The Good Enemy of Perfect Enough

There is a saying out there that takes the form of something like: “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough.” From my interpretation, it tends to mean that you should not let the desire to make something perfect prevent you from finishing it, or sometimes cause you to not start it at all!

I think it is really good advice. Unfortunately I frequently don’t listen to it.

The blog posts you haven’t seen

I have a number of half drafted posts, or even just ideas for posts, that have not made it on to this blog. Many times, they don’t make it because they’re more like tutorials, and I don’t always finish the thing I’d want to write about. But other times, they’re posts about thoughts or ideas, like this one.

Except they never get finished.

Instead, I tend to get the thought “Oh, this is a good thought, but you should really think through every case and caveat and potential counter point before you write it.” And that’s the moment when my perfect prevents my good enough from happening.

Though, there’s certainly something to be said about not researching a post at all, or not thinking things through enough. And that can be a bad failure case. But that feels like a separate problem, more applicable for those who are already comfortable releasing their work at a regular cadence, even if it doesn’t feel perfect to them.

Okay so

To try and help get more posts from “they need to be perfect” to “they should get done”, I’m currently doing an iron blogger challenge with a number of other folks. It has been extremely helpful in getting “good enough” posts out (like this one!), because I have to post regularly. In fact, I only came up with the idea for this today, while talking with someone about what I would have to write about tonight.

So, while this post might not actually be “good enough”, it does exist! Which is more than the other posts can say, as they wait around for me to try and make them perfect.