Maybe we don’t need to worry about perfection on everything and maybe 110% is too much.
Brittany introduces who she is—an Army veteran, sober, and a single/divorced mom—and sets up the talk by naming the core idea: giving 80% instead of 110%. She explains why this idea surprised her and why it's the focus of the talk.
She shares a therapist tip about 'guarding 20%' of your energy for when you get home and contrasts the cultural pressure to give 110% with the benefits of conserving energy so you have something left for loved ones and yourself.
Brittany discusses how self-improvement and perfectionism can be harmful, gives examples of variable daily capacity, and argues that imperfect effort (like 80% or 50%) is often better than not trying at all.
She gives everyday examples—cleaning, workouts, starting changes now, and email/tech boundaries—to show how fragmenting tasks and protecting time can make 80% achievable and sustainable.
Brittany emphasizes reserving energy for home interactions, lists common drains on energy (work, social media, responsibilities), and explains how protecting that 20% improves relationships and personal wellbeing.
She wraps up by urging viewers to prioritize how they feel over output, save energy for themselves and loved ones, and accept that some days will be 80%, 40%, or 100%; ends with a warm sign-off.
Hello, hi. My name is Brittany. I am an Army veteran. I am sober. I am a single mom. I'm A divorced mom. And I have, yeah, I guess mom would imply I have a kiddo. I'm also at my other work. I work in radio. I do a lot of things. That's why I like I really wanted to have this talk today, and it's called giving 80%. That's not usually the mantra, right? 80%, that's we give 110%, right? Especially ex-military. I want to talk to you about something my therapist told me that changed everything. I wasn't coming home with a lot of energy for my little one.
And I realized I can't go out and give 100% because then I have nothing for me. I have nothing for her. And she talked about guard 20% for you when you get home. So let yourself have a little bit of energy for when you get home. That blew my mind. And that kind of started my mantra. Give 80%. And again, counterintuitive for the world of Do, do, do, better, better, better, best, best, best, 1% better, 1% better. Excuse me, what do you have for the people that mean the most to you when you come home at the end of the day, when you're out in these streets giving 110%?
You don't have much for you and you don't have much for them. So 80% isn't necessarily lazy, but it might be sustainable. This one's gonna be a hard one. If any of my veterans are out there, I'd love you to write in, message me or all the things 'cause I know that I'm going against programming. I'm going against what we're told. That mission mentality is 110%. Everything, the mission will be completed. Period. Get it done. Push through, don't ever quit and don't let people down. Well, That's all well and dandy, but the reality of it is that's not exactly sustainable for years and years and years, especially when you want to be living a life that's full and that people want to be around you.
As an alcoholic in recovery, we also turn to self-improvement into another place where we feel like we have to perform that perfectly. that's a lot, right? I know. So some days, Some days we can do that 100%. Some days we can do 40%. And comparably then, 80% sounds fabulous, does it not? 80% can be a damn good day, y'all. And that's why in a world that's begging you to bleed out for everybody, I think we need to change that 110% to let's give 80%. Life is not one big giant mission. And we have to enjoy what we're doing and going home at the end of every day.
And maybe that is your way of I gave it all and I get home, I pass out. But I have a feeling that a lot of you want to interact with your loved ones, want to have a little bit of a comfort zone for yourself, want to have some energy for yourself. And another example of why I think sometimes telling somebody like, hey, 80% is great. Hey, 50% is great. Because sometimes people, like for example, these live streams, I remember being really nervous to go on my first one because I was like, I have to be perfect, which is not on brand for me.
I don't know. It's not like anything about me that is perfect. Is like, I'm not going to start this until I'm perfect. And I think a lot of people hold back on doing things because they want to be perfect. And it's like, if that's what's holding you back, then you need to have the mantra. Let's do 80%. Maybe it's something like cleaning the house. You're somebody like me. To clean the house, you have to buffer out like 2 to 3 hours because you're chaotic and that's just what you do. But maybe Maybe we don't.
Maybe we take 40 minutes to clean a closet and go, that's 5% of what I wanna get done. When you wanna do something for our diet or exercise, we go, I have to go, every day I have to do an hour. No, every day you don't have to do an hour. You can start right now with whatever change you wanna make. Sobriety, I mean, Do what you can. Start now instead of waiting after the holidays or after this. I'm going to fail here. I'm going to fail there. Why don't you just go in and try and know that the mental health, I need to see my therapist this much.
I need to whatever. Start now and don't let perfection get in the way. I need to completely fix my finances. This is 1 I suffer from because it's like, if I don't budget on every aspect, screw it. And then let's just dump money everywhere. I remember when I first did my first like big house project and it costed way more than I thought. So it was like, the floodgates are open. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And I'm like dropping money here and there because like, you know, I wasn't perfect. So then why not spend a bunch of money?
And that's not a good mentality to have. Again, like clean one room. Go for a walk. Choose whatever diet or whatever, I don't know, diet's the wrong word. If you're looking to change, some health thing you wanna do is add a GD carrot to the mix. You know, your mental health, make one appointment today. Make one appointment. You can have time for one appointment this month. The finances thing, I don't, find one night where you can eat at home or not buy a sale or wait a day before you buy something.
That usually fixes my big problems. That's a hot tip. If you really want to buy something, give it 24 hours. And if you still want to buy it, then maybe you can let yourself. But a lot of times that will kind of dissipate. Done imperfectly is better than not trying to do the thing because you're intimidated by perfection. So 80% sometimes can get you moving. That mantra sometimes gets me moving. Sometimes I'm a real 20% girl. And I'll say, we're not getting a full walk in, doggos, because I got two.
