WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.439 If you're currently prepping for a really high 00:00:03.439 --> 00:00:05.700 stakes meeting right now. Or maybe just agonizing 00:00:05.700 --> 00:00:08.640 over the phrasing of a single relatively simple 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:11.679 email. Yes, exactly. If you are doing that or 00:00:11.679 --> 00:00:14.220 endlessly tweaking a project that was honestly 00:00:14.220 --> 00:00:16.879 ready to go like three days ago, you are likely 00:00:16.879 --> 00:00:19.399 caught in the ultimate productivity trap. It 00:00:19.399 --> 00:00:21.829 is so common. You just can't seem to stop moving 00:00:21.829 --> 00:00:24.190 the margins around. Right. And it's a universal 00:00:24.190 --> 00:00:28.690 experience. Its name is perfectionism. And it's 00:00:28.690 --> 00:00:31.750 an incredibly easy trap to fall into, largely 00:00:31.750 --> 00:00:35.170 because, well, aiming for perfection masquerades 00:00:35.170 --> 00:00:37.149 as a virtue. Yeah, it really does. We're conditioned 00:00:37.149 --> 00:00:39.469 from a very young age to do our absolute best. 00:00:40.009 --> 00:00:42.109 But there is a massive difference between doing 00:00:42.109 --> 00:00:44.429 your best and demanding absolute perfection. 00:00:44.710 --> 00:00:47.350 Which brings us directly to the topic of today's 00:00:47.350 --> 00:00:50.009 deep dive. We are looking at a single, heavily 00:00:50.009 --> 00:00:52.909 layered Wikipedia article focused entirely on 00:00:52.909 --> 00:00:55.630 one world -changing aphorism. Perfect is the 00:00:55.630 --> 00:00:57.829 enemy of good. That's the one. And the mission 00:00:57.829 --> 00:01:00.210 of today's deep dive is to explore the history 00:01:00.210 --> 00:01:02.950 of that phrase, to look at its surprising variations 00:01:02.950 --> 00:01:05.590 across different cultures, and most importantly, 00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:08.939 To examine the real world applications. Right. 00:01:09.079 --> 00:01:12.840 Why chasing absolute perfection so often stops 00:01:12.840 --> 00:01:16.500 us from actually doing good, valuable work. And 00:01:16.500 --> 00:01:19.459 as we navigate this, I really want you, the listener, 00:01:19.620 --> 00:01:22.640 to keep your own current projects in mind. Think 00:01:22.640 --> 00:01:24.819 about where you might be holding yourself back 00:01:24.819 --> 00:01:27.939 by, you know, holding out for a flawless outcome. 00:01:28.430 --> 00:01:30.750 So let's establish the core definition provided 00:01:30.750 --> 00:01:33.310 by our source. It essentially states that the 00:01:33.310 --> 00:01:35.829 insistence on perfection prevents the implementation 00:01:35.829 --> 00:01:38.609 of good improvements. Because achieving absolute 00:01:38.609 --> 00:01:41.209 perfection might actually be impossible. Exactly. 00:01:41.370 --> 00:01:44.090 And the pursuit of that impossible standard shouldn't 00:01:44.090 --> 00:01:46.010 prevent you from completing work that is imperfect, 00:01:46.370 --> 00:01:49.109 yet still highly valuable. Okay, let's unpack 00:01:49.109 --> 00:01:51.769 this by looking at the origins of this phrase 00:01:51.769 --> 00:01:53.969 in the English -speaking world. Oh, wait. I usually 00:01:53.969 --> 00:01:55.829 say that. Oh, my apologies. Go ahead. Okay, let's 00:01:55.829 --> 00:01:58.379 unpack this. By looking at the origins, if you 00:01:58.379 --> 00:02:00.560 ask someone with a literature background where 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:02.459 this comes from, it's commonly attributed to 00:02:02.459 --> 00:02:04.799 the French philosopher Voltaire. Right, from 00:02:04.799 --> 00:02:08.300 his 1770 work, Christiansen sur l 'Encyclopédie. 