At the beginning of a project at work that had a pretty tight deadline, the Project Manager on the customer's side sent out an email describing the importance of avoiding feature creep. At the end he included a quote that said "Perfect is the enemy of good." I don't have time to write a post going as in depth with this subject as I would like to, but at the least maybe it will spark a discussion, or at least give everyone something to chew on.
In my career, and in my personal projects, I have been thinking a lot recently about perfection, and how inefficient it can be. I have been accused from time to time of being a perfectionist, and recently as I have been trying to increase my efficiency at work, and spreading my free time across multiple personal projects at home, I have been questioning the effectiveness of wasting time being perfect. Today, I accidentally came across this blog post which provided some definition on the abstract ideas floating around in my head on the subject. Ironically, I felt that it clarified to me that some of my least favorite flaws about myself probably come from my inability to recognize when myself or others have done a good job, or even a great job, and move on to the next task, rather then getting hung up, upset, or negative because the job isn't "perfect" by my standards.
I am not trying to vindicate shoddy work. Great work does not have to be perfect. Improvement should still always be sought for. We should always be trying for the best that we are capable of doing. But with a little extra mental effort on our part, we might be able to recognize that the best we are capable of in our social lives, career, or personal projects is not just one absolutely perfect task, but instead accomplish a lot of tasks that we perform very well.
I find that customers who are perfectionist are hard. Sometimes I'm surprised to find bugs from the customer that say, "textbox is slightly off". Just like that blog you read, that textbox is off by 1 pixel, and the priority is set to critical. Sometimes my manager has to speak to them about it, refresh them on what's critical and what's not. I feel like sometimes I'm wasting my time that I could be doing real functionality, but instead looking for these small things that bother someone. However we have a couple new hires and those bugs are nice for getting their feet wet :)
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