Doing things the way I want

At work, I used to feel a kind of aversion to "doing things the way I want."
It seemed self-righteous — selfish, as if I'd be dragging other people around.
Of course you still need to be careful not to become that person. But for me now, I've come to feel how necessary it is to do things the way I want.

All kinds of worries, in moment after moment, have been making my own work feel cramped.

Looking back on my career — including my current work — I feel I really wasted opportunities. I should have proceeded more rationally; put bluntly, more mechanically, as I intended.
Looking back, there was too much room for unnecessary "consideration."

As a reflection: I often assumed that if I gathered members with some expertise in each area, things would go better than thinking alone — or that certain preconditions simply couldn't be changed anymore.
Written abstractly like that, it sounds like "that's just your lack of ability" — and yes, that's fair; when I actually faced it, I wasn't handling it well.

Calling it last-man-ship might sound grandiose, but I feel I lacked the resolve from the start to decide and finish everything myself.
Because there were members more specialized than me in each area, I thought we could improve by aggregating their views and moving the project forward that way.

Consciously, I couldn't quite believe the policies I'd designed were closer to best practice than other people's experience. I lacked confidence. Maybe I was running away.

But once I commit and decide that I should drive everything that way, many cases start to resolve.
Until now, things often ended up provisionally left to others. That really isn't right.
It may sound arrogant, but I'm genuinely reflecting that I was at fault. I wasted time.

I'm finally starting to understand the role my current client's boss expects of me.

Because I half-left things to others, even when something didn't sit right, I often just sat with indigestion and leftover stress.
When I'm not doing things the way I want, freeriders and unnecessary interpersonal friction appear, and I get drained.
I may not have much ability, but at least I think with my own head. I just didn't trust myself.
The principle that "evaluation is done by others" doesn't change. But I've finally understood that doesn't mean "doing what I believe is right" is unnecessary.

Lately I've finally realized: I need to hold myself more accountable as a professional — I need to do things the way I think they should be done.