It’s easy to waste a lot of time chasing perfection or overachieving on a task when ‘good enough’ will often do just fine.
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For example, in my consulting business, I come across a lot of different tools and apps. And clients ask me all the time questions like: “Should I use Calendly to book meetings or should I use the built-in Pipedrive scheduling tool?”
And my cliche answer is typically, “Well, it depends”. It depends on your requirements and which tool is going to be good enough.
You’ve probably heard the expression “Perfection is the enemy of progress”. Of course, there’s always a balance with everything and I’m not saying this is an excuse to accept low-quality results. But whatever it is you’re doing, whether you’re choosing what tools to use in your business or you’re setting up a new website, you want to aim for “good enough”. This is the point where you’ve achieved an acceptable result or level of quality based on your requirements but any further progress you make from here, you will probably start seeing diminishing returns. And the question has to be asked, is this a good use of time?
For example, I’m a heavy Pipedrive user and it comes with a perfectly adequate scheduling tool which I’m already getting as part of my paid subscription. But I am happy to pay extra and spend time to set up tools like Calendly which is much more powerful. Calendly allows me to set up round-robin scheduling and take payments, which is a better fit for my business.
On the flip side, for note-taking, I use Apple Notes on my Mac and iPhone. It’s very simple and lacks a lot of features compared to other note-taking apps like Evernote and Notion. But that’s fine with me. I don't want to waste unnecessary time learning how to use a powerful tool like Notion if my requirements are very basic. Maybe if I were an author, or did a lot of research as part of my job, I’d need something more powerful and it would be worth learning how to use the tool. But for my work, Apple Notes is good enough.
For years, I’ve thought about whether to redesign my website and make it better. I’m still using the same WordPress theme I installed when I started my website in 2014. But the thing that holds me back is that it’s already good enough. I’m sure I can make it better. But I’m not convinced the time spent doing so would be worth it.
As I write this blog post I'm wondering if I should write more and share more examples to drive home my point. Realistically, I think I've made my point and this post is good enough.
Identifying what is “good enough” gives you permission to move on to the next task or thing that you need to do without having to make everything perfect.