grahamg
Old codger
- Location
- South of Manchester, UK
Why Perfect Is The Enemy Of Good
Why obsession with perfection can paralyze
Quote:
"The irony, of course, is that while "perfect" may exist as a concept that impels us to keep trying to better our work, any judgment that we've achieved it in any particular instance remains entirely subjective and therefore by definition imperfect. This almost certainly explains why we can judge something perfect one minute and then hopelessly flawed the next without making a single change.
The quest for perfection also leads to dithering: the endless reworking of a sentence or a melody or a sculpture from its original form until it comes full circle back to the form in which we originally laid it down. That trying out other possible forms may be the only way we become convinced that the original was, in fact, best, it wastes time and feels more like an itch we need to scratch than an effective creative process. And this, of course, presumes we're able to make it back around to a form we even consider good, so confused is our judgment often made by this ruminative process. More commonly, we don't so much finish a project as abandon it, not knowing what else to do to salvage it from the wreckage our own obsessive tinkering has produced.
And when we finally return to it later, we often find time away from it was the only thing that actually had the power to grant us what we most need: an improved ability to judge its quality objectively. And if we're lucky we see, sometimes in a flash that lasts only a split second, not how to make it perfect but how to make it work.
Our development as a creator of good works must at some point involve us learning how to leverage our desire for perfection to impel us toward quality without becoming trapped in a miasma of permanent dissatisfaction with everything we create. At some point, we must remind ourselves, any changes we make to a creation no longer make it better but just different (and sometimes worse)."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/happiness-in-world/201106/why-perfect-is-the-enemy-good
Why obsession with perfection can paralyze
Quote:
"The irony, of course, is that while "perfect" may exist as a concept that impels us to keep trying to better our work, any judgment that we've achieved it in any particular instance remains entirely subjective and therefore by definition imperfect. This almost certainly explains why we can judge something perfect one minute and then hopelessly flawed the next without making a single change.
The quest for perfection also leads to dithering: the endless reworking of a sentence or a melody or a sculpture from its original form until it comes full circle back to the form in which we originally laid it down. That trying out other possible forms may be the only way we become convinced that the original was, in fact, best, it wastes time and feels more like an itch we need to scratch than an effective creative process. And this, of course, presumes we're able to make it back around to a form we even consider good, so confused is our judgment often made by this ruminative process. More commonly, we don't so much finish a project as abandon it, not knowing what else to do to salvage it from the wreckage our own obsessive tinkering has produced.
And when we finally return to it later, we often find time away from it was the only thing that actually had the power to grant us what we most need: an improved ability to judge its quality objectively. And if we're lucky we see, sometimes in a flash that lasts only a split second, not how to make it perfect but how to make it work.
Our development as a creator of good works must at some point involve us learning how to leverage our desire for perfection to impel us toward quality without becoming trapped in a miasma of permanent dissatisfaction with everything we create. At some point, we must remind ourselves, any changes we make to a creation no longer make it better but just different (and sometimes worse)."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/happiness-in-world/201106/why-perfect-is-the-enemy-good
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