When is good enough, good enough?
My dad, for all his wonderful attributes is not a handy person. He does a fine job and enjoys maintaining the lawn, hedges and flower beds outside of my parents house. He will tighten a loose screw on occasion or hammer a nail into a wall when needed but that is about the extent of his home maintenance skill set. I am sure if he were a younger man with all the resources one has to learn things online he could improve upon this skill set but he is growing old and his body is beginning to fail him.
My mom on the other hand is someone with a lot of ideas and time on her hands. This cocktail of too much time and a lot of ideas tends to manifest itself into either "this needs to be fixed", "this needs to be replaced" or "we should do this".
My parents have had a long, wonderful, happy marriage but one pain point that has always existed in the relationship is this combo of a person who isn't a great honey do list doer along with a person who is an expert honey do list giver. We lived in an apartment in the city when I was growing up, so this didn't cause much of a problem because the building had a superintendent whom my mother could call upon to address any issues she happened to find. This worked well for my dad too. He could focus on work and his other passions, like coaching my baseball teams, reading, and listening to music. His chores around the house were mostly limited to helping clean once a week and occasionally pitching in to do some laundry. My parents repainted the entire apartment and put up some wallpaper in the living room one summer when I was a kid. That was our big renovation.
A few years after I had finished college and moved out, my parents decided they were tired of apartment and city life in general. They retired and moved to a resort town around 2 hours away from the city and after a year decided they would make this town their last stop in life and bought a house.
A house brought up a new set of challenges as there was always something to do, something to fix, something to change. This kept my mom busy and likely driving my dad somewhat crazy, so he found a local job and went back to work. However, my mom being an enterprising honey do list giver solved this problem by finding a guy. His name was David and he worked at home depot and did handy work and renovations on the side. Great outcome for all. My dad could focus on working again, my mom could assign all her pet projects to David and when he had time David could make a bit of extra cash.
This all worked very well for many years. Eventually my dad retired again but he was more than happy David was the guy who got the to do list. Don't fight inertia if you don't have to, right? But over a decade had passed now and David was getting a bit older too and had also retired at some point along the way. He was still taking on side jobs from his best customers but he was slowing down.
After the pandemic hit, lockdowns ensued, the to do list wasn't as much of a priority anymore, but the necessary "to dos" were piling up, fortunately for my mom her new David was about to arrive.
I was a lot like my dad when I was younger, unskilled and disinterested in working with my hands unless that included throwing a baseball around or fiddling on a guitar. However, when I bought my first home I started to learn a few little things and when I started my business the necessity to learn to be handy would increase with each passing year as we took on different types of projects that I needed to manage and no longer just sub contract to someone who knew what they were doing. Besides, even if I wasn't doing the work myself, I needed to have a sense things were being done well, efficiently and for a fair price. Many years and lessons later I still don't consider myself that handy, maybe I am selling myself short, but when compared to even hobbyists who do their own major renovations, I still have a lot to learn. I am more someone who likes to fix things than someone who embraces the joy of a major project and each step along the way.
It was January of 2022 when my family and I moved to that same resort town my parents did around 15 years prior, I had a lot of time on my hands as I was now officially semi-retired and I had yet to find SN to pass much of my free time that was not occupied by my kiddos. I became the new David for my parents.
Hopefully you aren't bored to tears as I have told this rambling tale for a reason. I get a lot of joy of living in the same town as my the parents. They get to spend a lot of time with the kids and I get to help them do things that age makes more difficult. I am happy I can be the new David for them but am under no delusions that I am as experienced and skilled as David. My parents appreciate the work I do to help maintain their home and never take my efforts for granted. My mom will always ask if I want to do something or if she should find a guy.
That being said, my mom's preferred response to almost everything I check off the to do list for her is "That's good enough". A lot of this has to do with my propensity to want to fix something that is broken rather than replace it but also some of it has to do with the fact I am not as skilled as David.
