Good Enough vs. Perfect
The mirrorless camera is ready for the shot. The wind is still. You have adjusted your shutter speed, everything seems just right. The lake water is still like a perfect painting, with no movement, pure stillness ready to be captured. There is a slight gust of wind but that doesn’t concern you. You’ve got your North Shore puffer jacket to keep you warm. You lift the camera to your eye with your thermal glove-covered hands. You take a few shots, see how they turned out, adjust, change shoot spots and snap a few more times. After a few or so minutes you are done. The photos are perfect you think. The two-hour sunrise drive up to the mountain lake was worth it.
You got your shot.
When you get home you strip down into something lighter, fire up your Mac Studio and upload your photos to Adobe PhotoShop, you notice something a little off. The photos are good, better than good! But they aren’t what you saw on camera in the mountains. No! The photos you saw on the camera were perfect… these aren’t the perfect photos you saw before.
You stare at the screen with a stoic expression and inner curiosity, “hmmmmm,” you think, just looking at the photos, I thought they were perfect. You eventually snap out of it, make another cup of coffee and get to work. Pondering over it won’t make it the photo it’s meant to be. You edit your photo, and after an hour of focus and calming lofi music, the photo is ready to be shared with the world.
It may not be perfect. But it is good enough. You close down your workstation and enjoy the rest of your day.
You should aim for ‘good enough’ rather than perfect. As the saying goes… ‘Perfect is the enemy of good. Done is better than perfect. The best is the enemy of the good.’ There are times when something needs to be perfect and times when you can settle for good enough.’’
If you strive for perfect every time you are going to get nothing done. You will end up in an endless cycle of trying to make everything perfect and then you’ll, 1. Won’t even get started or 2. You will never finish what you started.
Perfect is an illusion, it doesn’t exist, and striving for perfection actually does more harm than good. For some people perfect has become a standard of living and the more and more they strive for perfection, the more miserable they end up. They are left endlessly chasing and reaching out for something they will never catch. They think they are close, they think it’s within their reach but the truth is nothing was ever there in the first place.
Perfect has become an increased norm with ‘perfect’ Instagram photos, filters making everyone beautiful and getting rid of physical ‘flaws’ that are afraid to be shown. But this is wrong, No one is perfect, and they never will be. Accept it. It’s scary but you must embrace the vulnerability of it. Be kind to yourself.
Focus on the good enough principle.
The good enough principle says you should pinpoint when putting more effort into something won’t make it better in a meaningful manner, so you should mark it as finished and move on.
This will help you embrace the idea that good enough is good enough, by contrast to wasting precious resources; time, money, energy, attention, you don’t want to pour them into a place where it’s not making any meaningful difference.
Trying to be perfect is counter-productive, it’s exhausting and not worth it. Do you work, practise your craft and then go live the rest of your life.
Make good enough your new perfect.
Until next time,
Brody
P.S.
“Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.” —Robert H. Schuler
“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” - Nobel Laureate William Faulkner
