
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly - dang
https://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/
======
oskarpearson
Is it just me, or have some of the comments here missed the point of this
entirely? This isn't about MVP or Lean Product Dev.

It's about doing the things that are "worth doing". And about doing them
yourself, instead of outsourcing them to someone else. Take responsibility for
doing the things that are difficult but worth doing.

Things that people outsource:

Gym - people outsource their Gym attendance to "the experts", Personal
Trainers.

Their health - to "the professionals", be those Doctors, vitamin salesmen, or
chiropractors.

Music - to professional musicians.

~~~
superuser2
>Gym - people outsource their Gym attendance to "the experts", Personal
Trainers.

Um, what? Your personal trainer doesn't go to the gym in your stead, they
advise on how best to use your time there.

~~~
xerophyte12932
I think he meant "you shouldn't skip gym just because you don't have a
trainer. Gym is worth doing, so it's even worth doing badly (without a
trainer)"

~~~
drewrv
I agree with this idea but if you work out badly enough you can seriously
injure yourself.

~~~
iLoch
You're probably over analyzing this. I don't need someone to tell me how to
run if I want to go for a run, regardless of my experience level. But sure,
having a personal trainer is important for certain types of workouts.

~~~
thenomad
I agree for a one-off.

But plenty of people have permanently damaged their knees by consistently
running without getting advice on how best to do it.

You don't need a personal trainer for that. But asking someone "to tell me how
to run" ain't a bad idea, even if it's a question on a running board on the
Internet.

~~~
pingswept
"But plenty of people have permanently damaged their knees by consistently
running without getting advice on how best to do it."

The people who read running boards all the time roll their eyes at stuff like
this. Saying that running will hurt your knees is the running equivalent of
"The GPL will infect your codebase." It's not true, but it sounds scary.

Usually, if you ask runners how to run, they will say something like, "It's
not that complicated. Run more miles, slowly."

For example:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/wi8zq/want_an_easy...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/wi8zq/want_an_easy_way_to_drop_that/)

~~~
thenomad
Interesting - thanks!

OTOH, "Runner's Knee" does seem to be a serious condition affecting a lot of
people (much like "Fencer's Knee", which I'm more familiar with). From the
same subreddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/3hx43k/how_i_cured...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/3hx43k/how_i_cured_my_runners_knee/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/26jaax/3_years_ago...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/26jaax/3_years_ago_i_blew_out_my_knee_in_a_marathon/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1gdw5l/can_i_fix_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1gdw5l/can_i_fix_my_runners_knee/)

And a number of people, when discussing the problem, reference bad technique
as a causative factor.

However, you're absolutely right that it seems there's little evidence for
permanent damage. I found this thread particularly interesting:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1fehx2/wife_trying...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1fehx2/wife_trying_to_convince_me_running_will_ruin_my/)

------
Terr_
For a bit more context, Chesterton is complaining about how the education
system (1910) blindly processes girls as if they were facial-hair-impaired
boys, and he digresses a bit into discussing creative/artistic play.

Here, I'll try to edit/snip/boil it down into something easier to read. Money-
quote is at the very end. (Original text at [http://www.online-
literature.com/chesterton/wrong-with-the-w...](http://www.online-
literature.com/chesterton/wrong-with-the-world/41/) )

_____________________________________

All the educational reformers did was to ask what was being done to boys and
then go and do it to girls [...] "Would you go back to the elegant early
Victorian female, with ringlets and smelling-bottle, doing a little in water
colors, dabbling a little in Italian, playing a little on the harp, writing in
vulgar albums and painting on senseless screens? Do you prefer that?" To which
I answer, "Emphatically, yes." [...]

There was a time when you and I and all of us were all very close to God; so
that even now the color of a pebble (or a paint), the smell of a flower (or a
firework), comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty; as if
they were fragments of a muddled message, or features of a forgotten face.

To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of
education; [...] To smatter the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the
dreadful sciences, to juggle with pillars and pyramids and toss up the planets
like balls, this is that inner audacity and indifference which the human soul,
like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up forever.

This is that insanely frivolous thing we call sanity. And the elegant female,
drooping her ringlets over her water-colors, knew it and acted on it. She was
juggling with frantic and flaming suns. She was maintaining the bold
equilibrium of inferiorities which is the most mysterious of superiorities and
perhaps the most unattainable. She was maintaining the prime truth of woman,
the universal mother: that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

