… even if she’s not from Minnesota. Because we have a saying here: “It’s good enough.” This philosophy works great. If we figure out the exact optimal amount of effort to put into something, then put in just a little bit less effort, we get the job done in a way that saves a buck or two and lets us suffer just a little bit. Like good Norwegian Bachelor Farmers should.
But perhaps that’s not what Debbie was getting at in her latest essay: Fortune Cookie Consideration: Letting Things Be “Good Enough”
…, it can be easy to focus on the flaws and ignore the successes. When I reflect on myself and on my place in life, particularly during this downer time of year, I can be pretty critical. I think of ways that I should be better, of ways that my life circumstances could be better…
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
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I like it!
There’s an old, stupid saying: “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”
Trebuchet’s corollary: Some things are not worth doing, but we’re required to do them anyway. (Status reports for inept management come to mind.) Don’t worry about doing them well.
I tell my help I want a “solid ‘B’ effort”. I don’t want 100% because that implies that you drop dead shortly thereafter. Salmon and cuttlefish give 100% and then die. Getting rid of the bodies, and filling out paperwork, is always a pain. Give 85% of what you think 100% is and it will be good enough.
I don’t want perfect. I want ‘just good enough’ with a little margin to spare.
Lagom, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom, a word I first learned in an article about Linus Torvald.
It’s also appropriate for evolution. Natural selection produces organisms that are juuust good enough, not some perfect, Platonic ideal.
That’s a helpful concept to understand; it’s something I thought about again today while trying to get through a pile of e-mails from the weekend. I can’t answer each with a masterpiece, or I’ll never get through them all! And I have a lot of work to do, sheesh.