Is striving for perfection actually a good thing, or is a fool's game?
Music and links from this episode
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/White_Visor/Dark_Hearted/White_Visor_-_Dark_Hearted (Dark Hearted by White Visor)
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Coin_Locker_Kid/The_Ghost_Sonata/Coin_locker_kid_-_The_Ghost_Sonata_-_10_The_queen_rat (The queen rat. by Coin Locker Kid)
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ugh_God/Ugh_God_Fucks_Drexel_-_Live__WKDU/We_Waste_Time (We Waste Time by Ugh God)
Line-by-line notes
INTRO
Hi
My name’s Craig
And I’ve got a problem
It’s a problem that plagues in my professional life
And my every day life
Every time I try and do something
This problem rears it’s head
Over and over
It gnaws at my psyche
And grinds at my creations
My problem is perfection
Or rather, the relentless pursuit of it
This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess
PLAY MID SONG
I can hear you laughing
I sound like those people in job interviews
Who admit their biggest weakness is being a perfectionist
That perfection, or striving to be perfect
Is not a problem at all
It doesn’t do you any harm
Or cause you any ill will
But that’s just not true
As anybody will tell you in the creative game
Striving for perfection is the fastest way to ruin
Or the slowest way, depending on how you look at it
Seeking perfection is a fool’s game
It’s an impossible errand that can never be completed
But nobody tells you that
When you first start out
I think there’s 2 people in this world
The people who are happy with their lot and happy to accept things
And the other people, the people who constantly strive for perfect
You often see CEOs of large organisations fall into the second category
They’re classic type A personalities
The kind of people you don’t like
And the type of people that are often called Sociopaths
Most creatives pursue perfection
Especially on personal projects
This is the exact reason why I’ve never managed to make myself a design portfolio
Because I want it to be perfect
And I can’t figure out what perfect looks like
Because it doesn’t exist
I see this same kind of thinking in designs students
And young people
They want to keep tweaking things, and changing things
Because they’re never happy with how it looks
The thing they produce never looks like the thing they imagined in their brain
And then perfection gets mistaken for indecisiveness
Perfection is an illusion
When you make something
And you look back at it the week after
You always see ways you could have improved it
And you’re never happy with the previous things you’ve made
But actually, that’s a REALLY GOOD THING
It means you’ve improved
It means you’ve got better, even within a week
And it means you didn’t try to perfect it endlessly, until you went in a gigantic circle
The truth about perfection is this
Perfection isn’t real
It isn’t possible by anybody
Perfection is an abstract noun
One person’s definition of perfection directly contradicts somebody else's
Anything you create can never be perfect
And the second you start trying to make it perfect
Is when it never gets made or finished
Perfection is all ego
And actually getting stuff done is what really matters
Let me leave you with a quote from Salvador Dali
Have no fear of perfection
Because you’ll never achieve it.
OUTRO
This was AADA. I’m Craig Burgess.
Music featured in this episode was
Dark Hearted by White Visor
The queen rat. by Coin Locker Kid
We Waste Time by Ugh God
For a line-by-line run down of this episode, go to askadesignernaything.com/ep107
I’m back tomorrow for another...