When Is “Good Enough” Good Enough?

How do you know when “good enough” is good enough? Many people don’t know when to stop working on a project. We spend inordinate amounts of time getting things just right instead of getting them good enough and then moving on. The challenge is understanding why you are doing it in the first place.

Each task or project you work on is just one short step on a much longer upward staircase. If you focus on perfectly designing every step, you will find yourself way behind where you could have been over time. The more efficiently you can keep moving forward, the further you go in a shorter period of time, and the more opportunities you take advantage of. This sets you up to be in the right place at the right time for even bigger opportunities instead of having dust collect on your shoulders as you invest time, energy, and resources in details that are unimportant in the big picture.

What is more important than having everything be perfect is your ability to produce and take great strides forward in your work. It’s ok if you don’t perfectly cross every “t” and dot every “i.” What is important is that you are completing things, moving forward, and learning to get better and better at what you do as you go.

So, the simple answer is that good enough is good enough when it’s good enough!

Let NASA worry about scientific perfection. Let yourself be a perfectly imperfect human, get it good enough, and keep going.

As the famous quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe says, “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.”

Not perfection, but action. Keep taking action and watch how you learn, grow, and everything you need falls into place on its own.