Avoid Perfection.
Perfect is the enemy of done.
I’d rather finish something that’s 80% of what I want and show it to the world. Get feedback. Then see what happens.
Contact with reality is by far the most helpful teacher. Before that, it is all talk, hypotheses, and guesses.
There is a story about Thomas Edison trying to invent the light bulb. He tried thousands of different materials for the filament before finding one that worked.
When asked about his failure, he said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
The lesson is that progress is made by trial and error. You have to try many things before finding something that works.
If you’re waiting for everything to be perfect before you start, you’ll never get started.
The goal is to get something done, not to make it perfect.
Of course, there is a balance. You don’t want to ship something that’s broken and unusable. But it’s better to ship something imperfect than to never ship anything.
So the next time you’re working on a project, don’t strive for perfection. Strive for progress. Get it done and put it out there.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
It just has to be done.