00:02:08.460 --> 00:02:11.699 But the fun fact here is that Voltaire wasn't 00:02:11.699 --> 00:02:14.479 actually the originator of the thought. He was 00:02:14.479 --> 00:02:16.520 quoting a proverb. He was borrowing established 00:02:16.520 --> 00:02:19.319 wisdom. Yeah, an Italian proverb. He actually 00:02:19.319 --> 00:02:23.400 wrote, Il meglio è l 'inimico del bene. The literal 00:02:23.400 --> 00:02:26.259 translation being, the best is the enemy of the 00:02:26.259 --> 00:02:29.120 good. And he liked that concept so much. He loved 00:02:29.120 --> 00:02:32.460 it. He used it to open his moral poem, La Bigole, 00:02:32.639 --> 00:02:37.860 referencing a wise Italian who says the best 00:02:37.860 --> 00:02:40.039 is the enemy of the good. Well, Voltaire gets 00:02:40.039 --> 00:02:43.099 the widespread credit for popularizing it. What's 00:02:43.099 --> 00:02:45.180 interesting is another major French philosopher, 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:47.759 Montesquieu, beat him to the punch by several 00:02:47.759 --> 00:02:50.340 decades. Oh, really? What was his version? Around 00:02:50.340 --> 00:02:53.400 1726, in his Pensées, Montesquieu wrote something 00:02:53.400 --> 00:02:55.919 a bit sharper. He said, the best is the mortal 00:02:55.919 --> 00:02:59.020 enemy of the good. The mortal enemy. Wow, that 00:02:59.020 --> 00:03:01.539 really changes the vibe of it. It does. What's 00:03:01.539 --> 00:03:04.139 fascinating here is the deliberate escalation 00:03:04.139 --> 00:03:06.819 by using the word mortal. Yeah, it makes it sound 00:03:06.819 --> 00:03:10.039 like a life or death struggle. Exactly. He recognized 00:03:10.039 --> 00:03:12.099 philosophically that holding out for the best 00:03:12.099 --> 00:03:14.860 doesn't just delay the good. It actively destroys 00:03:14.860 --> 00:03:17.259 its viability. Right. Because if you refuse to 00:03:17.259 --> 00:03:19.699 accept anything less than the absolute best, 00:03:19.879 --> 00:03:23.000 the good never even survives. It's a fatal threat 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:25.599 to actually shipping any real world work. Which 00:03:25.599 --> 00:03:28.520 perfectly illustrates how perfectionism is basically 00:03:28.520 --> 00:03:32.319 self -sabotage. It's an assassin waiting to kill 00:03:32.319 --> 00:03:34.460 your perfectly functional work before anyone 00:03:34.460 --> 00:03:36.340 else can see it. And that actually brings us 00:03:36.340 --> 00:03:39.400 to the antecedents section of the source. This 00:03:39.400 --> 00:03:41.979 isn't just some 18th century European idea. Right. 00:03:42.020 --> 00:03:45.129 It goes all the way back to antiquity. Yes. Think 00:03:45.129 --> 00:03:47.830 about Aristotle's golden mean. The classical 00:03:47.830 --> 00:03:50.490 philosophers counseled against extremism in all 00:03:50.490 --> 00:03:53.490 forms. So perfectionism is a form of extremism. 00:03:53.530 --> 00:03:56.370 Precisely. It's an extreme, unyielding demand 00:03:56.370 --> 00:03:59.530 placed on a system or on yourself. By demanding 00:03:59.530 --> 00:04:02.090 perfection, you abandon that healthy, virtuous 00:04:02.090 --> 00:04:04.580 middle ground of just being good. That makes 00:04:04.580 --> 00:04:06.539 a lot of sense. And I love how this idea shows 00:04:06.539 --> 00:04:09.259 up in classic English literature, too. Shakespeare 00:04:09.259 --> 00:04:11.560 actually tackled this exact friction. Oh, of 00:04:11.560 --> 00:04:13.460 course he did. Yeah, in King Lear, written in 00:04:13.460 --> 00:04:17.019 1606, the Duke of Albany has this brilliant warning. 00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:19.959 He says, striving to better, oft we mar what's 00:04:19.959 --> 00:04:23.980 well. Striving to better, oft we mar what's well. 00:04:24.120 --> 00:04:26.920 We ruin what's already working. Yes, and he hits 00:04:26.920 --> 00:04:30.939 our identical theme again in Sonnet 103. He writes, 00:04:31.519 --> 00:04:34.899 Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, to 00:04:34.899 --> 00:04:37.699 mar the subject that before was well. Framing 00:04:37.699 --> 00:04:40.779 it as a sin is so potent. And if you translate 00:04:40.779 --> 00:04:43.060 that striving to mend into a modern situation 00:04:43.060 --> 00:04:46.240 like, think about tweaking a presentation slide. 