Your Happiness Project: Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

I was inspired by an observation by Voltaire to make my resolution, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” In other words, instead of pushing yourself to an impossible “perfect,” and therefore getting nowhere, accept “good.” Many things worth doing are worth doing badly.

I have a friend who never exercises unless she’s training for a marathon; as a consequence, she almost never exercises. I never push myself when I exercise, and although I suspect she scoffs at my wimpy work-outs, I’ve managed to get myself to exercise several times a week for years. If I’d tried to have a more ambitious work-out, I’m sure I wouldn’t have exercised at all.

Along the same lines, I told a friend that one of my happiness-project resolutions was to “Remember birthdays,” and so I was sending out happy-birthday emails. He said, “Oh, you shouldn’t email! You should call or write a hand-written note, that’s much nicer.” True – but I won’t. And it’s better to get something done imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly.

The perfect can also become the enemy of the good in the quest for perfect information. There are two ways to approach decision-making: as a satisficer (yes, that is a word) or as a maximizer.

Satisficers are those who make a decision or take action once their criteria are met. That doesn’t mean they’ll settle for mediocrity; their criteria can be very high, but as soon as they find the pasta sauce or the business card that has the qualities they want, they’re satisfied. Maximizers want to make the optimal decision. Even if they see a bicycle or a backpack that meets their requirements, they can’t make a decision until after they’ve examined every option, to make the best possible choice. Studies suggest that satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers; maximizers spend a lot more time and energy to reach a decision, and they’re often anxious about whether they did, in fact, make the best choice. (For a fascinating discussion, read Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice.)

In almost every category, I’m a satisficer, and in fact, I often felt guilty about not doing more research before making decisions. But it’s one of my Secrets of Adulthood: Most decisions don’t require extensive research. In picking a girls’ summer camp, a friend got information from twenty-five camps and visited five in person. We got information from five camps and picked the one that a friend’s daughter loved. I used to think that my lack of diligence was a sign of laziness, and my resolution “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” has made me feel a lot better.

In some situations, the happier course is to know when good enough is good enough, and not to worry about perfection or making the perfect choice.

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Comments

[Jenna]

Very wise - I definitely over analyze any purchase that involves more than about $50. I am going to put your advice to work as we shop for a new vacuum cleaner & microwave - good enough is good enough.

[ChasingSanity.com]

My thoughts? Perfection should always be sought. That being said, the PROCESS to perfection is the goal, not perfection itself, as perfection (in the term's conventional use) is not an achievable goal.

[Lori]

This is excellent advice. Why waste energy on trying to find something perfect when nothing is ever perfect? I think deciding what criteria is important to you is a good idea, but beyond that, it's not worth it to agonize over every decision.

[MissPrism]

I sympathise with the friend who only exercises when she's training for something - I need the extra impetus of a "deadline" to get myself off the sofa. Perhaps your friend, far from scoffing at you, admires your tenacity.

[PowerGirl]

I'm a grad student and we try to do something similar that we call "don't be a hero" or "the principle of least effort". For example, doing an incredible master's thesis that is going to take you longer to graduate probably isn't worth the extra time and money, since in the end, you just have a master's degree -- you don't get a better degree for doing a bigger project.

[d]

This makes a lot of sense. When we try and be perfect, we often get paralyzed by the thought of, well, trying to be perfect. Doing a little of something beats doing nothing any day of the week, particularly when it comes to exercise.

- Dave

[Karyn]

I learned that I am a Satisficer and my fiance is a Maximizer. Learning this saved our relationship. I used to become very frustrated and angry with him until this was pointed out to me. Appreciating his Maximizer ways (and giving him a deadline to eventually make a decision) has made me a much happier person. And he's beginning to see how my Satisficer ways can help us get things done.

We refer to it as "shopping for toasters." I will figure out what I want from a toaster and go buy it. He will look at every toaster ever made to figure out what features he wants. A little patience on my end and a little trust on his end leads to a perfectly acceptable toaster that we both can live with.

I don't know that we could have ever survived the wedding-planning process if we had not learned about shopping for toasters first.

