Don't. Make use of it.
There is enough people that are comfortable compromising on quality. I decided, rather than to fight it, to find for myself a niche where being perfectionist pays off.
Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
61–70 of 134 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#62One concept clicked for me and changed everything -> In the future, I’ll know much more about the subject, so I should do the simplest possible solution now and revisit it as I become wiser. Basically, I can optimize this thing around my current understanding, or my future understanding.
This one really resonates with me.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#63I didn't. I just directed it in different directions. Same with everything: self-destructive tendencies, doomlooping internal thoughts or shame / guilt. Just redirect it, stop letting others control you.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#64I just don't have time for it anymore. Too much other stuff, and I try to restrict how much I work (i.e. not work on weekends). Given that, something has to give and it's usually perfectionism.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#65The 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
When you say "wrong decision" do you really mean "bad outcome"? Be careful not to confound the two. (See "outcome bias")
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#66At my first job I had a more experienced coworker, and I couldn't understand why he wrote code the way he did. Copy pasted stuff everywhere, never added abstractions, stuff was 30 lines when it could've been 5 and a base class.
Yaknow what? He got 10x the amount of work done that I did.
'perfect' doesn't mean 'pure, clean, never needing to be rethought', 'perfect' to him meant 'meets requirements'. 99% of the time, none of his code ever needed to be touched again and if it did need to be touched..it was easy and rote to update because it was easy to understand and simple to modify.
less is more, but the 'less' applies to abstractions, not loc.
Just because you CAN take something to the next level, or iterate one more time till it feels right, doesn't mean you should or that there's value in doing so.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no such thing as no decision; delaying a certain decision is a way of deciding it, and is always on time.
The one I've found helpful, somewhat similar, is that if you don't make the decision, the decision will be made for you.
But even that's not true, because you can consciously decide not to choose either one of several presented alternatives, with the full awareness and acceptance of what that means. Basically you can always add the default case, making it explicit, and explicitly choose it.
Sometimes it's other people that want you to think that there are only two (or however many) alternatives, of which you must choose one; and by not taking any of them, you can assert your own thinking.
Sometimes you just have a small input to some process that other people are controlling, which will proceed without your input. Sometimes in these situations you only have the illusion that you're making a real decision even if you pick one of the non-default choices you're presented with.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#68At my first job I had a more experienced coworker, and I couldn't understand why he wrote code the way he did. Copy pasted stuff everywhere, never added abstractions, stuff was 30 lines when it could've been 5 and a base class. Yaknow what? He got 10x the amount of work done that I did. 'perfect' doesn't mean 'pure, clean, never needing to be rethought', 'perfect' to him meant 'meets requirements'. 99% of the time, n…
I've worked with plenty of workers like this. They all got 10x work done in relation to everyone else, because no one else wanted to touch their stuff, they owned the branch and never made pull requests because it caused too many merge conflicts as they were sooooo fast at getting things implemented.
Their code was full of bugs which they fixed immediately, causing silent regressions. They never wrote tests.
The other 5 places they had copy pasted that buggy code still remained buggy.
Also whenever they spaghetti code themselves into a corner, they spent 10x longer refactoring stuff as a result.
In effect, it's not that they got 10x work done, it's that they make everyone else get 10x less done.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#69Time box everything. Make the calendar entries with the time allowed, and make sure the vast majority of the time you don't go over the allotted time.
Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome perfectionism?
#70A lot of people here saying it's mostly about rejection, but in my case it can also be about someone becoming obsessed with my product or even indifferent to it. Maybe indifference is still a form of rejection somehow though.
The bigger thing I see for myself is the fear of not having control. Not knowing in which direction things will go. I think this happens to me a lot in life, where i want to be able to predict and know what will happen. When i think of this in software, i can go into hyperdrive because of how quickly and far software can scale—the multiplier effect on any imperfections.
I don't really have an answer at this moment for his to deal with it...what came to me in the last few days is that I would rather be more present and less perfect. When i try to be perfect, i tend to close off and hide until a big reveal, and throughout that time I'm not showing up with myself or the things I've made. Conversely, if i focus on being more present, I can prioritize showing up over showing up with the perfect thing.
I thought about this in the context of posting photos of myself online and to friends. I've gained weight over the last few years and don't feel very confident in how I look right now. And yet, many times, I'm just happy to see my friends, regardless of how they look. Maybe I have an initial shock at how they've changed, but that can quickly fade into "but I'm glad to see them." So I imagine this may work with products as well: the initial "hmm, why does it look/function this way" changing into "but I'm at least glad it exists and I have access to it"