Off Topic: Generic Equivalents

You've probably seen or heard of the phrase, 'It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be good enough', or if you read a lot of popular business or productivity books or follow the tech start-up space, you'll be familiar with the common mantra to 'just ship', shorthand for 'Don't endlessly obsess on every last detail in a pursuit of a kind of elusive and ultimately unreachable perfection that will only result in you never actually producing anything and giving up in frustration, i.e. it's better to 'ship' or release too soon than too late.'I have never had this. Probably.

I generally tend to agree with those sentiments, even if sometimes I think the 'just ship' people start to drift dangerously close to the 'Just be fantastic if you want to be fantastic' types. Like the kinds of tautological statements found in many self-help books, inspirational tweets, and inside fortune cookies. Oh really, if I want to be incredibly successful, I just have to start doing things that will make me incredibly successful? Wow, thanks for the tip.

But in our professional lives these kinds of decisions have to be made all the time, whether to chase the bigger and better solution, to invest time and money in the latest technology to support a particular organizational process, or whether we need to extend our normal salary ranges and budgets in order to land that person or two that might be formerly out of our reach and likely to get snapped up by our better known and better funded competitor. Even in our personal lives we come up against this all the time. How many folks reading this have already had a mental conversation with yourselves about ditching the iPhone 4s you just got for the upcoming iPhone 5 will be the right move?

So here is my question for you on a Friday - how do you know when 'good enough' is really 'good enough' and perfect isn't needed? What criteria do you use? Do you ever get comfortable accepting less when better or faster or more capable is still out there, just a little bit out of reach?

When might you decide, for example, that generic beer will do the trick?

I'm curious.

Have a Great Weekend!

Comments

[Tim Gardner]

One of my co-workers refers to the application of the GSD - Gardner Sufficiency Doctrine - when he is working with an internal client. I am a firm believer that something will come along to change whatever we do, so a solution for today needs to be sufficient- it needs to deliver the desired result. No over-delivery because the next solution will get at that.
No solution lasts. I work for a company that is 140 years old - what solutions do you think we use that are the original processes? Methods change, values last. What's good enough is what will do the job until something better really does come along.
And I'm not sure what measure of "better" I will use to determine if the next iPhone should replace my current "good enough" 3GS.

[Steve]

Thanks Tim - excellent insight. And I like how you have a Doctrine named after you! Very cool!