Today I was reading through my RSS feeds, checking out the blogs I always read, when I came across this:

The perfect is the enemy of the good. When you spend so much time looking for the “best” choice that you never actually do anything, you are sabotaging yourself.

Open the door, put one foot in front of the other, and go.
–Get Rich Slowly

In another blog:

Sometimes done is better than perfect.

I know I do this. There are lots of times (like yesterday) when I look at the things I need to do and just sigh and think “Why even bother?”.
… it’ll just need to be done again tomorrow
… it’ll never look like a home in a magazine
… it’ll never taste as good as when others make it
… it’ll never make me look as good as that girl I saw yesterday
… it’ll take a long time, and I only have 10 minutes now

Maybe I need to print out a sappy little saying and pin it up on my wall.

This one is particularly bad when I try to declutter things. I look at a room, and see the hours of work needed to make it perfect. I don’t see the work I could do in the 10 minutes I have right now. I don’t see the “little by little” that will chip away at the whole task.

I don’t want to settle for “good enough”, but I also don’t want to always be waiting for the right time to make it “perfect”, as perfect rarely comes. I will learn to settle for my best, and I will learn to understand that my best can depend on the circumstances.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Sometimes done is better than perfect.