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Perfection Is Fragile, and You Should Avoid It

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Manage episode 493440601 series 1402099
Content provided by Jonathan Cutrell. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Jonathan Cutrell or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.

This episode discusses why perfection is a dangerous and fragile goal, explaining how striving for 100% leads to unsustainable outlier states. It highlights how setting perfection as a bar can cause commitments to break and plans to fail due to a lack of slack, and offers strategies like building redundancy and planning with slack to achieve goals more effectively without relying on perfection.

  • Uncover why perfection is a dangerous and fragile goal, as it often requires exorbitant, unsustainable effort and creates outlier states that are unlikely to be maintained, referencing the "Wedies effect" where things tend to regress to the mean.
  • Learn how planning for 100% utilisation or setting perfection as a commitment can lead to fragility, causing plans to fail when unexpected changes occur or leading to giving up altogether once a "perfect" streak is broken.
  • Discover practical strategies to avoid fragile perfectionism, such as planning with slack to accommodate change and building redundancy into your systems and personal commitments for more robust outcomes.
  • Explore why actively avoiding requirements or expectations of perfection is crucial, as investing in it can be an exponential or even asymptotic step, leading to an unsustainable and fragile state.

Note: sorry about the plane noise in the background. I decided to publish it, since it's imperfect (and that's kind of making the point!).

📮 Ask a Question

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

📮 Join the Discord

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!

🧡 Leave a Review

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

  continue reading

1265 episodes

Artwork
iconShare
 
Manage episode 493440601 series 1402099
Content provided by Jonathan Cutrell. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Jonathan Cutrell or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://ppacc.player.fm/legal.

This episode discusses why perfection is a dangerous and fragile goal, explaining how striving for 100% leads to unsustainable outlier states. It highlights how setting perfection as a bar can cause commitments to break and plans to fail due to a lack of slack, and offers strategies like building redundancy and planning with slack to achieve goals more effectively without relying on perfection.

  • Uncover why perfection is a dangerous and fragile goal, as it often requires exorbitant, unsustainable effort and creates outlier states that are unlikely to be maintained, referencing the "Wedies effect" where things tend to regress to the mean.
  • Learn how planning for 100% utilisation or setting perfection as a commitment can lead to fragility, causing plans to fail when unexpected changes occur or leading to giving up altogether once a "perfect" streak is broken.
  • Discover practical strategies to avoid fragile perfectionism, such as planning with slack to accommodate change and building redundancy into your systems and personal commitments for more robust outcomes.
  • Explore why actively avoiding requirements or expectations of perfection is crucial, as investing in it can be an exponential or even asymptotic step, leading to an unsustainable and fragile state.

Note: sorry about the plane noise in the background. I decided to publish it, since it's imperfect (and that's kind of making the point!).

📮 Ask a Question

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

📮 Join the Discord

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!

🧡 Leave a Review

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

  continue reading

1265 episodes

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