00:04:46.459 --> 00:04:48.100 Well, we've all been there. Right. It's finished. 00:04:48.279 --> 00:04:50.639 It looks professional. It is well. But then you 00:04:50.639 --> 00:04:53.480 get that urge to strive to mend. You start adding 00:04:53.480 --> 00:04:56.439 unnecessary animations. Changing the fonts, importing 00:04:56.439 --> 00:04:59.319 massive high -res files, and then boom, software 00:04:59.319 --> 00:05:01.949 crashes. The file corrupts. And you missed the 00:05:01.949 --> 00:05:04.629 deadline. Exactly. In your striving to better, 00:05:04.790 --> 00:05:07.470 you literally marred what was well. It's the 00:05:07.470 --> 00:05:09.470 exact same human impulse Shakespeare observed, 00:05:09.649 --> 00:05:11.649 just playing out on a laptop instead of parchment. 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:13.720 Here's where it gets really interesting, because 00:05:13.720 --> 00:05:16.480 the source pivots to show how this takes on different 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:18.759 cultural variations. I love this part. There's 00:05:18.759 --> 00:05:21.899 this beautiful imagery from an 1893 dictionary 00:05:21.899 --> 00:05:24.800 of quotations. It highlights a Chinese proverb 00:05:24.800 --> 00:05:27.740 that says, better a diamond with a flaw than 00:05:27.740 --> 00:05:30.600 a pebble without one. Visually, that perfectly 00:05:30.600 --> 00:05:33.379 captures the concept. It really does. A diamond 00:05:33.379 --> 00:05:36.759 has immense intrinsic worth, right? Even with 00:05:36.759 --> 00:05:39.779 a flaw, it retains value. But a pebble. Even 00:05:39.779 --> 00:05:42.800 a completely flawless, perfectly smooth pebble. 00:05:42.860 --> 00:05:45.870 Has almost zero intrinsic value. So the message 00:05:45.870 --> 00:05:48.529 is you want to produce flawed diamonds. Your 00:05:48.529 --> 00:05:51.269 work has inherent value, even if it contains 00:05:51.269 --> 00:05:53.949 a typo or a minor bug in the launch. And that 00:05:53.949 --> 00:05:56.769 pragmatic approach isn't just for poetry. It's 00:05:56.769 --> 00:06:00.009 a rule of survival in modern fields. Like military 00:06:00.009 --> 00:06:02.029 and tech history, right? Yes, specifically Robert 00:06:02.029 --> 00:06:04.810 Watson. He was instrumental in developing early 00:06:04.810 --> 00:06:07.250 warning radar during World War II. Right. And 00:06:07.250 --> 00:06:09.069 he had this philosophy he called the cult of 00:06:09.069 --> 00:06:11.720 the imperfect. Which sounds wild for a military 00:06:11.720 --> 00:06:14.339 engineer. It does. But his reasoning was purely 00:06:14.339 --> 00:06:16.500 pragmatic. He said, give them the third best 00:06:16.500 --> 00:06:18.800 to go on with. The second best comes too late. 00:06:18.860 --> 00:06:21.319 The best never comes. The best never comes. Wow. 00:06:21.420 --> 00:06:23.540 Think about the stakes during the Battle of Britain. 00:06:24.279 --> 00:06:27.139 Speed beat theoretical perfection every time. 00:06:27.379 --> 00:06:30.360 If you wait to deploy the perfect radar, your 00:06:30.360 --> 00:06:32.399 country might be decimated while you're still 00:06:32.399 --> 00:06:35.189 running diagnostics. So the third best system, 00:06:35.329 --> 00:06:38.410 even with limited range, is infinitely more valuable 00:06:38.410 --> 00:06:41.389 because it actually exists. Exactly. He chose 00:06:41.389 --> 00:06:44.029 the flawed diamond and it literally changed the 00:06:44.029 --> 00:06:46.449 course of history. Which completely validates 00:06:46.449 --> 00:06:49.850 the idea of perfection as a mortal enemy. Waiting 00:06:49.850 --> 00:06:52.370 for the best there meant death. Now let's look 00:06:52.370 --> 00:06:55.569 at economics. George Stigler had this hilarious 00:06:55.569 --> 00:06:58.149 and counterintuitive assertion about time management. 