good vs. perfect?
Reading a friend’s blog post on throwing perfect parties (or not), i came across:
the gap between “good” and “perfect” isn’t much. One flawed particular, qualification, or requirement is enough to make a perfect thing, a good one.
If you want to succeed in most competitive challenges of today’s world, good is not enough. Usain Bolt wouldn’t capture the imagination of millions if he was just good. Beethoven’s piano sonatas wouldn’t last for centuries if they were just good.
So does this mean that we all need to be perfectionists?
Perfectionism, in psychology, is a belief that perfection can and should be attained. In its pathological form, perfectionism is a belief that work or output that is anything less than perfect is unacceptable. At such levels, this is considered an unhealthy belief, and psychologists typically refer to such individuals as maladaptive perfectionists. (wikipedia)
Not very healthy to be a perfectionists! so now what?
But let’s step back. What does it mean to be prefect? Is that a relative judgment or an absolute one? Can something that was prefect 100 years ago still be considered perfect? Is there really no room for the gymnast who scored a perfect 10 in past Olympics to do better?
I really think perfection is a moving target that is affected by our understanding of the space in which the work exists, the time it was produced, and even the resources/constraints that the performer had at the time of production. Of course, the efforts of other actors in the same era affect the perfection judgment significantly.
So how can we hit this moving target and join the greats? I think the healthy balance here is to strive for the perfect work or output (whatever it means to us at the time) but not to deem anything less unacceptable. Put the work out there. Get feedback and improve upon it. And repeat…. Just be conscious that there is always room for improvement, even if you can’t see it now.
This is one of the reasons why I love working in technology so much. The meaning of perfect in this field changes so quickly that you can’t escape seeing the moving target. What was a perfect web application 10 years ago now would seem so broken! And I am sure what we see as perfect today will feel broken in a couple of years. The challenge is to keep up with moving target and try to stay as close to it as possible all the time.
Now back to perfecting that simple web form!
