
Taming Perfectionism - apgwoz
http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/taming-perfectionism.html
======
kirse
_Inability to achieve any lasting perfection is not fought, but embraced via
lack of symmetry, respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity.
Imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness is incorporated directly into
the design_

No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack of
internal self-acceptance. For us who build and produce, it can be a vicious
cycle of obsessing over the details, succeeding, and then reaping external
validation from others for that success.

However, I would question this approach that says "these external things I
make will always be imperfect" instead of simply saying "I internally accept
myself, in entirety, for who I am."

The first case only solves issues of perfectionism, while the second - self-
acceptance - goes much farther than just addressing perfectionist tendencies.

~~~
Eliezer
_No matter how you experience it, perfectionism always traces back to a lack
of internal self-acceptance._

Not everything that sounds Deeply Wise is actually true.

Try doing math with imperfect proofs and see how long it takes to arrive at a
contradiction. Ariane 5 blew up thanks to a floating-point error.

Some things in life require perfection. The error lies in applying the same
standard to things that don't.

~~~
kirse
I can't tell if this is a joke or serious.

Either way, what you're saying here is that someone who does a math problem
the right way is a perfectionist.

That's correct in one sense of the word, however, under this specific context
where we are discussing "perfectionism", doing a math problem the right way
does not make one a "perfectionist".

~~~
yters
Making sure absolutely every ambiguity is eliminated from a mathematical proof
is perfectionism. That can be quite hard.

There are a large number of things in our modern world where not shooting for
perfection can be disastrous. Space flight is one area, finances is another,
weapons targeting a third, etc. Great art is also known by its perfection.

~~~
gravitycop
_Space flight is one area [where not shooting for perfection can be
disastrous]._

No. Perfectionism has been the single leading cause of every spaceflight
"disaster". <http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm>

<http://www.dunnspace.com/leo-7-10.pdf>

_A final area needing cultural change to achieve lower launch costs is one
that cuts across virtually every part of government and the aerospace industry
that is involved in space system development and operations. [...] Fear of
failure, and the consequent lack of tolerance for it, dominates the thinking
of many engineers and aerospace managers to the point of having major effect
on the design and operation of space systems. [...]

Today’s space leaders in this country need to recapture the spirit and vision
of bold adventurism and risk acceptance to open avenues for reductions in
space system costs and new space program starts. This will require strong
courage by space managers as well as politicians to weather the storms of
inevitable failures and continue to press forward. To help ameliorate the
emotional, political, and financial impact of failures, the launching of cargo
and the launching of people should be forever separated as soon as possible.
As the cost of space launch comes down, launches (at least those that are
unmanned) will become more routine and more plentiful. This frequent and
common unmanned launch activity will allow any occasional accident that does
occur to be treated with no more significance than any other accident that
does not involve a loss of life or injury to people, or damage to the
environment._

~~~
yters
Very good point, I stand corrected. I will also post it to HN, if you don't
mind. Mainly to save it for myself.

~~~
gravitycop
Thank you. I don't mind. I believe weekday mornings are the best times to post
(the times when posts are most likely to make it to the front page and stick).
I'm not sure of the sweet spot, but I think it's ~4-8 AM Pacific time. (I
wonder if anyone has come up with HN posting-time statistics yet.)

------
raju
"I've heard that "perfect is the enemy of good enough" many times, but the
repressed artist in me refused to accept this as truth" - Thank you!

I still have this issue about perfectionism. I am constantly reading, trying
to perfect my knowledge of the framework I am using, CSS guidelines to ensure
that the UI is perfect, patterns book and software development books to make
sure I know a code smell, always trying to write the perfect code or pick the
perfect color that I have NEVER seen a side project to fruition.

This might have to do with what kirse said - it may have to do with the way I
look at myself internally. But it certainly proves to be an impediment. The
"fail fast, fail early fail often" matra does not work so well for me,
especially when I have complete control over the final outcome.

