Done is better than perfect

Five years ago I wouldn't have let a blog post like this one ship.

I'd have spent two more days on it. Tweaking, tuning, agonizing over a comma in paragraph four that nobody on earth was ever going to notice. I was a perfectionist. Didn't enjoy it. Took me about 50 years to figure that out, which is a long time to learn a five-word lesson.

Done is better than perfect.

It's my favourite line of the last two years, it's on the T-shirt, and it's the closest thing I have to a philosophy. I say it in Spanish too, badly. Hecho es mejor que perfecto. My Spanish is terrible. It's also functional. I can tell a bad joke in it and make a room smile, and I'd never have got there if I'd waited until I could conjugate properly.

Where it came from is nothing fancy. I built software to write faster and the software started handing me drafts that were good enough, fast. I could keep polishing, or I could go for a bike ride. I went for the ride. Since then I winter in Panama. Correlation, not causation, but I'll take it.

Why I'm telling you this on a blog about AI

Because I think perfectionism is exactly how people lose an afternoon to ChatGPT.

Think about the last time it happened to you. You asked for one thing. What came back was 80% there. And instead of taking the 80% and fixing the rest yourself in four minutes, you went back in. "Make it warmer." "Less corporate." "Can you try a version where..." Three hours later you've got eleven drafts, you're annoyed, and you send the first one anyway.

That's not the machine's fault, and it's not yours either. It's the perfectionist's trap with a new coat of paint. The machine will always give you another version. It never gets tired. You do. And the eleventh draft is almost never better than the second. It's just later.

My rule, and don't follow it as a set rule

Two rounds. Not three. You ask, you read, you ask one more time if you have to, and then you take what you've got and finish it by hand. Your hand. Your words on the rough spots. Send it.

Will it be perfect? No. Will it be done, in your voice, in the time it was supposed to take? Most of the time, in my experience, yes. And done and sent beats perfect and still in drafts every single day of the week.

A caveat, because I don't want to be the guy who tells you to ship crap. Some things deserve the extra hour. A contract. Something going to ten thousand people. A note to somebody who's grieving. Take the hour. Perfectionism is a problem when it's the default, not when it's a choice.

Everything else? The Tuesday email, the listing, the post, the note to the team. Two rounds and out.

And if two rounds gets you nowhere? Close the tab and write it yourself. You could always do that. You've been doing it your whole life, and the machine was supposed to save you time, not eat it.

What would you do with your afternoons if you got them back? That's the question I'd ask. I got a bike ride and a second language I speak badly, and I'd take that trade again tomorrow.

Done beat perfect. It usually does.

If that line works for you, there's a small form below and it's the only ask here. If it doesn't, no problem, and thanks for reading this far.