Why does accepting good enough work feel like I don't care?

For you, accepting good-enough work, from yourself or your team, feels like a failure of caring. You have tied "adequate" to "did not try hard enough," so anything short of your best feels like a small moral failure. That is an exhausting standard to carry, and to place on others. But good enough is not the enemy of caring. Often it is the proof of wisdom, knowing where excellence matters and where it does not. Pouring maximum effort into everything is not high standards; it is an inability to prioritise. The people who do great work do not do everything greatly. They choose. Try naming, for one project, what "good enough" actually looks like, and then let it be finished when it reaches that line. Save your intensity for the few things that truly deserve it. Caring is not doing everything to the maximum. It is spending your care where it counts.