All the little choices I had to make—bottles, pacifiers, sleep training, going back to work, childcare, the list goes on—felt like some kind of an algorithm that added and deducted points, spitting out a calculated score on the Good Mom barometer. I was always tallying the score. And as a result I always felt anxious and guilty.

When I was first promoted to a management position, it wasn’t much different. I put so much pressure on myself to be a Good Manager—I wanted so badly to do right by my team. (None of us want to be one of those Bad Bosses, right?) But, like so many new managers, I was learning management skills on the fly. It was as new to me as changing diapers.