Thanks to Josephine Bush (SQL Kitty – @hellosqlkitty) for hosting this T-SQL Tuesday. The prompt is how to avoid being a perfectionist when it’s not needed.
I’m listening to Effortless by Greg McKeon (link to author’s page) through Audible.com. He points out that often times, a quest for perfection means we don’t move forward. We get caught up in details and possibilities and instead we need to take a step back. His recommendation is to Start from Zero.
Let’s say that we already have a solution and we’re trying to reduce the steps in that solution to make things faster/easier. Or we have a solution but all these ideas to make an absolutely fabulous final product. In the first case the danger is that we don’t realize that some of those steps don’t matter. An example McKeon gave was from Steve Jobs’ Apple days around iDVD. The team had this elaborate piece of software that they felt they had reduced a lot in the interest of making things easier for the end user and they were prepared with slides and everything. Jobs simply drew a box on the board and said, “This is the app. They should be able to drag the movie onto the app and then click a button to burn the DVD. That’s all that’s needed.” In the second case, we keep redefining what “Done” means. By starting from zero we can look at what is absolutely needed. Then we do those things. In the Agile world we use “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP) and it’s the same idea that can be applied pretty much universally.
For instance, McKeon gives the example of an Eagle Scout project he and his son were working on. They got into the “how can we make this spectacular” mode and as a result, forward progress stopped. They don’t finish and his son can’t become an Eagle Scout. When he and his son pulled back and looked at the requirements for that final project, they were able to rewrite the plan and finish. The spectacular wasn’t necessary to complete the goal. As a result, they were able to complete the requirements for the Eagle Scout project and his son was able to earn his Eagle Scout award.
If you’re stuck or you notice that momentum is slowing down, take a step back and figure out what the minimum is to get the job done. This might mean stepping back and taking a blank sheet out (literally or figuratively) and determining what you need to do. Then execute on that.