Perfect Is The Enemy Of Good — Decoding Perfection With Pareto’s Principle
Aiming for perfection can affect your productivity
Let me put the above mentioned Voltaire’s quote this way — Done is better than perfect. Voltaire clearly figured it out 200 years ago.
Perfection is an excuse
And I have been one of the victims. Procrastinating the task because you don’t have a perfect idea. Most times, aiming for perfection is quite an excuse to avoid the task altogether.
“I am gonna write a novel?”
“Great, what is it about?”
“Exploring a few ideas, got to find the best one.”
After few months, you are still finding the perfect idea. The time, that was sufficient enough to write and finish a novel. Waiting for the perfect idea could cost you the novel itself.
It is an excuse for never starting the task. Because if you finish it, you might have to put yourself out. You are afraid of judgement. It is the insecurity that is stopping you from writing a novel, making music, making a video, etc.
It is the insecurity of exposing yourself to people under the garb of perfection.
For years I have thought of becoming a writer. I have been writing on and off for years. Always afraid to put me out in front of an audience. Fear of judgement took over my life for years. It cost me a hell of a lot of time. No regrets though!
What will people say about my writing? What if they don’t like my work? Let me perfect the art of writing before I start writing.
It was years of judgement and self-judgement that stopped me from completing even a single piece.
Even if you begin with your task. The aim for perfection will make you scrap it again and again.
Perfection can lead to the abandonment of the task.
Decoding perfection with Pareto’s principle
“It takes 20% of the full time to finish 80% of your task, while to complete the last 20% of your work takes 80% of the effort.”
What this means is that beyond a point, the increase in efforts will eventually result in diminishing returns.
How many times are you going to edit that article till you publish it?
How many times are you going to re-shoot that video before you upload it?
Unless you set a certain number of edits or reshoots, you will venture endlessly into the hypothetical theory called perfection.
In fact it so contradictory in nature that the thing which we thought of perfect, looks flawed when we come back at it. It is purely subjective. An extra effort might not make it better but only different.
“Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.”
— Confucious
The cult of the imperfect
Robert Alexander Wattson-Watt created a system to detect aeroplanes in the range of 90 miles. The frequency of his radar was much lower than the ones that were present in other countries during World War II.
He defended his choice of suboptimal radars by quoting, “Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes.”
His system of radars played an eminent role in defending the United Kingdom against German air attacks. If they had kept waiting for the best ones, history could have been different.
If you never miss a flight, then you are spending too much time at the airport — Nobel Laureate George Stigler
A lot has changed at the airports in the last few years. You could get a meeting done on Zoom, make a PowerPoint presentation or even write an article.
Let’s pretend it’s the 80’s. No laptops. No cellphones. No internet. One couldn’t be much productive at the airport.
The probability of missing your flight might be low if you leave 2 hours before. Depends on traffic of course. It goes up when you leave an hour before the takeoff. Fifteen minutes before, you are definitely going to miss it. Only a moron could do that.
There is an opportunity cost involved for reaching two hours early. You could get a lot of things done instead of waiting at the airport. You might spend more time at your holiday destination. Click a few more pictures. Get some writing done on that old typewriter.
It’s the 80’s remember.
So you could get more things instead of wasting time at the airport.
For that, George Stigler justifies losing a flight or two out of say, 400 flights.
If I spend too much time researching an article, I might lose out on the opportunity of writing two additional articles a month. That is 24 articles a year. 240 over a decade. The passion for perfection can cost me 240 articles over a long period.
Hence, perfection is a losing game.
Exceptions
There are certain exceptions. In case if the matter is of life and death. The construction of a bridge over a river can get delayed for a year. Because it cannot be settled for a decent enough bridge. Here, the opportunity loss might be another bridge, but the cost is human life.
So, the engineers have to make the bridge as best as possible even if it overshoots the time limit.
Missing a flight from a remote destination where only two flights take off in a week could be a big loss. Missing out on your best friend’s wedding could be another reason that you can’t afford to be late for the airport.
Final Thoughts
Perfection can very well be a hindrance to not making a move. Sometimes, it is nothing but the insecurity or fear of judgment under the facade of perfection.
There is an opportunity loss involved when you aim for the best. Over a long period, the loss compounds.
Why aim for perfection when you could do good!