I will certainly find that book and see if it helps me. But its nice to know
someone else was in my shoes, and found a way to work with it, rather than
fighting it.

~~~
jonny_noog
_I still have this issue about perfectionism. I am constantly reading, trying
to perfect my knowledge of the framework I am using, CSS guidelines to ensure
that the UI is perfect, patterns book and software development books to make
sure I know a code smell, always trying to write the perfect code or pick the
perfect color ..._

I think there are a lot more people struggling with this problem that any of
us realise. Particularly, it would seem, in areas where technical knowledge
intersects with endevours that would traditionally be classed at "art".

Personally, I think this has got to be one of the most useful articles I've
read in months. This kind of stuff is why I keep coming here.

------
prakash
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura: <http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/tea.htm>

~~~
chris11
It's also available from Gutenburg. <http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/769>

------
jayair
Lets ignore the term perfectionism and its meaning for a second.

We are people who build and produce (as someone in the comments so eloquently
put it) and let say we set out to build X. X happens to takes a set of inputs
and produces a set of outputs. It can be built in many different ways, each of
which can be affected by a set of external factors. The effects of many of
these factors are under our control, other however are not. We have a vision
for X and a vision for how people will use it to accomplish a certain task.

Given all these factors (and many others) we build v1 and end up with X'. We
look at X' and realize its not the same as X. The difference is caused (lets
assume) due to the set of external factors we ignored, set of inputs that we
didn't consider and the resulting set of outputs that we couldn't have
expected.

Now it should be clear that X != X' is because we didn't consider all the
cases along the way. But as human beings we learn from our mistakes and we
iterate and X' grows closer to X over time. The important part here is that we
iterate and iterations take time.

The author of the article states that "I knew that real artists ship, but I
refused to ship mediocre work, which meant I could never ship anything.". Now
does he mean he couldn't ship v1 or that he was awe struck by the
discrepancies between X and X' that he couldn't iterate.

I also don't understand this part about "...but embraced via lack of symmetry,
respect for blemishes, and unsanitized simplicity.". Does he mean we need to
accept that we will never be able to perfect what we do? If so then I think he
is wrong. We might not get it right on the first try and depending on the
complexity of the task we might not get it right on the 100th try but as human
beings you can bet that we wont rest till we get it right.

Perfectionism to me is a result of the process of iteration that is carved
into our very being. Being human is not the achievement of perfection or in
his case the acceptance of our lack of, it is the pursuit of perfection. And
the day I forget that fact is the day I would stagnate and perish.

~~~
arakyd
Sounds like your attitude is pretty healthy.

As a perfectionist myself, let me say that the key is being able to continue
working on v1 _even when you anticipate the potential for a problem with the
finished v1_. The perfectionist failure mode is to restart the iteration every
single time a potential problem is perceived. The perfectionist cannot stand
the idea that anything, even v1, might fail in a way that was remotely
preventable. The perfectionist iterates, but the iteration is a very tight
loop that is not large enough to collect good feedback. In pathological cases
the iteration never leaves the mind.

The obvious problem is that these "mistakes" are far too small to learn
anything useful from. It does no good to tell the perfectionist that they have
to iterate and learn from failure, because that is exactly what the
perfectionist is doing. The problem is that it is more complicated than that -
one also has to have the right kind of failures. A person with a healthy
attitude towards failure won't even think about it and will naturally tend to
let the problem dictate the optimal size of the iteration loop, but the
perfectionist will usually always keep their loop too tight to be efficient,
or to get anything useful done at all.

Being able to let go of that requires the ability to ignore or accept a
certain kind of imperfection. Perfection in the limit requires the acceptance
and embrace of _permanent_ lack of perfection _everywhere_ else, but
especially in the builder. That is what is so hard for the perfectionist to
do.

~~~
jhickner
Thanks for your post, it really clicked for me. I certainly suffer from this
problem. I have several projects that have gone through major revisions over a
period of months or even years, without ever launching.

