How good is 'good enough'? I suppose that depends on what you're doing. If you're building a bridge or a skyscraper or a submarine or a jetliner, 'good enough' is nearly perfect, at least as close to perfect as we are capable of achieving. If you are fixing dinner, 'good enough' might mean only that you can swallow it without gagging. 'Good enough' is always changing.
There are some guidelines, however, that you can use to decide how far 'good enough' needs to go. That's what I'd like to talk about this week.
First, it is important to remember that 'good enough' is different from perfection. Achieving perfection is hardly possible in any endeavor (except, perhaps, pure mathematics). No matter how good you are at typing, you will occasionally hit the wrong letter. No matter how good you are on the dance floor, sometimes you'll step off the beat or out of sync with your partner. No matter how good you are at saying the right thing, occasionally the wrong words will come out of your mouth.
Second, 'good enough' is contextual. If you are emailing a press release to the local news team, 'good enough' has a higher standard than if you are emailing a lunch invitation to your best friend. In each different context in which you can be doing something, there is a minimum level of correctness expected, and they are all different.
Third, 'good enough' is a function of experience. A beginning cook is going to make mistakes, and the people he cooks for will understand if something doesn't turn out well; the same cook, after years of practice, is expected to get it right more often and in more subtle ways.
Fourth, 'good enough' is open to interpretation by the audience. What one person accepts today, they might reject tomorrow, and it could be for an entirely unrelated reason such as the mood they are in after sitting in traffic. We are at our core subjective beings, and many things affect how we interpret any given situation. A movie might do really well with one crowd and bomb with the next one; the movie hasn't changed, but the demographic has, or the time of day has, or the weather outside the theater has.
So 'good enough' is not really something that you can control, and the race to be perfect is one you will always lose. Instead of trying to perfect everything, I would like to offer a different way to look at 'good enough':
'Good enough' is as correct as you can make something given your available skill, available time, and available resources, as judged by your available peers.
Still a beginner? Accept that your final product will offer much in the way of learning experiences even if it doesn't come out the way you hoped or expected. Don't have much time? Accept that your end result won't be perfect and make it as good as you can in the time you have. Don't have the tools you need to get the job done? Try doing it a new way or try creating those tools, and, again, accept that your creation won't be perfect. Don't have anyone else to give you feedback? Pretend to be your audience, and, yet again, accept that the output won't be perfect when it is reviewed by the final audience.
The one thing that is in every one of those examples is the word 'accept'. Really, that's what this all comes down to. Most people expect things to be a certain way, and don't accept them the way they actually are. Some people spend much of their time beating themselves up over details rather than taking a step back and looking at the bigger pictures of life. Typically, the masters in any field are also the most accepting, and it's the people who are just learning who consistently place unrealistic demands on themselves and others.
Acceptance is the hardest part. I've explored it before, and I'll do so again from another perspective next week...
Other news
- Stick to Reader's Digest, for your own well-being: Magazines 'harm male body image' [www.bbc.co.uk]
- Yes, when I first glanced, I thought he was learning from a TV show: 'I studied surgery as a Japanese PoW' [www.bbc.co.uk]
- More proof that what hurts the life around us hurts us as well: Pesticide Parkinson's link strong [www.bbc.co.uk]
From the editor
I'm in the process of reconfiguring how the newsletter gets distributed, so sometime in the next few weeks I'll be posting the last issue through Zinester. If you receive this by email, then you will have to take a few steps to keep receiving it, but it should only take a minute or two. I'll let you know what to do when the time comes. I just wanted to give you a heads-up.
It's hard to believe I've been doing this for almost two years now. When I started, I hoped it might be popular, but I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. I thank you all for making this worth my time and energy... if it weren't for my readers, I wouldn't be here.
Have a great week!
Healthy thoughts,
Jeff
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