~~~
bonniemuffin
I'm glad society no longer expects me to loaf about with a smelling-bottle
dabbling in Italian. The elegant female can kiss my ass. I'd rather be
ferociously competent.

~~~
dclowd9901
I read it less as "leave women to their vices," and more as "leave people to
their vices," but maybe I'm giving credit where it isn't due.

------
david-given
I've always preferred Douglas Adams' version: _Some things you should care
enough about to do badly._

~~~
ctdonath
He also wrote it as: _The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy... does at least
make the reassuring claim, that where it is inaccurate it is at least
definitively inaccurate._

I've paraphrased it as _if I 'm going to be wrong, I shall strive to be
DEFINITIVELY wrong_ which has proven very helpful advice.

~~~
Terr_
I find myself thinking of the different between:

"Look at this cool code-trick I found... Maybe it's good?"

"Look at this cool code-trick I found... Warning: Despite the cool part, it
actually contains several subtle and horrifying flaws and no sane person
should ever trust it in production."

------
wilshiredetroit
I guess this is the cycle:

1) "Some things you should care enough about to do badly." \- Start as a hobby

2) “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” - You work on it some
more but you are still mediocre at it

3) "If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing." \- You work at it, again and
again and you have a ton of iterations

But you get tired and you question what you are working on; #4,#5,#6 creeps in
your head

4) "If a thing is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well."

5) "If doing something isn't worth the effort, doing it well won't fix that."

6) "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be
done at all."

I see 4,5,6 a lot in "features". Techs spend too much time on features that no
one really cares about. Its the same for crappy movies.. lots of talented
people work on really crappy work.. 99% of the time its not their own passion
project. In todays, work-world, we are forced to do great work on really vapid
stuff.

I see 1,2,3 in really passionate people and what the world gets are
iterations, variety and meaningful work. *the world is better for it -
scientist, entrepreneurs and artist do this. Many variations and angles of an
idea. A lot of times, the body of work becomes meaningful.

------
cafard
Years after encountering this in Chesterton, I read _The Soul of a New
Machine_ , and found Tom West quoted as saying "Not everything worth doing is
worth doing well." I don't know whether he had read Chesterton or whether he
simply made an obvious additional turn on a turn of phrase.

~~~
wilshiredetroit
wow-- thank you for this tidbit.. just quickly read the wiki on it.. and now
Im gonna get on and read it. :D

~~~
cafard
You're welcome. When you read it, consider that the team originally wanted to
build a machine with a VAX-like instruction set, and that those fell out of
fashion soon after. I did used to know Eclipse assembler, and it had its
peculiarities--no register-relative byte addressing, as I recall.

------
kazinator
If we stick in the word "even", it's clearer: _worth doing even badly_.

If something is worth doing, it may be worth doing even badly, rather than
insisting it must be done well, resulting in paralyzing inaction.

------
RangerScience
Upon consideration, I think maybe it's clearer in the inverse:

If you _have_ to worry about how well you do it, it's not worth it for you to
do.

I think this applies equally well to things doing the things you love doing -
raising kids, making art - as it does to clearing blockers and doing-things-
what-need-doing.

Note that the "have to" is a key part - most people will and/or should
actually worry about how well they do - the difference is whether you're
_required_ to worry.

This definitely doesn't apply to all situations - it missed the entire field
of "things you're good at" \- but I found it decently insightful for my
personal life.

------
arvinsim
An inspiration for amateurs everywhere. It is a useful idea at the start. But
at some point, you will acquire an itch to to hone your skills. By then, you
probably don't need to worry about doing badly.

P.S. I love this guy's wit. I came into his works when I researched
Catholicism and because of some references from Neil Gaiman. But I would have
never thought that this writer would ever be in HN.

