Progress Over Perfection

[mcbuilder]

If only my wife felt this way about my approach to household chores. My point is that in many areas of life, progress alone isn't simply good enough. Even if you believe in the 80-20 rule, progress alone won't get you to that 20%. I tried to find a deeper insight in the article, but I have a feeling the author gave up with the progress he had made when he decided to publish.

[adamisom]

Funny you mention chores because that's exactly what I've always thought of as the prime example of where 80/20 thinking brings benefits. I think a big reason to focus on higher-ROI (80/20) is to reduce friction; I'd rather have a quite-clean living space the majority of the time than a perfectly-clean living space on rare occasion (I think 80/20 thinking leads to a higher average level of cleanliness). You did say 'if only my wife felt this way' so I assume you buy into 80/20 for chores and she doesn't.

[gapo]

Made me laugh out properly.

[jf22]

I only skimmed after the part about him having three side hustles and a podcast.

Focusing on one thing instead of four is the key to success.

Spreading yourself too thin is going to lead to frustration and burnout.

[dgb23]

I'm unable to do this apparently. Or not in a strict sense at least.

Last year I had a bit of a crisis. I believed that I needed to become more focused on one particular area to facilitate long term professional success. I think I got this advice directly or indirectly from different people at different times.

But I couldn't. I looked at specific areas to specialize in isolation. All of them are interesting, but I could feel almost physical pain from just thinking to narrow down my focus on any of those.

Then I gave up, and what a relief that was. I realized that I'm not wired this way. I see the connections between the things. That's what draws my attention and endlessly motivates me. Tackle a new problem, refine my skill a bit here, bolster my knowledge a bit over there.

Quoting Heinlein: Specialization is for insects.

This resonates with me.

Now I'm a programmer (full-stack web), teacher, consultant. Recently also started learning technical writing and working towards building an animal sanctuary.

I see more and more connections between those things, which is satisfying and rewarding, often in unpredictable ways.

[swyx]

> Focusing on one thing instead of four is the key to success.

citation heavily needed on this one.

[bartread]

I think progress over perfection is a fine principle in many areas of life, but I also completely agree with your point about fous.

I'm doing quite a lot of work on my house at the moment and, like most of us, I also have a job. In addition I have a side project that's started to earn a very small amount of money since the spring, but I've barely done any work on it in months because I just can't work on that, and work on the house at the same time. I am not wired to do things in bits and pieces, and for me trying to do so just leads to stress and burnout. If I'm to feel satisfaction about either of these projects I need to be able to make solid progress, which requires dedicated time. I'd rather push on with one and let the other sit unattended for a while, than be constantly switching.

(Especially because focus is a luxury that my job only affords a limited amount of - this isn't a problem with the job at all; just the nature of it.)

[scns]

Not so sure about this. The musicians involved were pretty sure that Tool had the least chances for success from all their projects, because they only did what they liked. Then they started selling millions of records.

[tekstar]

Stopped reading when they referred to their own ambitions as a "big ask"

[SanderNL]

I get it. The author is in a hurry. But it shows. The article contains perhaps two meaningful units of useful knowledge which the author somehow stretches into multiple pages. No disrespect intended, but to save your own time, you managed to waste mine. Not a good look IMHO.

tldr: - Outsource what you can - Move fast, don't get hung up on details

Relevant quote: "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one."

[slx26]

Yeah. For perfectionists and procrastinators, it's good to focus more on small chunks of work in order to make more measurable progress... but in general, I feel that what the world needs is people moving less (movement is not always progress) and being more reflective. Working towards resilience and accessibility, not just output.

[simplecto]

This is why I come right to the comments. Thank you.

[kkoncevicius]

What's the deal with using one-sentence paragraphs? Recently I am seeing this trend more and more, it always confuses me a bit.

[leg100]

It's a desperate attempt at profundity. Particularly when a very short sentence follows in the next paragraph to declare some great insight.

Like this.

[asadkn]

Perhaps you weren't around at the peak of blogging era when all the gurus usually running self-help blogs were preaching that writing style to aspiring bloggers. It stuck around and still is dominant in blogging - and for good reasons for certain audience.

Information examples from more popular blogs:

https://neilpatel.com/blog/write-copy-like-apple/ https://copyblogger.com/short-guide-to-good-copy/

[augustk]

Could it be due to a focus on progress over perfection, and that hitting the enter key feels like progress?

[codingdave]

I do it when writing online because the average online audience's reading habits are to skim content, not fully read a paragraph. A collection of short paragraphs can get the message across better than longer explanations of the same points.

[runnedrun]

Personally, It helps me write succinctly. I'll start with long paragraphs then remove content to get to 1-2 sentences.

[tyingq]

"Progress not perfection" is a popular term in AA.