Average Work is Usually Good Enough

Published by David Spotts, November 4th, 2013

There’s a perfectionist lurking inside each of us. If you’ve ever obsessed over a detail until your vision went white, you’re well aware of this. Some of us, however, take perfectionism to the extreme, and it can turn us into neurotic workaholics who can’t stop until every detail is just right. This isn’t the best way to succeed. A better approach - and this may seem counter-intuitive - is to settle for being average. That’s right: average. It’s more efficient than tweaking, and tweaking, and tweaking our work in the hopes of reaching a level of greatness that we probably won’t come close to anyway. That doesn’t mean we should do shoddy work, of course. But an average attitude may free our minds to accomplish more, and learn more in the process.

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