Doing It Right Vs. Doing It Right Now
December 17th, 2007
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Photo by sunrise100(deuce)
Shaun Boyd at LifeReboot.com has written about how he recently accepted that nothing he writes will ever be perfect. Falling into the common trap of obsessing over perfection, he scrapped a lot of posts that were probably excellent because he found something wrong with each one. Then he received this comment from a reader:
“well, after almost a month with no new posts, i’m forced to unsubscribe. it’s a shame – this blog had a lot of potential.”
Shaun acknowledged the comment, then responded by writing a post the next day, and another one four days later (which was yesterday). He says he’s given up on perfection.
I can’t say that I’ve kicked the perfectionist habit that cleanly, but I do make an effort to relax my inner editor to increase my output. I think of it as “doing it right vs. doing it right now.”
This is not specific to blogging, but it’s very common with any kind of writing. I notice it when I’m writing software programs, which is somewhat understandable, but I even do it with very simple emails. I always feel the urge to check the spelling one more time, make sure everything flows, that all the bases are covered, and that everything sounds right.
In a way, this is good. After all, if you look around it’s not hard to find plenty of cases where work has been done very sloppily. Paying attention to detail is a good thing.
But one of the problems with too much of a good thing is diminishing returns. When you write your first draft, it might be 85% perfect right off the bat. A small amount of effort is all that’s needed to get it to 95%. If you check it very carefully and pay a lot of attention to how it will sound to readers, you can eventually get it to 99%. But a perfectionist will spend exponentially more time getting it to 99.1%, then 99.101%, etc.
By spending all that time trying to make an already good thing marginally better, you’re depriving yourself of the chance to make many more good things. Which would you rather have: one post that’s 99.44% perfect, or five posts that are 95% perfect? And here’s the kicker: the world probably won’t appreciate your perfectionism. Show someone a 95% post against your 99.44% pure masterpiece, and they might not be able to tell which is which. They might even prefer the other one.
While this principle is commonly observed in writing, it can be seen everywhere. Anytime someone says it’s not a good time to have kids (year after year after year), or they’re not good enough to start competing in some sport or hobby (year after year after year), or they don’t have enough information to try a business idea they’ve been thinking about (year after year after year), they’re stuck in the trap of waiting for the time to be right. Guess what—the time will never be right, so you can’t let that paralyze you.
I’m not saying to be careless. I’m saying to be aware of the trade-offs and strike a balance between “right” and “right now.” People tend to err heavily on the side of doing things “right,” and then realize far too late that they haven’t done very many things. Relaxing your standards a bit can help you crank up the output and get far more done for the same effort.
On another note, can someone explain to me why a low posting frequency would force someone to unsubscribe?
December 18th, 2007 at 12:13 am
Hi Hunter,
Thanks for linking to my article at LifeReboot — I’m glad you enjoyed it, agreed with it, and expanded it. I’ve heard of diminishing returns before, but never fully understood what it meant until I read your explanation here. Thanks for laying it out so simply.
Regarding your question “Can someone explain to me why a low posting frequency would force someone to unsubscribe?”, I think he had a legitimate reason to say what he did. Maybe he was “forced” to do it because he would prefer not to, but he was tired of being disappointed seeing the same latest post in his reader day after day.
To be honest, I’m grateful for his comment. He helped me get back into the habit of writing.
Cheers,
~Shaun
December 18th, 2007 at 1:12 am
Hi, Shaun. I was actually about to email you to introduce myself, so thanks for taking the initiative. This post was one of a couple dozen in my “post idea queue,” and when I saw your post I decided that now was the time.
I learned the concept of diminishing returns in ECON 201. They illustrated it with glasses of water. If you’re really thirsty, the first glass is fantastic. The second is not quite fantastic, but great. The third glass is merely good. The fourth glass might be hard to get down, and the fifth might make you sick. So you have to take that into consideration when you decide how much to drink.
I understand that person’s reason for unsubscribing better now after reading your explanation. I’m new to the blogging world and have no idea what a feed reader interface actually looks like. I thought that if you didn’t post he simply wouldn’t be notified; I didn’t realize he’d keep seeing the same post over and over again.
Anyway, I’m glad the loss of a subscriber had a silver lining for you.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:49 am
Hi Hunter,
Every time I have a chance, I come to your blog to catch up on your older posts. This was another good one.
The scenario you wrote about, “striving for perfectionism”, reminds me of a saying I heard years ago…”you can analyze until you paralyze”. For me, this stuck. It taught me to be more gentle with myself, realize I will make errors, know that I am not perfect, and all of that is O.K.
Even with blogging, I often make a typo, or word a sentence wrong, but I have learned to “let it go”. I have way too much fun blogging to worry about the small stuff.
With regard to Shaun’s visitor, unsubscribing, I use Google reader, and if one of my favorite blogs has a new post, it shows (1), and the name is “brighter” (for lack of a better word). If I have “marked all as read”, the name is “dim”.
Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t subscribe in a reader, but had tried email alerts. Then my inbox got so cluttered, I unsubscribed (via email) to all of the blogs.
Barbara’s last blog post..Stop The Press – I’m Dying To Share
February 1st, 2008 at 12:21 am
Barbara, you’re really good at seeking out posts…searching for new bloggers on Google, digging deep into their archives, and leaving comments. I’m sure that just about every new blogger appreciates that someone wants to read them even if they don’t have hundreds of diggs on every post.
I’m trying to get better at just getting posts written, and saving the editing for end. I find it hard not to get caught up in checking for typos and the right wording, but I try to remind myself that my readers probably don’t care much about those things.
Shortly after I left my comment above, I started using Google Reader. However, I still don’t understand why someone would unsubscribe because the author isn’t posting enough. Where it says “Show: updated – all,” I select “updated” so instead of being dimmed, blogs without new posts just don’t appear. I can understand wanting someone to post more, but if they don’t post enough for you, unsubscribing will result in even fewer posts.
I know exactly what you mean about your inbox being cluttered. One of my upcoming posts is going to be about why RSS readers are the best way to stay on top of our favorite blogs.