Perfection Is The Enemy Of Progress
Perfection is the enemy of progress. What is perfect anyway?
It is in your interest to avoid perfection whenever possible, a good enough solution that works, is immeasurably better than a perfect solution yet to be implemented. In your company and your life, good enough solutions should be prevalent. Good enough should be the dominant form of answer to your problems with the occasional perfect.
Your client does not give a damn if the problem of fitting servers in to your network operations centre is perfectly optimal with perfect wiring and perfect infrastructure. Your client does care if the presentation you just gave is not perfect, if the contract in front of them is not correct, if the marketing for the product launch is not wonderful, if the product is not remarkable. Pick your battles. Save perfect for when it really matters.
When you seek out a perfect solution to a problem, you are adding significant risk to a project, and quite often incurring a sizeable amount of delay as well. People who are self-described perfectionists slow down the progress of development. One perfectionist on a team of any size is bad, two or more and you will have endless discussions about the perfect solution to a problem.
For many, perfectionism is their manifestation of procrastination. Perfectionism allows you to opine the poor quality of the tools, the lack of necessary software, the imperfect lens on the camera, the light being all wrong, not having the appropriate programming language, the right keyboard, unable to find the precise shade or hue for the blog theme, the marginally uncomfortable chair THAT. WILL. NOT. QUITE. ADJUST. THE. WAY. YOU. WANT!
Perfectionists pick up on the slightest blemish or flaw that has anything to do with the project and then delay… and delay… and delay some more.
I have been the interviewer at many job interviews in my career and there are many ways for candidates to destroy their chances at being hired. When answering the question “So what do you consider your biggest flaw or weakness?” the response I do not want to hear is “I can be too much of a perfectionist.” Bang! Right there, the interview is over. I do not need you and I have no intention of expending company funds on your ego.
When you are developing a product, be it software or gadget, realise you will not get it even close to right the first time, you will not reach perfect the second time either. Great products take a decade or more to become great. Release now, worry about perfect later. Become as conscious as you can that to work towards perfection, however you define the parameters, takes a lot of energy and time and resources.
When I launched this blog, I knew it would not look perfect the first day, or even the first month. I could never hope on my launch day to have all of the bells and whistles that more established blogs possess. My blog would not even have 1% of the content of a more established blog.
It takes an inordinate amount of time to create enough content to have a long tail. It takes time to make the blog look visually appealing. It takes time to get all of the technical features implemented. I can spend time up front and delay the launch until everything is perfect or I can assume the time is going to pass so I might as well launch earlier. An earlier launch will garner some attention from early adopters willing to tolerate the rough edges whilst I work on improvements to the blog.
With digital product delivery such as software, audio or eBooks, the cost to iron out the rough spots is minimal. There is always time after launch to reach for perfection. If your product has the flexibility to evolve, let it.
When you attempt to make something perfect before you release it, you will realise that it is not perfect anyway. Once people start using your software or gadget or information, you will realise that your creation requires evolutionary refinement.
Get it done. Get it shipped. Get it out there. Fix it in post.