Is striving for perfection actually a good thing, or is a fool's game?

Music and links from this episode

Dark Hearted by White Visor

The queen rat. by Coin Locker Kid

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 episode of Ask a Designer Anything

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