As soon as I see a potential problem down the road, I lose motivation and want
to start over with a fresh approach. But then after that delay, often a new
technology/framework/version has appeared that would make things so much
easier/better/faster, and I start over again.

Client work has deadlines that force you to finally make compromises, but it's
enormously more difficult to do work for yourself.

------
jcromartie
"Real artists ship" may very well be an acceptable western analog to Wabi
Sabi.

------
dustmop
defmacro doesn't post very often, but I always enjoy when he does.

~~~
waldrews
perhaps he's a perfectionist about his writing?

------
jsmcgd
When did you make this realisation?

------
vlad
There's a good point to this I want to mention. THere is a good way to tell
when you're a prefectionist. (Evefybody goes through this, some more than
others.)

I am righjt now in the I-dont-careab-out-perfection mode, which actually feels
nice. This is so because I had a boring winter break without much contact with
people, so when college started up again, I didn't care ab out being obsessed
over stupid things, I'm just happy to be taking a lot of classes, where the
fine details are just so minute to me right now.

So I can tell you right now that yes, acceptance of yourself (e.g. confidence)
is true. Another is trusting your intuition 100%. Inotherwords, I had decided
to let my left-brain just take care of things without worrying about the
beautiy, structure, form, etc that the right-brain always doubts us to. The
more we learn about what it takes to be a professional in something, the more
our right-brain tries to stop us. So I thought I should just trust my left-
brain to just do whatever tasks my eyes and brain remind me to do, and it's
been working great. Feels liberating.

But here's the point of what I wanted to say. HEre's how you can tell when
you're in the perfectionism zone.

It's when you constantly notice people nitpicking you, and you actually
realize that it is happening, and you point it out. All three things happen.

Lets go over them each one.

First, I said nitpcking, not just someone actually giving true, very useful
differences. For example, I wrote spring semester instead of winter semester
in the top half of this comment. Since I'm ignoring stupid spelling and minor
grammar errors for now (Something I never do, if you read my other posts) to
prove a point, I still changed spring to winter because that was a genuine
thing that was a problem or a bug with the comment. I also just now rearranged
some wording a few sentences prior, where i moved the parenthesis--because it
was confusing. I didn't care that thew ord Something was capitalized for on
reason. But a big grammar mistake, sure that's importnat to fix because it
means hte reader has to read over three times to understand, but itf its just
a spelling mistake, then its okay.

So what I notice happening is that people are constantly nitpicking by saying
things that were clearly not thought out, either jokes or trying to show how
smart they are by saying do x , y or z. In all those cases, they were not
actual useful feedback, but just a way for a person to feel like they're
contributing or smart. So that stuff you can ignore. The point is that when ur
not a perfectionist, as I am not right now, then you notice this.

Number two, you point it out, like I said. You feel comfortable expressing
confusion (what an idiot the person is for suggesting somethign that is the
same thing but said off the cuff, what a waste of my time, if it's insulting),
or SUnday and today, there was a girl who just would not stop nitpicking or be
quiet. SO I would tell her she was controlling and annoying and I Just said it
straight up. She literally would not stop 4 or 5 times in both cases to keep
making some nitpicking in something, giving wilder and crazier things.

ANd the last thing would be of course to realize it's happening, which most
people don't. THere's notnhing more freeing than to know that what you juts
did is of value and easy to understand, and if there's one or 400 spelling
errosr its okay. Of course in this case im overdoingit. And the flow of text
is easy to follow, as I fixed any big mistakes. But I am not modifying things
because of being insecure or worried, any changes I made were because
something I wrote, if I left it like that, would be tought to parse. So I hope
this helps and of course I"m not going to sepnd 1 hour (seriously, thats what
I do sometimes) fixing a post.

------
critic
Speaking of perfectionism, look at my karma! (but don't upmod or downmod me,
or you'll ruin it)

~~~
maneesh
what was it?

~~~
critic
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