Here is a post I wrote for my personal journal, and I decided it was appropriate to post here as well. For background, I’ve been feeling a bit down lately, and when I pot about it, the very next day all these other blogs started talking about the pursuit of “perfect”.
imperfection-eagle
Photo by Chrissy Wainwright
Today I was reading through my RSS feeds, checking out the blogs I always read, when I came across this when J.D. linked to an older post:
The perfect is the enemy of the good. When you spend so much time looking for the “best” choice that you never actually do anything, you are sabotaging yourself.
Open the door, put one foot in front of the other, and go.
-Get Rich Slowly
In Unclutterer:
Sometimes done is better than perfect.
I know I do this. There are lots of times (like yesterday) when I look at the things I need to do and just sigh and think “Why even bother?”.
… it’ll just need to be done again tomorrow
… it’ll never look like a home in a magazine
… it’ll never taste as good as when others make it
… it’ll never make me look as good as that girl I saw yesterday
… it’ll take a long time, and I only have 10 minutes now
Maybe I need to print out a sappy little saying and pin it up on my wall.
This one is particularly bad when I try to declutter things. I look at a room, and see the hours of work needed to make it perfect. I don’t see the work I could do in the 10 minutes I have right now. I don’t see the “little by little” that will chip away at the whole task.
I don’t want to settle for “good enough”, but I also don’t want to always be waiting for the right time to make it “perfect”, as perfect rarely comes. I will learn to settle for my best, and I will learn to understand that my best can depend on the circumstances.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Sometimes done is better than perfect.
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I love the pic! Even with the missing feathers the eagle is still majestic. He may not be perfect but he is still great!!!!
I couldn’t agree more. Just doing something puts you way ahead of the rest of world.
Just stumbled into your blog. Couple of resources for your readers:
Buried In Treasures covers the new and breakthrough thinking on hoarding http://www.amazon.com/Buried-Treasures-Compulsive-Acquiring-Hoarding/dp/0195300580
Hoarding research survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/hoarding
5S techniques from Industrial Engineering are effective to personal organization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S_(methodology)
Kaizen at a simple personal level
http://www.amazon.com/Small-Step-Change-Your-Life/dp/0761129235
When something is overwhelming me, I just set a timer and see what I can get done in that time period. Or break it into little steps. It sometimes takes me weeks to, say, get a room painted (e.g one weekend strip old wallpaper, next one wash walls, next one polyfilla, next one sand etc.), but eventually it gets done. It’s not perfect, but it’s perfect enough for me. Love the perfectly imperfect eagle!
“Sometimes done is better than perfect.” This is a mantra I need to chant as I am completing work, or homework assignments that I’m staying up until midnight or 1 a.m. to finish it…..