> You don't want to spend all the time on the inferior choice or the choice that will bite you later and trigger a rewrite and decision fatigue all over again.
This is classic perfectionism.
When suffering from perfectionism, a person overweights the consequences of arriving at an imperfect solution and underweights the consequences of not arriving at any solution at all.
In other words, it becomes safer to exist in an undecided state where all options are on the table than to make a decision and potentially deal with regret later. We tend to think of perfectionists as people who tirelessly work until the problem is solved to perfection, but many perfectionists simply get stuck in decision paralysis. If you never make a decision, you never have to deal with irrational fears of picking the imperfect solution.
In reality, most of the time it’s better to pick something and run with it as fast as possible. Worst case, you have a good but not great solution. Best case, everything works just right. Either way, it’s better to have some solution than nothing at all.
Perfectionism is a classic killer of ambitious startup teams. Put a lot of smart, dedicated people on a problem and they’ll want to produce something they’re proud of. They want to collect all of the best practices and state of the art tools, as only the “best” will do for their work. Good intentions, but while they’re on their second rewrite and spending weeks rearchitecting to 100% test coverage, their competitors are running circles around them by shipping product that is good enough, even if it’s not ideal or perfect. Mediocre products that ship are better than perfect products that never ship.
If you find yourself struggling with this, there is a large body of work and self-help materials for dealing with and overcoming perfectionist tendencies.
> When suffering from perfectionism, a person overweights the consequences of arriving at an imperfect solution and underweights the consequences of not arriving at any solution at all.
This is classic perfectionism.
When suffering from perfectionism, a person overweights the consequences of arriving at an imperfect solution and underweights the consequences of not arriving at any solution at all.
In other words, it becomes safer to exist in an undecided state where all options are on the table than to make a decision and potentially deal with regret later. We tend to think of perfectionists as people who tirelessly work until the problem is solved to perfection, but many perfectionists simply get stuck in decision paralysis. If you never make a decision, you never have to deal with irrational fears of picking the imperfect solution.
In reality, most of the time it’s better to pick something and run with it as fast as possible. Worst case, you have a good but not great solution. Best case, everything works just right. Either way, it’s better to have some solution than nothing at all.
Perfectionism is a classic killer of ambitious startup teams. Put a lot of smart, dedicated people on a problem and they’ll want to produce something they’re proud of. They want to collect all of the best practices and state of the art tools, as only the “best” will do for their work. Good intentions, but while they’re on their second rewrite and spending weeks rearchitecting to 100% test coverage, their competitors are running circles around them by shipping product that is good enough, even if it’s not ideal or perfect. Mediocre products that ship are better than perfect products that never ship.
If you find yourself struggling with this, there is a large body of work and self-help materials for dealing with and overcoming perfectionist tendencies.