Voltaire wasn’t wrong when he said, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” The pursuit of perfection can stifle progress.
Perfection is impossible to achieve. What may be perfect to you may not be perfect to anyone else.
Recently we launched our new website. We should have gone live a few days sooner than we did, but we spent extra time tweaking content and graphics to get the best possible representation of what we do. On our planned launch date, the site was in great shape and it could have been published on time. Don’t misunderstand, I am not suggesting that we produce sub-par product; we would never do that. But how much did it matter whether we said “grow” or “expand”? Was the incremental (and subjective) improvement worth the few extra days that could’ve been devoted to working towards other goals?
In some cases, getting as close to perfection as possible is demanded. But in most cases, good enough may just be perfect.
Have a great weekend.
—Vijay
Sources:
Image retrieved from http://jasoneppink.com/on-good-enough-a-brief-treatise/.
About Friday Food for Thought (FFfT)
I frequently attend conferences and retreats on entrepreneurship and leadership and while I am away, the J2 team picks up the slack, allowing me to learn to be better at what I do. I wanted to share what I was learning with my team, so I created the weekly FFfT emails in November of 2015 and have been writing them ever since.
Before long, the J2 staff began sharing the FFfT emails with their friends and family and now other leaders have asked to be included, which led to the creation of this newsletter. I hope you enjoy!