Don’t Let Perfect Be the Enemy of Good.. But Don’t Let Good Be Good Enough
I had the saying “Anything worth doing is worth doing right” drilled into me by my authoritarian father from a very young age. This idiom, when applied in the proper context, can help to instill the very noble trait of giving one’s full attention to things that are truly valuable or important.
It was not in this context that I was given this wisdom, however. Instead of it being an encouragement to find joy in the challenge of difficult but worthwhile work, it was given to me in the form of harsh criticism of my work when it was not done exactly to my father’s often unrealistic expectations. In this context, I did what any rational child would. I learned to do everything with excruciating attention to detail, tuning in with laser focus to the task at hand. If that had been the end of it I’d very likely have accidentally become a Zen master. Instead, I obsessed over the perfect word, the perfect shade of blue, the perfect whatever it was I needed to choose. My analysis paralysis was misapprehended as procrastination or, the greater sin in my household, laziness. I would agonize over an assignment until well beyond the point of no return and then fire off a terror-fueled act of brilliance, often feeling shame when I would get an A on a school assignment that I had cut corners to complete.
I also learned that, to avoid criticism of half-assed work, I should avoid doing anything that I couldn’t do perfectly. In a nutshell, I’ve struggled with perfectionism all my life.
It was not until very recently, in August of 2024 to be more specific, that I began the ongoing process of dismantling the harmful attitudes that I’ve held towards work. The aphorism “Perfect is the enemy of good” had come into my awareness a number of times in the years leading up my experience of what Brené Brown referred to as a “breakdown spiritual awakening” in her 2010 book The Gifts of Imperfection. I was in a really hopeless place, crippled by self-doubt and mounting debt, frozen in place by a million things I felt I was screwing up every minute of every day. Before my “breakdown spiritual awakening” the aphorism sounded, like most aphorisms do until they don’t, dusty and trite. When I gave myself the gift of rehab for my by then completely out of control drinking, I finally gave myself space to question everything. I mean really question. I was ready for profound change. I don’t know where the thought came from but I remember sitting on the deck of the detox facility thinking, “the only thing I have to change is everything.” I’ll write more on my experience in rehab and my journey through recovery elsewhere and at another time. The context for my perspective shift now established, however, let’s get back to perfectionism.
The really nasty thing about perfectionism is that it seems to be so pervasive yet is given lip service - at best - in the culture we find ourselves in today. I’ve seen one study, referenced in Fobes, that found that 92% of us are affected by perfectionism in the workplace. I’d heard colleagues criticize themselves - and, occasionally, me - for having perfectionist tendencies. These self-deprecations and polite criticisms were generally delivered with a sigh or a smile. It wasn’t until I got into the recovery community that I heard anyone really talk about how destructive perfectionism can be. So, if you’re part of the silent majority who battle perfectionism take this away if nothing else: You are not alone. Your perfectionism is a learned unhelpful attitude. You can train yourself with a more helpful attitude.
One of the manifestations of perfectionism is all-or-nothing thinking. To bring us back to the beginning, that kind of thinking would be “If I can’t do it right I might as well not try”. Here’s an irony that I stumbled upon just within the last week: I was trained to iterate, to not expect A+ work on the first try. I remember essay assignments in high school and short fiction and poetry assignments in college where we were expected to turn in a rough draft, get notes from the teacher and incorporate those notes into the final draft. That was the plan at least. I also remember getting those notes and being absolutely gutted. “How could I have spelled holocaust ‘halocaust’? I’m a total idiot!” And that was a note on a rough draft of a poem I wrote more than 30 years ago. It still effing stings! Want an even more sad personal example? I still remember a 1st grade “what I want to be when I grow up” assignment where I wrote that I wanted to be a flight attendant. I said I wanted to travel the world on a 7-40-7. My teacher’s correction was not mean in any way but I was so devastated that I had let her down that the memory still pops up to this day. The shit is deep!
