Early in my career, I almost burned myself out over a deadline that was impossible from day one.
We were in a big sales meeting about a multi-million dollar opportunity.
The prospect asked for a major new capability.
And the executive in charge, wanting to look like the hero, casually said:
“My team can build that in six weeks.”
There was no way.
There were compliance reviews to get through.
Dependencies on other groups.
Complex logic to design and implement.
But I was young.
I had survived a few layoffs.
I was eager to prove myself and just afraid enough to say, “Okay, I will make it happen.”
So I went all in.
Late nights.
Weekends.
Losing rollover vacation because I “couldn’t” take it.
Watching my own health and energy slide while telling myself, “This is what the company needs from me.”
Here is the part that still stings a bit:
It was never actually possible.
No amount of effort was going to fix the fact that the promise itself was wrong.
We were not just fighting a hard problem. We were fighting bad expectations.
And the people who made the promise did not step in.
They did not reset it.
They just let us grind ourselves down trying to make an unworkable commitment look plausible.
I ended that stretch exhausted and burned out.
Not because the work was hard, but because I did not have boundaries yet.
It took me a long time to learn this:
Not every problem needs to be solved immediately.
Not every deadline is reasonable just because someone important said it out loud.
And no one will protect your energy, time, or health for you if you do not do it first.
Some situations need clarity before action.
Some need patience.
Some need a hard “no.”
And some require walking away.
If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be this:
“There are very few things in this world that are actually hard.
Most of the time, you just have not found the right approach yet.
But no amount of approach will fix an impossible promise.”
What about you?
Have you ever pushed yourself to the edge over something that, in hindsight, was never realistically possible?