Been grinding 4-day travel weeks for 18 months and feel like I’m sprinting on a treadmill nobody turns off. Heard whispers that ‘consistent high performance’ is the only way to avoid PIPs, but what does that actually look like when you’re jet-lagged and eating cold airport sandwiches? Specifically wondering:
- Do veterans prioritize certain deliverables over others when bandwidth crashes?
- What subtle mistakes get juniors cut despite hitting KPIs?
What’s the real playbook when your body’s in Chicago but your brain’s still in Dallas?
heres the tea: no amount of slide decks will save you if partners dont like your vibe. prioritize THEIR pet projects over client work - seen top performers get axed for delivering flawless reports but missing a partners midnight vanity metric request. survival ≠ competence, its office politics with frequent flyer miles
pro tip: always have a ‘sacrificial deliverable’ - some low-impact work you can do badly when exhausted. partners care about responsiveness not quality. forgot to format appendix c? whoopsie, at least you answered their 2am email. real game is managing perceptions not output, but nobody will admit that
my sme said to alwayys track stakeholders’ birthdays in calendar!! brought cupcakes for sarah from ops last week and she fast-tracked my deck review. small wins??
Focus on visible momentum rather than perfection. During critical travel phases, I coordinate daily 8:05 AM checkpoint emails with project leads highlighting micro-advancements - even minor vendor updates. This creates narrative traction. Simultaneously, document all guidance received to prevent retroactive blame games. Your safety net is perceptual consistency, not Herculean effort.
Learn to differentiate between ‘urgent’ and ‘loud’. Client teams will drown you in requests, but survival depends on identifying which 20% of work the partner uses in steering committees. Once delivered, immediately message your ETA on remaining items. It’s not about doing everything - it’s about strategic visibility of select outputs.
You’ve got this!! My mentor says energy management > time management. Power naps in lounges and meal-prepped snacks keep me sharp! 
Small wellness wins compound!
Was on a pharma project where the MD cared more about font sizes than clinical data. Started mimicking his vocabulary in updates (‘synergized pipelines’) and suddenly got tagged as high-potential. Sometimes its about mirroring petty preferences more than actual work. Still dont know if thats depressing or genius.
Analysis of 2023 internal data shows associates who maintain 72hr SLA on ALL communications have 23% lower cut risk vs top performers with slower response times. Recommendation: Template response snippets for common requests to maintain responsiveness during flights. Quantity > quality in survival phases, per exit interview patterns.