[Janet Engel]

this is just excellent--- so much to think about and very insightful. Thank you for the reminder of just the simple reality that "postive action changes everything"..we don't have to move mountains..just one foot in front of the other. We are the ones that get in our own way with our perfectionistic thinking!

[Meesha]

I think I need to apply this to cleaning my house!

[Christopher]

I'm definitely a "Maximizer", but never actually thought about it before.

Thanks for this "a-ha!" MOMENT!

[beth]

The pithy, Texas version of this maxim is "Done beats perfect every time"

[GretchenRubin]

I love "Done beats perfect every time." a great encapsulation of what my father, who is a lawyer, used to remind me, "There's the brief that's perfect, and there's the brief that's timely -- and an untimely perfect brief is useless."

[STL Mom]

Is there such thing as a crazy-super-maximizer? Because recently I read the reviews on both the Target and Amazon websites -- for juice glasses.

I still haven't bought them because I'm not completely sure which ones I want. This is a less than $20 purchase, and I can't make up my mind.

Someday karma is going to give me some real, tough decisions as punishment for all the time I've wasted on the trivial ones.

[MarketingMentor]

Whoa! Vulcan mind meld, dude!

Of course, I think there's another saying about great minds.

Or was it "great *Vulcan* minds"?

[CG Walters]

Absolutely wonderful message...“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”!
Take action--even if imperfect; live and move forward.

A novelist spoke of finishing a work and moving to the next rather than waiting to make the first on perfect, "in 10 years,do you want to be finishing your 10th novel? Or, finishing your 1st?"

blessings and continued inspiration,
CG

[Liara Covert]

Every human being has a happiness project, but may not be aware of this yet. If you believe your goal is to reconnect with your true self, and this involves rediscovering love as it is at a core, then you share a universal journey. What makes you happy or unappy at a given moment is something else. Nothing is truly better or worse than anything, only different.

[Ruth]

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Great advice. This has been shown true to me in my own life in the area of diet/nutrition (I've followed some weird diets in my day, and done some fasting, but when I "fall off the wagon", I do so with a resounding crash) and exercise (in the past, I've pushed too hard, hurt myself and quit, so now I just add intensity/distance slowly, which is much more effective.

I do have a tough time applying this approach to certain areas in my life (spiritual development, dealings with other people), and tend to be perfectionistic and very hard on myself (seeing shortcomings as absolute failures).

I blogged about this today. Thanks for an enlightening post!

[Christina Salwitz]

My favorite post so far! Shared it with all my Tweeple!

[FupDuckTV]

I don't think "SETTLING for good enough" is on the road to happiness. You can be happy and still strive for a seemingly unachievable perfection. You’d be surprised how many unachievable perfects have been reached (human flight, the electric lightbulb, landing on the moon). I pray to god I never have a doctor that believes in "Done, beats Perfect". "Sir, we got most of the cancer out, but that is ok... we're done now".

[Barb]

I loved this post. One of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, once said that "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor." Once I got over wanting to be perfect or do everything personally, I started doing so many more things that made me happy.

[aha]

Incredibly enlightening and uncomfortable. I have never felt so exposed! I think this might be the source of all my problems!
A little exercise per day as opposed to trying to save enough money to hire that trainer to start "THE PERFECT WORKOUT"
A little clean-up and dusting around the house as opposed to the "HUGE SPRING CLEANING" that needs to include every single closet and bookcase and drawer...
Reducing a few calories per meal instead of waiting for the Monday morning that never comes to start the "PERFECT DIET"
Having a friend or two over for tea as opposed to waiting till everything is perfect (and the spring cleaning is done) in order to prepare the best gourmet dinner and throw "THE PERFECT PARTY"
I could go on for pages...

[Lee Wind]

Yeah. I liked this a lot. There's a great metaphor I know for optimizer (the word I've always heard for your "maximizer") vs. satifizer:

A satisfizer finds a needle in a haystack, and checks if it's sharp enough. If it isn't they keep going until the find one that is sharp enough, then they stop looking.

An optimizer finds a needle in a haystack, and keeps going through the ENTIRE haystack, finding every single needle in it. Then they line up ALL the needles, testing each one in turn to see which is the SHARPEST. And then, they use that one.

But I liked your summer camp selection example, too!
namaste,
Lee