“Perfection” has an expiration date. Yesterday’s perfect may be today’s “meh”.
I watched Tony Robbins’ interview with Shaun White not too long ago. When they mentioned Shaun’s Perfect 100 Score at the 2012 Winter X Games, I looked for it on YouTube. To me, it looked stunning. It’s just unbelievable that people can do that. As I scroll down the comments, I see this one: “Probably a 93 today”.
A perfect score yesterday won’t guarantee a perfect score today. Not without work towards progress. Yesterday’s competitors will learn from that perfect score. I like this sentence I’ve read in The Obstacle is the Way: think progress, not perfection.
Year’s ago, I’ve read Derek Sivers’ summary of the Art and Fear book. This passage has stuck with me:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be greaded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weight the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
“Better good today than perfect tomorrow”, comes to mind.
I keep those things in mind whenever I see myself with tons of ideas but not starting them because I may not have what I consider ideal to get it done (“not enough time”, “not enough money”, “not enough skills”, etc.).
I have been putting out many songs over the last several years. Every time I’m working on a new one, I may think “if I learn how to play the drums better”, “if I learn more music theory”, “if I learn how to sing better”. But I’m getting better at realizing I’m falling into that trap and quickly shifting into getting it started, working on it, getting it done, and moving on. Next time, it gets a little better, and so it does the time after that. Instead of waiting 10 years to have the perfect song (which I know won’t happen), I get done however I can, with whatever I have.
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