Perfection is a Waste of Time
- Posted June 12th, 2008
- Filed under: Blue By You, How We Do It
Don’t get me wrong. My middle school principal called me Perfect Pamela. I am not unfamiliar with the virtues of flawless design, stunning prose, or impeccable offerings and the hard work it takes to get a creation to that level. But as a wise husband likes to tell me, “The enemy of good is perfect.” It’s a slightly mangled quote from Voltaire that nicely conveys the pitfalls of overworking a solution.
We’ve been cooking up some exciting new BatchBook features (if you like sneak previews, join our usergroup and weigh in on what is coming) and part of the exercise for us is resisting the urge to send our new features into product development’s version of the perfectionist’s purgatory. You see, smart and insightful and driven as we are, we are only eight people and there are about 6 billion or so other bright and talented people out there who might help us make our product a little perfecter.
There comes a time in all creative (as in creating something, not artistic) work that you have to realize the value in sharing your creation with your audience versus continuing to make your own improvements. The question is, will that thing that needs to get done, get launched, get sent out into the world be 100% better if you spend twice as much time on it? Probably not. Maybe 5% better. Or 10%. But if you use that extra time collecting feedback from all those people in the world that will have a completely different experience with your thing, you are much more likely to get your 100% improvement back tenfold.
Not sure I kept my point of view consistent here, but hey – I’m not trying to be perfect.
