So you waste another day getting older and grey in the head
And you’re hearing lots of stories ’bout the happy times you have ahead
There are other folks in power so you kick back and get farther behind
And although the world rotates itself the only thing you twist is your mind
–What can you do, by Bad Religion
Like so many things we are taught since childhood, the comparison of good to great is one where we have been misled. The phrase I always heard in school and later in my job was that “The good is the enemy of the great”. Closely related to that was “Good enough is not good enough”. Now the base point of that is a nice ideal that if we are going to do something we should do it our absolute best and make sure we don’t just half ass it. Fair enough that’s a good point. However in actual practice the idea that the good is the enemy of the great is something that holds people back and leads to them kicking back and falling behind.
Show me the person who is always taking more time to make something that is already good just a little better and I’ll show you a person who misses opportunities. If you’re struggling with fixing the last 1% of something then you are going to be beaten to launching the idea by the person who will accept just the 99% and deal with the 1% later. Not only that but I see people take ages and ages stressing over minor details so they can get everything exactly right. Not me… I’d rather get 10 things 99% right while that other person deals with their single 100% issue (now granted I’m not a doctor I’m and entrepreneur… if you’re my doctor please get it 100%!)
I’ll give you the perfect example of this from when I was working in the finance field. There was a senior accountant who was extremely detail oriented and for whom everything had to be exactly right to the penny. She was reviewing customer billings and noticed that somewhere in the 4,000+ customers we had that we had somehow gotten off by $1.35. Now to me that’s not a big deal and I’d say oh well and move on to the next issue. Not her. She spent 4 hours looking for that $1.35 and when she couldn’t find it she had me and another senior analyst track it down. It took another 2 hours of all 3 of us working on it to find it and in the end we probably spent about 8 to 10 man-hours (That’s hundreds of dollars in salary and benefits) to find $1.35. And the kicker? It wasn’t that we were missing $1.35… we had $1.35 too much.
The long-taught phrase “the good is the enemy of the great” is wrong in this and many other cases. So lets replace it. Here’s a new phrase to keep in mind:
“Good enough is good enough, and perfect is a pain in the ass.”
Don’t waste you’re time perfecting the last little details of you’re business concepts or projects. Most anything you can fix as you go along. Better to take action and do something than spend time and energy doing nothing. People like me (and I’m sure a lot of you) will act first and beat out those who delay looking for the perfect. Not only that we’ll be working on new projects while the others are still struggling with that last $1.35.
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