101–110 of 134 posts
Software (like Art) is never finished, only abandoned.
If you can wait for perfection, you probably don't need to build it at all, and so you've already got your perfect solution - nothing
If you look at the stacks we build everything on top of, it’s insanely brittle and barely works. We simply lie to ourselves that it’s otherwise so we can get out of bed in the morning actually ship something that’s useful to another human being.
If you don’t believe me, look at the organization or source code behind the black box you’ve built everything on. By some miracle it works, but barely.
I’ve found the best book that describes this is “The Systems Bible” — https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-Large/d...
You’ll chuckle as you read it and learn to embrace the miracle that anything works.
Perfectionism occurs due to a lack of information. You don’t know what “good enough” is so you err on the safe side. The more you put something in front of people and then talk to them about what they think the better calibrated you’ll be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Emu War would be pretty high on that list [1]. TLDR; the Australians lost a war to Emus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War
In what way is this perfect, other than as a joke?
Plus Emus won so, for the Emus, this is perfect because it means they’ve never lost a war and there hasn’t been another one waged against them since! Plus, as Emus are notable for never once using a gun in war, it’s probably good as a case study for pacifist strategists.
I 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 compa…
Fear is the enemy of the shipped. Perfectionism is a drive that keeps us shipping something better and better. Folks are happier that way too since they get to see all the snapshots on the road to perfection, which helps them understand how they too can create perfect things themselves. Plus it gives others the opportunity to be a part of that perfection. Like for instance upgrading a web framework so its password sy…
I found this article insightful (was posted here a while back): https://arunkprasad.com/log/unlearning-perfectionism/
Without knowing you personally, the strategy I suggest is to honestly think about what your perfectionism is. What's stopping you from stopping? "I need things to be perfect" is not an answer to this question, it's the smokescreen you throw up to stop yourself from asking harder, scarier questions about what this behavior is. Good luck!