Perfect is the enemy of Good. The Wikipedia article on the subject summarizes it much better than I ever could.
Quote
Perfect is the enemy of good is an aphorism which is commonly attributed to Voltaire, who quoted an Italian proverb in his Dictionnaire philosophique in 1770: "Il meglio è nemico del bene". It subsequently appeared in his moral poem, La Bégueule, which starts
Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.
(In his writings, a wise Italian
says that the best is the enemy of the good)
Aristotle, Confucius and other classical philosophers propounded the principle of the golden mean which counsels against extremism in general.
The Pareto principle or 80–20 rule explains this numerically. For example, it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort. Achieving absolute perfection may be impossible and so, as increasing effort results in diminishing returns, further activity becomes increasingly inefficient.
Its sense in English literature can be traced back to Shakespeare. In his tragedy, King Lear, the Duke of Albany warns of "striving to better, oft we mar what's well" and in Sonnet 103:
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
Watson-Watt, who developed early warning radar in Britain to counter the rapid growth of the Luftwaffe, propounded a "cult of the imperfect", which he stated as "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes." Economist George Stigler says that "If you never miss a plane, you're spending too much time at the airport."
Unquote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
We seem to go through life constantly waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect opportunity, the perfect project, the perfect ...
And end up missing on good and mostly great moments, opportunities, ... We spend too much time worrying about how whatever we're doing is just not good enough. And end up doing nothing. Thereby proving our initial assumption that "It wasn't good enough".
It makes great sense to do the exact opposite. I'm a fan of the Chesterton philosophy of "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
http://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/
And so if you think this article or the blog itself could be written much better, you're absolutely right. And as soon as you let me know how, I will definitely make it better.
But think about it. Had I not written this imperfect piece or had a blog at all, neither you nor I would have ever known how imperfect I was. And then I could never close the gap between perfect and imperfect.
Quote
Perfect is the enemy of good is an aphorism which is commonly attributed to Voltaire, who quoted an Italian proverb in his Dictionnaire philosophique in 1770: "Il meglio è nemico del bene". It subsequently appeared in his moral poem, La Bégueule, which starts
Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.
(In his writings, a wise Italian
says that the best is the enemy of the good)
Aristotle, Confucius and other classical philosophers propounded the principle of the golden mean which counsels against extremism in general.
The Pareto principle or 80–20 rule explains this numerically. For example, it commonly takes 20% of the full time to complete 80% of a task while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort. Achieving absolute perfection may be impossible and so, as increasing effort results in diminishing returns, further activity becomes increasingly inefficient.
Its sense in English literature can be traced back to Shakespeare. In his tragedy, King Lear, the Duke of Albany warns of "striving to better, oft we mar what's well" and in Sonnet 103:
Were it not sinful then, striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
Watson-Watt, who developed early warning radar in Britain to counter the rapid growth of the Luftwaffe, propounded a "cult of the imperfect", which he stated as "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes." Economist George Stigler says that "If you never miss a plane, you're spending too much time at the airport."
Unquote
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
We seem to go through life constantly waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect opportunity, the perfect project, the perfect ...
And end up missing on good and mostly great moments, opportunities, ... We spend too much time worrying about how whatever we're doing is just not good enough. And end up doing nothing. Thereby proving our initial assumption that "It wasn't good enough".
It makes great sense to do the exact opposite. I'm a fan of the Chesterton philosophy of "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
And so if you think this article or the blog itself could be written much better, you're absolutely right. And as soon as you let me know how, I will definitely make it better.
But think about it. Had I not written this imperfect piece or had a blog at all, neither you nor I would have ever known how imperfect I was. And then I could never close the gap between perfect and imperfect.
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