00:06:58.389 --> 00:07:00.889 Ah, the airport quote. Yes. He said if you never 00:07:00.889 --> 00:07:02.569 miss a plane, you're spending too much time at 00:07:02.569 --> 00:07:04.920 the airport. I love that one so much. Because 00:07:04.920 --> 00:07:07.600 to guarantee you never, ever miss a flight. Accounting 00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:09.839 for traffic, flat tires, long security lines. 00:07:10.040 --> 00:07:12.459 You'd have to arrive like four hours early every 00:07:12.459 --> 00:07:15.259 single time. Right. The hidden cost of a 100 00:07:15.259 --> 00:07:18.180 % success rate is the massive surplus of your 00:07:18.180 --> 00:07:21.360 own time just wasted sitting in a terminal. So 00:07:21.360 --> 00:07:23.480 to optimize your life, you have to accept the 00:07:23.480 --> 00:07:25.420 risk of occasionally missing a plane. Because 00:07:25.420 --> 00:07:27.759 it reclaims hundreds of hours of your life. The 00:07:27.759 --> 00:07:30.199 source also brings this into computer science. 00:07:30.990 --> 00:07:33.990 Donald Knuth has this famous rule for programming 00:07:33.990 --> 00:07:37.129 optimization. Premature optimization is the root 00:07:37.129 --> 00:07:41.269 of all evil. Strong words. Very. But it happens 00:07:41.269 --> 00:07:43.709 when a programmer spends weeks making a tiny 00:07:43.709 --> 00:07:47.149 piece of code run incredibly fast. Before the 00:07:47.149 --> 00:07:49.790 whole program is even finished. Right. They optimize 00:07:49.790 --> 00:07:52.230 for a scenario that might not even matter. the 00:07:52.230 --> 00:07:55.029 product gets delayed budget is blown all because 00:07:55.029 --> 00:07:57.290 they obsessed over a micro detail which flows 00:07:57.290 --> 00:07:59.649 right into the marketing concept of quality creep 00:07:59.649 --> 00:08:02.089 oh quality creep is dangerous it's when a team 00:08:02.089 --> 00:08:04.810 just keeps adding tiny incremental improvements 00:08:04.810 --> 00:08:07.829 pushing back the launch date until the product 00:08:07.829 --> 00:08:09.850 isn't even viable anymore if we connect this 00:08:09.850 --> 00:08:12.250 to the bigger picture look at the pattern here 00:08:12.250 --> 00:08:15.259 we've got 18th century french philosophy World 00:08:15.259 --> 00:08:18.319 War II radar, modern economics, computer coding, 00:08:18.540 --> 00:08:20.620 marketing. Totally different fields. But they've 00:08:20.620 --> 00:08:23.360 all independently discovered the exact same truth. 00:08:24.259 --> 00:08:26.540 Conquering the illusion of perfection is required 00:08:26.540 --> 00:08:29.639 to deliver anything of actual value. So what 00:08:29.639 --> 00:08:32.379 does this all mean? How do we mentally categorize 00:08:32.379 --> 00:08:34.970 these traps so we can avoid them? The see also 00:08:34.970 --> 00:08:37.210 section of the source gives us a great web of 00:08:37.210 --> 00:08:39.690 these related concepts. Let's do a rapid fire 00:08:39.690 --> 00:08:43.190 round of these to give you listening some mental 00:08:43.190 --> 00:08:45.950 models to take away, starting with project management, 00:08:46.129 --> 00:08:49.590 gold plating. Gold plating is essentially adding 00:08:49.590 --> 00:08:52.309 unnecessary features to something that's already 00:08:52.309 --> 00:08:54.600 finished. Like taking a functional building and 00:08:54.600 --> 00:08:57.440 needlessly painting it in gold. Exactly. It has 00:08:57.440 --> 00:08:59.519 no functional value, just consumes resources. 00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:02.100 And the counter to that is from politics and 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:04.639 business, Burt Lance's famous quote, if it ain't 00:09:04.639 --> 00:09:07.360 broke, don't fix it. The ultimate pragmatic rule. 00:09:07.879 --> 00:09:11.340 Next up, design and engineering. The KISS principle. 00:09:11.620 --> 00:09:14.240 You keep it simple, stupid. Complexity is often 00:09:14.240 --> 00:09:17.100 just a symptom of trying to be too perfect. Every 00:09:17.100 --> 00:09:19.240 moving part you add is just another potential 00:09:19.240 --> 00:09:21.419 point of failure. Then there's philosophy and 00:09:21.419 --> 00:09:24.350 logic. The Nirvana fallacy. This one is insidious. 