[grepLeigh]

"Give yourself permission" here means acknowledging you're doing a "good enough" job (for now) instead of a "perfect" job, and not beating yourself up about it in the short term. The Wiki article on self-compassion [1] has more context on the therapeutic value of practicing self-compassion and the impact on measurements of life satisfaction/happiness, curiosity, resilience, etc.

Depending on the task/behavior, you may carry the same attitude into the medium/long term, OR figure out how to course-correct medium/long term to align with your values. E.g., if one of your core values is militant conservation of water, either because it's expensive or one of the disappearing resources on Earth, you might strategize ways to conserve your energy to do the best possible dishwasher-loading job every day. That's what I was getting at when I said these type of tasks are "microcosms" because sometimes they reveal misalignment of values.

Why do you say "therapist" here (with the air quotes)?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-compassion

[amanaplanacanal]

You are being incredibly judgemental about people you don't even know.