Non-paywalled link, anyone? NYtimes won’t let me read it in Firefox’s Private Mode.
Use the temporary account containers plug-in. Also very useful for software testing.
It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
11–20 of 135 posts
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#12I’m reminded of a similar online NY Times piece I read, years ago, I think by a woman named Gladys, which was entirely about the harrowing process of procrastinating on, and eventually writing, the piece. All I could think was, poor Gladys. Not, here’s an authority on procrastination. Heck, I’m more of an authority on procrastination, based on my high school and college years alone, not even counting that I’ve overcome it in my 30s.
There is so much better advice than “just get it done” (isn’t that like telling a commitment-phobe, nobody’s perfect, so just pick someone and commit? I’m sure someone, somewhere, has given themselves that advice and taken it, with positive results, but it’s kind of questionable advice in general).
For example, “meditate” is good advice. Let the anxiety come up; allow it to flow, and leave; see it without judging it or trying to figure it out. Even realizing your problem with starting is an anxiety problem, and feeling the feeling in your body, is a huge step. Maybe noting some beliefs that contribute to it. “Journal” is good advice. Practice writing in your voice, and the act of writing. Journal about your anxiety. Learn to enjoy your writing. Practice will improve the quality. Discounting quality will not help.
Stories about how I procrastinated on something for a month and then late one night managed to forget my usual thought patterns for an hour and do it? I have hundreds of those from my past. There is some information in the thoughts I had when finally doing it (“I get it! You just do it!”), but not relative to the information you will get from going inwards and asking how to change your own patterns of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#13Steve Wozniak suggests the Apple II became successful because he's a perfectionist. He talks about throwing out almost-finished designs because he thought of a more streamlined approach while implementing the existing one. Then again, Steve Jobs has suggested that "Woz" spent so much time fiddling with Apple II hardware that he never got around to adding floating point math to Apple BASIC. (They probably should have…
Perfectionism is great when you know exactly what the customer wants (like a custom made shoe). It wastes too much time when you're experimenting to find out what the market wants.
The part I’ve always had trouble with is you need a certain amount of polish before the idea is acceptable. The quality of delivery heavily influences people’s perceptions. So this is a very fine balance.
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perfectionism is great when you know exactly what the customer wants (like a custom made shoe). It wastes too much time when you're experimenting to find out what the market wants.
The part I’ve always had trouble with is you need a certain amount of polish before the idea is acceptable. The quality of delivery heavily influences people’s perceptions. So this is a very fine balance.
Quality is local optimization, Market Fit is global optimization. As the saying goes, if you're not embarrassed by v1 you waited too long to launch.
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#15This is exactly what I was saying in the other HN thread today about code reviews, and I got downvoted a bunch of times. A lot of people have a perfectionist mindset and lose sight of the fact that "perfection" can be subjective and that the product they are creating for the user is more important than the engineer's personal vision. This isn't to say that we should just throw out best practices, wing it, and never take criticism. Being willing to break work into further tickets and actually giving them priority can mitigate long-term problems created by imperfection in the first place.
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#16I’ve seen some code done by perfectionists, it was beautiful to behold. It did it’s job well. Unfortunately it was considered the “legacy system” and was eventually retired.
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The part I’ve always had trouble with is you need a certain amount of polish before the idea is acceptable. The quality of delivery heavily influences people’s perceptions. So this is a very fine balance.
Quality is local optimization, Market Fit is global optimization. As the saying goes, if you're not embarrassed by v1 you waited too long to launch.
But consider results in consumer technology: Palm versus Blackberry versus iPhone.
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#18Steve Wozniak suggests the Apple II became successful because he's a perfectionist. He talks about throwing out almost-finished designs because he thought of a more streamlined approach while implementing the existing one. Then again, Steve Jobs has suggested that "Woz" spent so much time fiddling with Apple II hardware that he never got around to adding floating point math to Apple BASIC. (They probably should have…
Perfectionism is great when you know exactly what the customer wants (like a custom made shoe). It wastes too much time when you're experimenting to find out what the market wants.
I think that a big part of the problem is that the economy fundamentally doesn't make any sense anymore so it's impossible for entrepreneurs to predict what the market wants.
Nowadays, the market wants products made by companies whose founders have raised a lot of VC money and which are heavily advertised.
If you're working on a product and you don't have good business connections, then you should make your product as perfect as possible because otherwise you don't stand the slightest chance in this economy. It used to be that your product had to be 10x better than the competition in order to make any impact, nowadays, 10x better is not enough to even be noticed; consumers just follow the capital.
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#19I’m reminded of a similar online NY Times piece I read, years ago, I think by a woman named Gladys, which was entirely about the harrowing process of procrastinating on, and eventually writing, the piece. All I could think was, poor Gladys. Not, here’s an authority on procrastination. Heck, I’m more of an authority on procrastination, based on my high school and college years alone, not even counting that I’ve overco…
I often tell myself to "just start" rather than to "just get it done," especially when I suspect my anxiety is driving.
If I tell myself I'm just going to sit down and pretend-work on the thing that's making me anxious for five minutes, just to get a feel for it, and if it ends up being crappy, I'll just toss it and start over later, I'm usually able to short-circuit the anxious "everything must be well-understood and perfectly optimized before you even start, or you're going to fail, because this problem is crazy hard" part of my brain.
Usually five minutes turns into 45 minutes, and I either finish, or conclude that it wasn't so bad after all.
Re: It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
#20I’m reminded of a similar online NY Times piece I read, years ago, I think by a woman named Gladys, which was entirely about the harrowing process of procrastinating on, and eventually writing, the piece. All I could think was, poor Gladys. Not, here’s an authority on procrastination. Heck, I’m more of an authority on procrastination, based on my high school and college years alone, not even counting that I’ve overco…
"Mediate" and "journal" are two specific solutions. The general answer is "figure out what's stopping you from getting something done and take steps to mitigate or reduce it."