00:09:24.529 --> 00:09:27.309 It's when we reject an actual realistic solution 00:09:27.309 --> 00:09:29.850 simply because we're comparing it to an impossible 00:09:29.850 --> 00:09:33.470 perfect utopia. Like voting down a plan that 00:09:33.470 --> 00:09:36.470 reduces traffic by 40 % just because it doesn't 00:09:36.470 --> 00:09:38.690 solve traffic completely. Right. You reject a 00:09:38.690 --> 00:09:40.940 good improvement because it's not magic. Which 00:09:40.940 --> 00:09:43.480 brings us to satisficing. A blend of satisfy 00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:46.559 and suffice. It's a strategy where you stop searching 00:09:46.559 --> 00:09:49.019 for solutions once you hit an acceptability threshold. 00:09:49.399 --> 00:09:51.340 You don't optimize for the maximum. You optimize 00:09:51.340 --> 00:09:53.899 for the requirement. And what about aesthetics, 00:09:54.100 --> 00:09:57.220 Wabi Sabi? The Japanese concept of finding beauty 00:09:57.220 --> 00:10:00.460 in imperfection and impermanence. It embraces 00:10:00.460 --> 00:10:02.980 the asymmetry. Embracing the flawed diamond? 00:10:03.179 --> 00:10:07.259 And lastly, from software. Worse is better. The 00:10:07.259 --> 00:10:09.960 idea that a slightly worse, less elegant system 00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:12.460 will win in the market because it actually ships. 00:10:12.700 --> 00:10:15.019 Because it gets into users' hands years before 00:10:15.019 --> 00:10:16.980 the perfect system is even out of beta testing. 00:10:17.240 --> 00:10:20.259 This raises an important question for you, the 00:10:20.259 --> 00:10:22.759 listener. Which of these traps do you fall into 00:10:22.759 --> 00:10:25.440 the most? Yeah, you gold play your projects. 00:10:25.740 --> 00:10:28.279 Are you a victim of the nirvana fallacy? It takes 00:10:28.279 --> 00:10:30.700 real self -awareness to notice when you've crossed 00:10:30.700 --> 00:10:33.100 the line from doing good work to just performing 00:10:33.100 --> 00:10:37.379 perfectionism. It really does. So to wrap up 00:10:37.379 --> 00:10:39.580 this deep dive, the central takeaway here is 00:10:39.580 --> 00:10:42.700 that completing imperfect, flawed, but valuable 00:10:42.700 --> 00:10:46.039 work is always superior to dreaming about flawless 00:10:46.039 --> 00:10:48.379 work that never sees the light of day. It absolutely 00:10:48.379 --> 00:10:50.720 is. So look at whatever project you are holding 00:10:50.720 --> 00:10:53.639 back on right now. The email draft, the code, 00:10:53.860 --> 00:10:56.200 the creative piece. I want you to embrace your 00:10:56.200 --> 00:10:59.799 flawed diamond. Hit send. Publish it. Finish 00:10:59.799 --> 00:11:02.299 it. Let it exist. And before we go, I want to 00:11:02.299 --> 00:11:04.259 leave you with a thought. building on that Nirvana 00:11:04.259 --> 00:11:07.419 fallacy. If absolute perfection is genuinely 00:11:07.419 --> 00:11:10.679 impossible, Is perfectionism actually just a 00:11:10.679 --> 00:11:13.100 socially acceptable disguise for our fear of 00:11:13.100 --> 00:11:15.580 being judged? Oh, wow. Think about it. If we 00:11:15.580 --> 00:11:17.279 claim we're just waiting for it to be perfect, 00:11:17.379 --> 00:11:19.440 it gives us a permanent excuse to never put our 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:21.440 work out into the real world where it might be 00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:23.700 criticized. That is a very provocative thought 00:11:23.700 --> 00:11:26.299 to end on. Perfectionism as a shield. I know 00:11:26.299 --> 00:11:27.799 I'm going to be thinking about that for my own 00:11:27.799 --> 00:11:30.080 projects. We all should. Thank you so much for 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:31.919 joining us on this deep dive. Keep learning, 00:11:32.019 --> 00:11:33.840 and most importantly, keep shipping your work. 00:11:34.059 --> 00:11:34.779 Take care, everyone.