So, finally onto the crux of the post. I have been thinking about this phrase "good enough" a lot lately and even more so "when is good enough, good enough"? And when should we strive for excellence? There is a saying, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Meaning, don't allow the pursuit of perfection to prevent a good outcome. But surely we must occasionally pursue excellence or is excellence merely the natural result of the compounding of a series of ever increasing good enoughs?
Thanks for reading. I look forward to any thoughts and comments stackers have.
Sats for all, GR
161 sats \ 2 replies \ @gnilma 24 Jul
I don't like the "good enough" mindset. In my work, I understand that I will never reach perfection, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't try my best to strive for excellence with the given circumstances.
Of course, there is always a balance / trade off between quality of work and time spent. My strategy is to have a set of requirements for my work and every requirement must be met before it becomes acceptable, or else it must be worked on again. Also, I have a rule of thumb, which is "if I can see something wrong with the work, the customer can see it too." So if I see something wrong with my work, I will take it completely apart and work on it again if I catch something wrong with it. Better to fix my own problems on my own than have the customer point out my fault, while still having to fix it later.
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I am glad you chimed in because I know you have posted before about mastering your craft.
I think somethings in life you should aim to master but other things are good enough as good enough.
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I agree, because we have such limited time in life that we cannot afford to master / perfect every single thing we do. That would probably take too much time and we end up getting nothing done.
Mastering one thing in life is sufficient for me. I'm pretty much in the "good enough" camp when it comes to things other than my work. Well, maybe also sharpening blades, as a passionate hobby, I'm trying to master as well, haha.
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I am an electrician by profession with a major in computer science, my degree is valid in my native country Venezuela... but I have already been a migrant or established in Lima Peru for 7 years... at first I took on many masonry jobs or why not I have also laid tiles or ceramics and Yes, it is a tedious, annoying and boring job and obviously, since I was new, I had a boss on top of me telling me that the ceramics had been crooked or crooked all day long... it is not easy at all to have the pressure of someone who wants everything to be perfect and who also be the job that you have at that moment and your family depends on it... you... and your food for the day... until I managed to be taken into account as an electrician... and I advanced a little further because they paid me a little more ...but the truth is, jobs where there are so many bosses or supervisors constantly and all the time are not easy...
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I was an electrician and went to school for computer science as well. 🤔 I also spent some time in Peru. Thanks for your share and perspective.
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Thanks for sharing your experience
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Does the pursuit of excellence cause you to neglect other important areas of life? Does it cause you to be short-tempered, rude, or cruel to other people? In other words, does it damage your relationships or damage your mental and physical wellbeing?
In an organizational context, does the pursuit of the inherent excellence of a product end up hindering the organization's overall mission?
If the answer is yes to any of the above, then at that point I believe the perfect has become the enemy of the good.
Of course, some people may use the above principles (perhaps subconsciously) as an excuse for laziness. Hopefully they have wise people around them to point that out if so. And that they themselves are wise enough to accept such feedback.
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That's good logic. I recall when we used to resurface and polish marble floors. It's a tedious process that doesn't show much result until the very end and at which point with some much time invested you can either review be content with the finished product or drive yourself crazy agonizing over have the light reflects from every single tile.
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There's also "Done is better than perfect." That's an important lesson too, when you're doing work that actually needs to be finished at some point.
I'm a major "good enough" person, which is one of the reasons I like collaborating. My "good enough" can work as a starting point to build off of for others.
Partly, this is because I take a very iterative approach to things. I like to get something done and then submit it for feedback, which gives me a new set of things to make "good enough". Eventually, with any luck, we end up with something that's legitimately good.
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Certainly work that has deadlines requires a good enough approach at some point. I like your perspective of putting good enough work out there for others as a jumping off point.
