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Discussion on: Aim for Perfection, Don't Expect a Bullseye

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morgana

I've taken the approach of just leaving things better than I found them.

Perfectionism puts me in "analysis paralysis" so much that I struggle to get things done or have clear milestones for delivery.

After running a team for a while, I saw others struggling to deliver because they either weren't convinced the solution was perfect or they wanted to make sure everything was flawless.

I can't remember who it was (maybe @aspittel ), but they mentioned that they see people who want to build their personal site, but never launch it because they spend so much time trying to make things perfect. Then someone new comes along and throws up a Wordpress site in an hour. Using a Wordpress site, doesn't necessarily showcase what you're capable of, but it was something! And now they can iterate and progressively make it better or move to something they've built on their own to strut their stuff.

After sharing that with my team, we began watching out for each other and would focus on delivering small iterations (small optimization here, a unit test there, etc).

</end-rambling>

tl;dr Leave it better than you found it. Do one small piece at a time.