~~~
digitalsigil
> An inspiration for amateurs everywhere. It is a useful idea at the start.
> But at some point, you will acquire an itch to to hone your skills. By then,
> you probably don't need to worry about doing badly.

Actually, I think it's even better advice someone who is already skilled at
something. It's easy to forget that being able to do something well doesn't
make that thing worthwhile. Right now I feel this way about my profession -- I
need to choose between doing something I think makes the world a worse place
"well" to pay the bills versus trying to redirect my skill-set towards
something more "worthwhile", but potentially failing.

Obviously there are many factors to consider but I think the main point of the
quote is to emphasize the nature of "worth" transcends ability, not just
"don't be afraid to try new things!"

re: P.S. And yes, "Good Omens" is an awesome book.

------
EC1
I got stuck starting a company with my friend and wasted months coding
everything to absolute perfection with the latest bleeding edge tech when we
could have coded it in a week, then we missed out chance because a huge
competitor swept in with lots of VC money and ate the market. So it goes.

~~~
dev1n
_Software is a very competitive business, prone to natural monopolies. A
company that gets software written faster and better will, all other things
being equal, put its competitors out of business. And when you 're starting a
startup, you feel this very keenly. Startups tend to be an all or nothing
proposition. You either get rich, or you get nothing. In a startup, if you bet
on the wrong technology, your competitors will crush you._

You didn't read PG's essays [1] did you?

[1]: [http://paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://paulgraham.com/avg.html)

~~~
EC1
Yeah we thought we were going quick. "Takes years for people to launch and we
built a perfect system in a few months!" was kind of our approach. We
literally just should have bought a theme, connected our backend, and
launched, then iterated the moment we saw cash. Reading all the things in the
world won't matter until you start or have some frame of reference for the
things you read. Now our frame of reference is our past failure.

~~~
tim333
I dare say even if you'd done the quick solution you may well still have been
crushed by the competitor with VC funding. It's a tricky business. I guess one
of the advantages of going through YC is the companies then generally have
access to funding more easily than their competitors.

------
msutherl
Before realizing that this was a Chesterton website, I took the word
"Quotemeister" to indicate that this was a website called "The Quotemeister",
wherein, I guessed, popular quotes were analyzed to get at their true meaning.

Does such a website exist?

~~~
paulgerhardt
[http://genius.com/](http://genius.com/)

It started with rap lyrics (as Amazon started with books), expanded to
poetry/tech/news, and is on a wibbaldy wobbedly course to break down any body
of text or website.

Here's a page on Oscar Wilde quotes: [http://genius.com/Oscar-wilde-famous-
oscar-wilde-quotes-anno...](http://genius.com/Oscar-wilde-famous-oscar-wilde-
quotes-annotated)

~~~
msutherl
Amazing – didn't think of that – thank you!

------
tim333
As some context from Wikipedia:

Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox."...

"Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs,
allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."

------
jimkri
>The line, “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” is not an
excuse for poor efforts. It is perhaps an excuse for poor results. But our
society is plagued by wanting good results with no efforts (or rather, with
someone else’s efforts).

This relates to weight loss and the dependency on weight loss drugs. I see ads
all the time for new weight loss supplements, or new workout machines, or fat
burning belts. Stating that this will burn fat faster, with less effort.
Society now thinks that in order to look fit you must take a fat burning pill,
or some crazy concoction to actually loose weight. >We have left “the things
worth doing” to others, on the poor excuse that others might be able to do
them better. But in reality it just takes a healthy life style to be fit, so
if loosing weight is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

------
bovermyer
I think I prefer this quote without the context of the original author, given
his attitudes and motivations in writing it.

Are there any quotes that you know of where you feel similarly? Where you have
transplanted the quote into your own context, rather than the original
context, and felt better about it as a result?

~~~
visakanv
The Ender's Game series teaches kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion. The
author is a homophobe. I'll take the learnings sans the homophobia!

------
frandroid
"As for your second question, the Quotemeister generally tries to avoid
explaining what Chesterton means. For two reasons. [...] Two, we think
students should write their own class assignments rather than having us do it
for them." Bwahaha

------
unabst
Steve Tyler of Aerosmith:

"If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing."

