I don’t get asked for advice much. I pride myself on the fact that I’m just as lost as anyone else in the world, and that suits me. Life is a challenge and a journey and anyone who says it isn’t is doing it wrong.
I’m not a big giver of opinions (aside from that last statement), I’m not a party animal or an adrenalin junkie, I don’t profess to “live life to the fullest” but I know one thing and that is that perfection is a unicorn. You can’t have a perfect life, a perfect relationship or perfect kids, and most of all you cannot create something perfect. Everything is subjective. How can you possibly have/create something that everyone thinks is perfect.
In my career I’ve pursued perfection and it’s driven me into depression, made me feel inadequate, like a fraud and has affected my home life too. We seek perfection, but does anyone actually know what it looks like or if it in fact even exists?
I was asked by a friend, a few weeks ago, for an opinion on a synopsis for a book she is writing (which by the way, does sound rather awesome). She said she was still working on the book and wanted it to be “perfect” and sounded like she was giving herself a hard time over it all.
My response :
“I think seeking perfection is probably the most destructive thing you can do, you know (I have plenty of experience in that department), especially with anything creative. It’s so subjective and presumably whatever you submit could then be edited? (That’s not meant to freak you out…). Take for instance rock music, the more polished and “perfect” it is, the more wanky the band are seen to be, some things are meant to be rough around the edges, the emotion gets lost if its too glossy and perfect.”
People who embrace the rough edges become the star, the hero, Nirvana. People who strive for perfection become Nickleback. Too shiny. So shiny, it’s awful.
Perfection shouldn’t enter your mind when you’re looking at a new project, a new relationship, the prospect of becoming a parent. The main reason it shouldn’t is because by allowing yourself to strive for perfection, you’re simply setting yourself up for a fall. You’ll never get there. Sorry to be the barer of bad news.
[su_pullquote]Perhaps perfection is a blank page, the small amount of time between having an idea and putting it to practice.[/su_pullquote]
The best you can do, is take your parents advice “Just try your best”. I’m pretty sure that advice must be pre-programmed into parents brains, I am not sure I’ve ever met a person who’s not had a parent give that advice. Trying your best involves pushing yourself to do things better than you would have, which is a damn sight more than perfection will ever give you.
Who wants an ending, perfection sounds like there is a point at which something becomes done and cannot get any better. An end point. Who wants that?! Wouldn’t you prefer to evolve and learn and become better?
Perhaps perfection is a blank page, the small amount of time between having an idea and putting it to practice. After all there is nothing quite so lovely as a brand new notepad. I’m getting off track here…
I ended up in a profession that embraces the “tryer”. A profession where we are all still learning, evolving and getting better.
I didn’t start out that way. I began my career wanting to be perfect, wanting the client to think my designs were perfect. I wanted all the knowledge and all the creativity and I wanted pixel perfection.
Over the years I’ve had plenty of forks in the road, tripped over them, then had to realign my thought process and try to move forward. I’ve had to overcome a shift in the way I work, where I work, how I work and who I work for. The thing is, I am still learning; I am not a master, I don’t know it all, I doubt many people do. I don’t create perfect code or create perfect designs, I simply get shit done and try my best.
I now have a new fork, Responsive design. Make this stuff look good on any device. If anything RD is like the “anti-perfection”, it’s a big sign saying “it’s ok to just make things look the best they can, you can no longer have pixel perfection”. I have read a lot of books, articles, listened to podcasts, watched videos and it still terrifies me because I will at some point want to create a perfectly responsive site, even though that’s not actually possible. I will just have to settle with doing the best I can.
Like this post. It isn’t perfect, it’s rough, straight from brain to screen but I am ok with that. Finally I am ok with that.