Tuesday, January 19, 2010

There is no such thing as perfect

You might think you are the exeption to this. You aren't! :)

So, what am I saying: that perfectionists are wasting their time getting everything perfect...  Yes, in my opinion they are for sure mising out on a lot of creativity, and they won't achieve their goal anyway.

As I see it the result of what you do can be illustrated as the following graph.




It illustrates the time it takes to reach perfection. Actually it show that you will never reach perfection. Productivity is the angle on the curve. In the beginning you are going very fast towards the goal. As you acomplish things your focus will change from fundamental structural task into details.

The strive for perfection is often a sign of lack of experience.

2 comments:

  1. Well that kind of depends on how you define perfect, doesn’t it?
    It’s amazing what can pass as perfect if you define perfect as being in a state where the amount of money new customers gives you exceeds the price of damage control + the drop in goodwill.
    Let’s not pretend that’s not happening. (only dream ;-))

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  2. Hi Lasse, and thanks for your comment. I define perfection as when there is no more room for improvement. In any economy there is room for improvement and therefore I would claim that having a positive balance is not perfect, because you can always do better.

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