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Great write up! You're sharing views which are so intact to South Asian culture. Living with your mom and dad is a blessed feeling in itself. Your mom is very much same to mine. My mom's always asking for so many things to be done. Also, it feels quite good that yours and mine situation is very much similar. My parents moved from a big city to our current town 20 years ago but I stayed back for work. I only returned right before covid and worked in a nearby small city. I'm also semi retired, now doing some business only. My father, still not 60, is heading our logistics business along with my younger brother. I'm now married and expecting a child within a few months.
So, there are only age differences, may be, rest of the things are quite similar. Even living in an apartment in a big city in my childhood is quite a similar story. The David one was also there! The David for our town house was also there! But since I semi retired last year, my mom got me there for David and too hang between 'good enough' and 'perfection'.
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It’s great living in the same town as my parents. The kids love it to. We are about 7 minutes drive away from them. Which is great. I can help them with anything they need and if we need them to watch the kids, they are close by. I have always respected the closeness of families in the Indian community. I don’t know about living with them under the same roof but 7 minutes away is great.
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I thought you're living under the same roof but it's okay 7 minutes (assuming 5 to 7 miles away) is not that far. Do you visit your parents regularly/daily? Also, Dp you intend to live with them in coming years?
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No we will not live with them. I have a wife and 2 kids. 7 minutes is close enough. We visit them usually 3 times a week.
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3 times a week is 'good enough'. I also don't stay too much at home. I travel so much these days but my wife stays there.
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Unless it is something you are truly passionate about, good enough is fine for everything that you. Usually your good enough is a high enough standard, right? But when it comes to passions, it takes time to be perfect. Even if it is good enough at that time, you will come back to it to make it perfect or near perfect. My two cents.
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Good thoughts. Similar to most stackers perspectives.
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You have to be motivated to strive for excellence, a project that gets you excited or provides meaning. You will prioritize which endeavors are worth striving for excellence.
Time is the biggest constraint. If you have been working on something for a while and not progressing then it's probably time to say "good enough".
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Time is the biggest constraint for any project.
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I like this line of thinking. If you aren't excited or energized by a given project you probably won't enjoy striving for excellence and in this case just getting the job done and saying good enough is for lack of a better term, good enough.
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Thanks for sharing your experience but good enough is never good enough. It becomes good enough if it makes you and others happy,comfortable and satisfied. No one is perfect but we only try our best to be perfect,that's what we call (Good enough).
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We all have certain standards in that and our job is to know how far we can go and where to stop.
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The perfect circle, the center of the target, perfection. For me, it has been a long road to learning that there is no such thing in this realm. And yet, everything is perfect. For a long time, I really struggled to start anything challenging, for fear it would not meet my expectations. I would fail, fall short of perfect. Slowly I am working toward expectations about clear intention and expansion. To do my best and always look to learn from every part of the experience. With this approach I get a lot more done. And I am happy with the results. Everything feels like are instead of attempting to make something that isn't real. I still find that I am a bit hard on myself and others at times.
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I think getting a bit better each day is a good way to achieve excellence without letting the pursuit of perfection get in the way of consistent progress.
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I think about this in terms of longevity. If I am taking on a new project that I am not necessarily an expert in, I need small wins to keep that momentum going. I think this is what leads to people quitting projects prematurely. So I do think that excellence is a result of the compounding of good enoughs. If you refuse to settle for good enoughs, then you most likely will end up giving up on whatever it is you are working on.
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I like this line of thinking and it is similar to how I look at it.
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Korean burger chain slogan...
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How about pursuing everything with an aim for perfection? The frivolous mistakes and falls are also joy in life!!!
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First of all, it's great to see you living with your parents much like India where we prefer to live in combined family. It's a great feeling in itself. Isn't it?
Now talking to your point about striving for perfection, I've always believed that trying for perfection is exaggerated option and noone should be thinking a lot about it. When doing any work 'good' is enough and it can be sometimes 'perfectly good'. When you do something same over and over again, this is where you start getting those 'perfectly good' results but still not perfect as there's always a chance to improve.
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