We're going around the block. And like, that starts something in you. That initiates something. And that can help A lot. Now, this is my favorite part for you guys. It's that guarding 20%. because at the end of the day, you're... spreading yourself out throughout the whole week. I mean, I know that. I'm at work doing a live stream. If anybody understands you give a lot and can spread yourself thin, it's me. And my therapist said, you need to start guarding 20% for when you get home. You can't come home spent.
You have a four year old. She looks to you. She wants interaction. You can't check out at 630 when you get home. put on a show, you don't feel good about doing that. You have somebody who wants a call and response, wants to talk to you at dinner. So think about that. You got your coworkers, they get a chunk of your energy, time. Your job gets a lot of you. The public gets some of you. People interacting responsibilities gets some of you. Health and fitness, if you're a workout person, that gets a big chunk of energy.
Whatever drama is happening on your group chat, that probably gets some too. Your family and loved ones deserve a version of you that still has something left, that isn't drained completely. And you deserve some of that 20% too, doll. You deserve that buffering as well. At the end of the day, we can easily forget that we want to be amazing for everybody and give that 100%. And all of a sudden, the people that we love the most, like my four-year-old, my mom, my sister, They get the worst versions of us.
And I don't want that. And like, I even sometimes give myself the worst version of myself. Boo, boo earns, like that's not a vibe. So I think it's really important to look at that and go, is it sustainable or is this the life I want is that I come home drained because I'm, killing it at work. The reality of it is you can still kill it at work at 80%. Trust me, I should know. So what does 80% actually look like? Let's talk about that. Asking what is enough for today? What's the actual benchmark? What's the actual goal?
That's so important because sometimes we like make them up. We're like, well, you know, if I do this and this for work. But what are they actually asking of us? Right? My job is to make a three hour radio show and make interesting content. And I've decided then what to also make 6 videos that day or help somebody out here or there. The reality of it is what my job expects of me is to make a radio show. You know, there's not much more than that. choosing the important things instead of everything.
Not everything can be A1. You know, if you do a priority list, you can't have five A1s, you can't, because then they're not A1s. There are a big part of technology that's great, Avi, I'm doing that right now with you, I'm chatting you guys up, but the reality of it is, is like sometimes The nice thing about technology is it can wait. Emails can wait. You do a chunk of emails a day. It doesn't mean you have to go home and do more emails. Like if you're at a place, set that boundary, that expectation.
You shouldn't be constantly on and interact. I mean, that's just not sustainable again. Not making every workout a personal record. This one is for me. I love seeing weights go up, times get shorter, runs get harder. But the reality of it is, is like my body really doesn't change that much with all that. My mental health does because that's how I cope, but we're working on that. Not every run, every lift, every workout class, you don't, You're having an off day and maybe giving yourself, like, I've got this cold.
So I've been pulling back working out and I'm like embarrassed sometimes because I'm like, oh my God, I can only lift this, but who the frick cares? I promise you, nobody actually cares. And you know, I mean, finding times to use your finances to make sense. If you're struggling and you get home and dinner's been this big thing, Grab to go, you know? Like, I think that's super important. Like, those are the times where you go, listen, I wanna lock in with my kiddo at home, so it's like, I think that's super, those times where you go, I need to let myself be done with the cooking or being done, take a chunk of your day out.
This is so important too, and this is that 20% you're gonna leave for yourself at home, go to bed. I know. And that's a hard one for me because I want to watch one more show, do one more workout, read one more book. Okay, not like a book, put a chapter. Just go to bed. Hey, you didn't squeeze yourself to 100% that day. That's fine. Go to bed. Verbally saying out loud, I did enough today. I did enough today. I Did enough. I can be done today. Check out. Lights off. Love that. 80% doesn't mean you don't care.
It means you're actually planning for the future that you can do something sustainable for a long time. So you're going to be, you're a marathoner, right? 2 miles. Just spread it out. It doesn't mean you don't care about today. It means I care about tomorrow. It's kind of cool, right? In closing, what if we thought about ourselves differently, not about our output, but about how we feel and like how we're treating ourselves and our loved ones when we come home? And I think that's super important Save some of that energy for the people you love the most, the people you live with.
Save some for another person you should be loving the most. You guessed it, Davis, I feel like you know this one. You, yourself. Give a little energy to yourself. I think that's important too. Sometimes 80% is discipline, sometimes 80% is self-care, and sometimes 80% is the reason you have enough left at home to be delightful. And like, Don't understand being delightful at home. Listen, I know it's a place where we recharge and we take the mask off, but I'm telling you, if you think back in your memory to when you'd visit friends' houses and the parents that were delightful and the parents that were stressed, think about those houses, what a difference they are.
The person who has a delightful parent might not even have the nicest house, but you wanna go to that house. You have good memories of that house. The person who's like the stressed, they might have a freaking pool, but their parents are stressed and that takes every molecule of fun and just, boop, gone. So like think about the person you wanna be when you go home to your loved ones and you wanna be to yourself. And that's why sometimes a day, Give 80%, sometimes 40. Today I'm feeling like a real 75 girl.
I hope you're taking care of yourself and your loved ones. And Davis, thanks for hanging out with me. I appreciate it. Have a great day because it's only two. I was going to say night. All right, I'm leaving you now. Bye.
