The title above is my personal axiom for helping me stay focused on what’s important. Whether the task is work-centric or hobby-related, I repeat this to myself when I’m getting a little too in the weeds — losing sight of what I’m trying to accomplish due to some detail that’s grabbed my attention.
You might’ve heard this expressed as, “Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough,” but my favorite version comes from the 1997 movie Wag the Dog. Asked by a desperate White House PR flack what they’re going to do about the news days down the road, Robert De Niro’s character Conrad Brean says,
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
At heart, that means just start doing the thing, whatever “the thing” happens to be. Sure, you might not have all the edges polished down, but if you don’t at least start on it, it will never get finished. With experience, you’ll learn better ways to begin a task, but even then the important part is getting the momentum going.
An example in software development: Even after 20+ years of coding professionally, I still find it hard to step back after I get a list of requirements and think things through before writing a line of code. But I know that listing out my assumptions, bouncing them off of the client for feedback, and having even a vague plan is better long-term than no plan at all. What years of experience have taught me is knowing when I’ve got enough of a plan to set things in motion, with the expectation that changes will need to be made later.
The other side of the coin with experience is that having seen plenty of projects, it’s easy to fall into the trap of “I know we’ll need this eventually, so let’s add it now.” Sure, users will one day need to upload batches of items to your new site, but it’s best not to confuse things early on before the single-item upload logic is working and tested.
Keep the Extreme Programming concept of You aren’t gonna need it (YAGNI) in mind. When I think of use cases we’ll most likely need but shouldn’t do now, I like to create a low-priority ticket for them. Mark it “post-MVP,” “2.0,” “tech debt,” etc. Keep it around so the feature or idea isn’t forgotten, but this way you get it out of your head. Add whatever details will help whoever picks up the ticket later, and stay focused on the task at hand.
Outside of work, I find this mindset does a good job keeping my anxiety at bay with personal projects. Did I get the books in our library organized? By genre, but not alphabetized yet — no big deal. Or when I’m painting my nails — maybe I got a little on a cuticle. So what? No one’s going to notice but me, and it’s more important to have them done than perfect.
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