... and you know he would say that.

~~~
wilshiredetroit
I think it was Ayn Rand (per Google) *I love that saying though

~~~
cholantesh
The knowledge that she had a penchant for amphetamines certainly adds an
interesting perspective to that quote...

------
tacon
I was thinking this must be the original source of a Zig Ziglar quote:

"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well."

But the two quotes appear unrelated.

------
Kenji
Or another way of looking at this is the following. If you take on new, large
projects, you're often worried about the problems you face, how things are
going to work, if your skills, effort and knowledge are enough. More often
than not, you will end up with something reasonable upon completion (if you
have enough self-control to get that far) and even if you fail miserably, you
learned valuable lessons. So it is not a bad thing to confidently step into
new directions, even if there's a risk or certainty that it won't be better
than bad.

Example: I never baked a cake (ok that's not a large project ;p). I will bake
a cake. I know it is most likely not going to turn out well. The result of my
work might even be garbage that I have to dispose of. I will bake a bad cake.
But the next cake will be better, I learned something from my mistakes.

~~~
douche
If you're baking a cake, and have never done so before, you don't wade in and
try to make the multi-layer chocolate scratch cake with ganache first.

You buy the box of Pillsbury Funfetti mix[1], measure out the cup of oil and
crack two eggs in and mix it up and pour it into a 13x9 pan. Bake it up and
throw some canned frosting on top.

Is this going to be the greatest cake in the world, no; it's ceiling is maybe
80% (or maybe higher, depending on how nostalgic you are for Funfetti). But
it's hard to really screw it up.

[1][http://www.pillsburybaking.com/products/funfetti-1378](http://www.pillsburybaking.com/products/funfetti-1378)

------
ctdonath
If a thing is worth doing, doing it badly is still worthwhile because what
matters is that it is done - to whatever degree.

Were doing it badly not worth doing at all, then the thing is not worth doing
- only doing it well is.

------
wilshiredetroit
What I find really interesting after mulling it over.. is that there's soo
much crap out there -- being made well by really really talented people. _I
wonder if there 's an easy heuristic to figure out if something is worth
doing_ \-- I think that we've exhausted the whole-> "do what you are
passionate about" and "solve problems" bit as a source to figure out what to
work on. Or have we?

~~~
throweway
I think passion is the best heuristic. Otherwise it depends on things we cant
know. Will we be invaded by aliens in 1000 years? If so then thats going to
change the optimal side project!

------
cmdrfred
Brain surgery is one exception.

------
EpiMath
If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.

------
nether
IOW: Perfect is the enemy of good.

~~~
bloaf
Not quite. I think you could read it that way, but I suspect Chesterton had a
bit more of a principled idea in mind:

 _It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all
the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are
done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing
them, and that the nation is merely looking on_

-Chesterton

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Hmmmm makes me wonder about the road construction crews. Is it a bad sign that
they are so efficient?

Edit: How did this idea ever get upvoted by the progressives here on HN?

~~~
douche
Where do you live that road construction is efficient?

It might just be that I live too close to Massachusetts, but we have a whole
repertoire of "How many road workers does it take to change a light bulb?"
jokes around here.

------
applecore
Charlie Munger's quote is also insightful: "If a thing is not worth doing at
all, it's not worth doing well."

~~~
jasperry
I'm not so sure about this one. Doing something well can be a pleasure in
itself, and even take the sting out of a job that looks like useless busywork.
And if you find a really elegant solution it could be useful for something
else later. At least you can take pride in yourself and keep your skills up.

~~~
jldugger
Munger is something like a co-manager of Berkshire Hathaway. His quote should
be considered in that context: if doing something isn't worth the effort,
doing it well won't fix that.

~~~
tim333
Buffett's quoted that as a justification for not investing in small businesses
in that he needs large deals to make a difference to Berkshire.

------
vijayr
Doesn't it depend on what it is though? If my todo app breaks, no harm done
other than a few irritated users. But if a dialysis machine breaks...

~~~
vog
Or, if a dilettantish crypto app provides a false sense of security to
political activists, which may be life-threatening as well, depending on their
country.