To dispel my perfectionist ghosts I’m re-entering the iterative process. Like many people I know, I’ve fallen into a constant cycle of having too much to do in the time allotted and, as a result, I don’t have time to go back and revise work before deadline. First draft is the final release. Back in January of this year I got into The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and have been free-writing three pages per day first thing in the morning, as prescribed by the book. It’s been tremendously liberating to just write and to notice when my inner critic starts to pipe up and tell him, forcefully, to shut the hell up and leave me alone to write whatever comes to mind. The writing isn’t about anything. It’s just a mining expedition. I’m drilling down through layers of self-doubt and lack of self-worth and perfectionist sandstone that I mistook for bedrock. The bedrock is somewhere deeper. The sandstone of self-sabotage is sedimentary. A superficial layer. If I can drill deep enough the real stuff I'm searching for will appear. Right now I’m tapping into that spirit. Just letting it come as it comes, filling up the page with whatever comes next without judgment and without looking at the screen to check my work. That comes later. Iterate. Go. Flow. Come back another day and see what’s there worth saving. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe something else will show up on that day. Maybe not. It really doesn’t matter. I’m fighting through an old habit that tells me that this has to be about something. That this has to be worthy of the time you’re taking to read it. And guess what, that’s not up to me to decide. That’s for you. My part is just to do the thing, curate what comes out and, maybe, publish it. And maybe it will find you on a day when you really need to hear the message and maybe it will go nowhere. That is beyond my control. All I can control is the practice, the willingness to put fingers to keyboard and see what comes. The rest is all pure potential. I'm incredibly grateful for the gift of The Artist’s Way in teaching me to let go and let ‘er rip. I wouldn't have done this 6 months ago. I would have agonized over every word, my critic would be screaming obscenities of disapproval at me and, eventually, I would listen and clam up and this would be just another blog post idea, not an actual blog post. And that would be a shame. Not the kind of shame I mentioned before. More like a robbery. I’d be robbing the world of my voice, hiding behind perfectionism and fear of failure and pretending everything is going great all the while shaking in fear and anger at the pent-up expression that has come to dominate my life.
So I’m learning to not let perfect be the enemy of the good. That’s progress. There is, however, this nagging need to go further. To turn this attitude or approach or whatever you want to call it into something that feels like continued growth. I want to learn how to always be learning. In that vein I have come up with the second part of the blog post headline: don’t let good be good enough. In getting better at getting started I want to get better at getting better. That means iteration as well. That means going full tilt and letting go of outcomes at first and then walking away. For something like a blog post that has no real deadline - why do I always paint myself into deadline corners with something as relatively low stakes as a blog post?? - I can publish any time. I don't have readers constantly checking to see what I've written. I’ll get there someday but today it’s not even a flicker of a chance. This idea, to not let good be good enough, is all about learning from failing and accepting the shortcomings of everything as the necessary byproducts of a single sliver of time. Growth can’t happen in freeze frame. It happens over time. So I will grow over time. Reach toward the sun even while covered in mud. Reach for better even though right now is good. I will let go of reaching perfection in the way that a plant doesn't reach for the sun, it grows towards it.
Another key inspiration for this part of my growth has been Atomic Habits by James Clear. The thing from that book that I'm focused on is the idea of 1% daily growth. This is another way to shed my all-or-nothing thinking. It’s not about overnight change. It’s about persistent daily effort with modest daily goals. 1% daily improvement compounded over time is big gains in the long run. Another dusty, trite saying that comes to mind is “one day at a time”. This is some journey of a thousand miles shit. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and try, as often as I can, to enjoy the views, the smells, the feeling of the path under my feet, and not focus too much on the destination. There’s always a bit of a letdown when I reach my goals because, time and again, there’s that “what’s next?” feeling that sets in almost immediately. I experienced it when I got my black belt, when I bought my house, and at pretty much every milestone. What’s next is more journey, more sights and sounds and smells on the way to something new I didn’t know I wanted to see until I got where I was trying to go. There is no perfect anything. There is only growth.