Progress Beats Perfect
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Progress Beats Perfect
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Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#2To progress I have to learn then to practice.
For any "applied" discipline practicing imperfectly lets me memorize bad form.
Therefore a (as much as possible) more advanced practitioner than me must periodically check my practice. He must understand that some parts of the discipline may have to be adapted to each practitioner (his 'perfect' practice may not be mine)...
For anything not completely theoretical (is if even possible?) this is a can of worms.
Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#3This is all a big problem with unrealistic expectations.
> If I get one percent better each day for one year, I'll end up thirty-seven times better by the end of the year.
This, too, is an unrealistic expectation. To get better every day (or even most days!) is very hard to do and can put you on the defensive as much as the quest for perfection.
Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#4Best thing my first boss ever told me and I find my self repeating to my self all the time - “perfection is the enemy of good”
Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#5This is all a big problem with unrealistic expectations. > If I get one percent better each day for one year, I'll end up thirty-seven times better by the end of the year. This, too, is an unrealistic expectation. To get better every day (or even most days!) is very hard to do and can put you on the defensive as much as the quest for perfection.
To me, the spirit of this 1% better every day is to have at least tried to be better. That alone counts as or at least towards the 1%. It’s not something you literally measure, but just aiming for. 1% of a day could be as much as changing a thought pattern. It could be not drinking that Coke Zero today - note to self. It could be not letting the full trash can in the bathroom spill over. It’s more about the intention than the measure.
Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#6Pursue excellence, not perfection. Try to be the best that you can be, but accept that you will make some mistakes.
Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#7This is all a big problem with unrealistic expectations. > If I get one percent better each day for one year, I'll end up thirty-seven times better by the end of the year. This, too, is an unrealistic expectation. To get better every day (or even most days!) is very hard to do and can put you on the defensive as much as the quest for perfection.
We have to be honest about what “1% better every day” fights against.
For an example, we have lots of time on a day to complete a task but we end up doing nothing on it. Instead we tell ourselves we’ll do a marathon session the next day to make up for it. Only the next day comes and we don’t feel like doing it anymore than we did the previous day. And now we’re dreading it because we set ourselves up having to pull a marathon session. So we do nothing again.
Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#8Best thing my first boss ever told me and I find my self repeating to my self all the time - “perfection is the enemy of good”
Now, get most 'bosses' to understand this concept. If you expect perfection and punish good, then you get people who only push for perfection.
There's a delicate balance from management to push people to try and create something better and pressuring them in every way they can to deliver perfection. From my experience, it tends to land on the latter.
Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#9This is all a big problem with unrealistic expectations. > If I get one percent better each day for one year, I'll end up thirty-seven times better by the end of the year. This, too, is an unrealistic expectation. To get better every day (or even most days!) is very hard to do and can put you on the defensive as much as the quest for perfection.
To me, the spirit of this 1% better every day is to have at least tried to be better. That alone counts as or at least towards the 1%. It’s not something you literally measure, but just aiming for. 1% of a day could be as much as changing a thought pattern. It could be not drinking that Coke Zero today - note to self. It could be not letting the full trash can in the bathroom spill over. It’s more about the intention…
Agreed, but it also has to be noted that this intention, if you remind yourself of it constantly, can fill you with dread add unwillingness which can grow to be a huge self-imposed psychic block.
I want to be better but I've dropped the "every day" trope. That's a meaningless and toxic hustling that only works when you are in your 20s.
Progress is not linear. We are not machines.
Even a machine can't make a linear progress if it doesn't get a steady (or an ever-increasing) energy input or if it can't internalize its previous experience and transform it to a more efficient algorithm.
To me, like you, the most important is the never-ending intention. I'm a pre-diabetic and I have very bad days during which the only thing I could do is eat, poop, drink water, nap, repeat 3-4 times, and the day is gone. But I don't lose sight of my goals and when my energy is back I am catching up on a few important items from my mental backlog, almost every time.
That's the important thing IMO: have a vision, never forget your vision, act on it when you're able. Don't guilt-trip yourself, ever.
Re: Progress Beats Perfect
#10This is all a big problem with unrealistic expectations. > If I get one percent better each day for one year, I'll end up thirty-seven times better by the end of the year. This, too, is an unrealistic expectation. To get better every day (or even most days!) is very hard to do and can put you on the defensive as much as the quest for perfection.
nkozyra:
This is all a big problem with unrealistic expectations.
> If I get one percent better each day for one year, I'll end up thirty-seven times better by the end of the year.
OP also seems to assume that 1% improvement today is same effort/as easy as 1% improvement yesterday. it becomes harder to improve by 1% as time goes on, just coz your baseline is compounded too but absolute effort/difficulty may not. 3.65 rather than 37.78 at the end of the year is probably closer to the truth (and that is if one is able to do this every day at all to nkozyra's point)