretary Sir John Manzoni and the tools were described by Downing Street as “star performers in the UK government’s Covid-19 response”.

For most, such volatility would be an excuse for failure. For the competitive perfectionist, it’s simply another challenge to overcome, another chance to prove exceptional capability under difficult circumstances.

The perfectionist’s dilemma in an MVP world

This psychology creates an interesting tension in today’s digital landscape, where the concept of the minimum viable product (MVP) reigns supreme. The ethos of “ship early, iterate often” fundamentally clashes with the perfectionist’s instinct to refine, polish and perfect before release.

Yet there’s a productive middle ground. The same competitive drive that pushes me to create perfect savoury macarons rather than serving shop-bought pâté can be channelled into creating MVPs that, while minimal, excel in their core functions.

The trick is recognising that perfectionism can be applied selectively, focusing intense effort on the elements that truly matter while accepting “good enough” for the rest. This targeted perfectionism may actually be more valuable than either unfocused excellence or uniform mediocrity.

Embracing vulnerability in content strategy

With time, I’ve also come to see the other side of competitive perfectionism. While it’s fueled many successes, it sometimes made me less attuned to the diverse ways people experience challenge and adversity.

There were moments – especially during high-pressure projects – when I realised that not everyone thrives on relentless standards and that vulnerability is not weakness, but a source of connection and understanding.

This realisation has deeply influenced my approach to content strategy. I’ve learned the importance of trauma-informed, vulnerability-aware communication, recognising that our audiences and colleagues bring their own histories, sensitivities and needs.

Creating space for vulnerability, both in myself and in others, has made my work more compassionate and effective.

By understanding my own drivers and learning to temper them with empathy, I’ve become more attuned to meeting people where they are, whether in my teams or in the content I help create.

In a world where digital services often reach people at their most vulnerable, this mindset shift has been as important as any technical skill I’ve acquired.

Understanding our drivers

This pattern of competitive perfectionism stems from childhood messages. My father insisted that my brother should only pursue activities where he could realistically become world-class. While potentially limiting in some ways, this mindset created a powerful drive to excel in any domain I enter.

Understanding this about myself has been transformative. It explains why I can’t simply serve shop-bought pâté on crackers, but also why I could deliver complex SaaS tools during a pandemic while managing dramatic team fluctuations.

This self-awareness doesn’t eliminate the drive, but it allows me to harness it productively, choosing where to deploy my perfectionist tendencies for maximum impact rather than being unconsciously driven by them across all domains.

The transferable mindset

Perhaps the most valuable insight from this reflection is the transferability of psychological approaches across domains. The same mindset that drives excellence in crafting savoury macarons or dominating village competitions can drive innovation in digital transformation when properly channelled.

In a business world obsessed with domain expertise and specialist knowledge, we often underestimate the power of transferable psychological attributes. The ability to rapidly master new domains, thrive under pressure, and drive for exceptional results may be more valuable than years of experience in a specific field.

As digital transformation continues to reshape industries, this adaptability becomes increasingly crucial. Today’s expertise may be obsolete tomorrow, but the psychological ability to quickly master new domains never loses its value.

Competitive perfectionism as a tool

As I perfect my savoury macaron recipes for my husband’s birthday, I’m conscious that I’m engaged in the same psychological process that has driven success throughout my career.

The connections between piping perfect macaron shells and delivering award-winning digital tools are more significant than they might initially appear.

By understanding our psychological drivers, we can deploy them strategically rather than being unconsciously driven by them.

For competitive perfectionists, this means choosing where excellence matters most, accepting “good enough” elsewhere, and recognising that our distinguishing characteristic isn’t what we know, but how we approach learning and mastery.

In both savoury macarons and digital transformation, the key isn’t starting with all the answers – it’s approaching the questions with the right mindset.