Deadlines, mostly.
Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
11–20 of 134 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#12The mantra, "A timely wrong decision is often better than no decision," has been helpful in my life. (my own adaptation of Kelly Johnson's statement here: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/97803-skunk-works (search for "wrong decision") )
There is no such thing as no decision; delaying a certain decision is a way of deciding it, and is always on time.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#13I think if what I did imperfectly would bite me in the ass in 6 months. If not, I just let it go.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#14Whenever I start caring too much about something, I pull up the "pale blue dot" image ( https://funnyjunk.com/The+pale+blue+dot/funny-pictures/52789... ) and remember that I will die long before Voyager will make it even 10% to the next star. All of humanity, including us, is just a tiny speck in an unimaginably vast and uncaring universe. Some people find that terribly upsetting, but to me it also means freedom beca…
I use the exact same mental image!
On the same theme, when I was a teenager my dad told me, in passing, to try to not to be the person caring the most about something. It has stayed with me since.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#15Perfectionism can be a symptom of codependence. Codependence is a loaded word, but understand that many, many people struggle with codependence to some degree.
Us codependent personalities gain our sense of well-being based on what others think about us. So, everything has to be perfect because the prospect of rejection is very scary. I view a rejection of my work as a rejection of me to an exaggerated degree.
If this rings true to you, my advice is to find a good book on codependency or begin seeing a counselor and begin to understand yourself a little more.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
how about the iraq war. that was timely and costly wrong decision
If you are going to poke, does that mean you consider there to be a perfect war?
The Emu War would be pretty high on that list [1]. TLDR; the Australians lost a war to Emus.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#17Break huge goals into smaller achievable ones and always make it a point to ship "something."
Not sure if that applies to your context but that's how I see it with building stuffs.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#18I keep coming back to the old Reid Hoffman quote: "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."
I also constantly remind myself that "perfect is the enemy of shipped".
A useful thing to remember is that you are the ONLY person that knows how beautiful the thing you were planning to build was going to be. What you've actually built is always going to be disappointing compared to the potential thing you had imagined.
No-one else has that context though. From someone else's perspective, you built a thing! If that thing is interesting or solves their problem, they couldn't care less what it would have been if it had matched your imagination of its full potential.
Most people never build or ship anything at all, so shipping itself is a big cause for celebration.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#19Laziness. Software is almost all bad and will be thrown away anyway. Get it working against happy path, solve for obvious bad paths, and move on.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#20The mantra, "A timely wrong decision is often better than no decision," has been helpful in my life. (my own adaptation of Kelly Johnson's statement here: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/97803-skunk-works (search for "wrong decision") )
how about the iraq war. that was timely and costly wrong decision
"A timely wrong decision is often better than no decision"
Looks like you found the "often".