In Defense Of "Good Enough"

While many of my posts are about consuming other people's works and what we can take away from them, this one will be about creating one of your own works. The question I will attempt to tackle this time is- when can you decide that your work is no longer a rough draft, but a finished product?

No one is perfect. This is a simple enough truth, albeit one that many people struggle to fully accept. Despite that, another simple truth is one should always strive to do as well as possible; the only question is how well one can expect to do.

There are many times when it is obvious that the producer of a piece has not put adequate effort into writing it. The piece may contain many glaring errors, possibly even in the title. There may be times when you end up making mistakes like this, but you should never willingly settle for this level of quality.

On the other hand, it's also important to actually finish your writing, and setting your standards too high may prevent you from getting anything done. To use an example, teachers may deduct points for mistakes based on their severity, with some giving you a failing grade, but failing to turn in an assignment without a good reason invariably results in a zero. In situations in which you are expected to turn something in, it may be better to submit a poor effort than nothing at all. This is hardly ideal, either, but in the end, you are getting something done.

The solution is a happy middle ground between sloppiness and perfectionism, which can be achieved by doing a few things. The first is doing everything you can to ensure your work is of the highest quality it can be. The second is to resolve to complete it whenever you need to, so that you won't make excuses to procrastinate or fall behind schedule. The third is to continually improve yourself so that your best gets even better. All of these boil down to due diligence.

In conclusion, whenever you wrap up a project, you should ask yourself whether you have done all you can for it. If the answer is yes, then you should submit it, knowing that it may not be perfect, but it is an effort to be proud of.

As a final note, this blog post sat as a rough draft for some time, and I revised it a few times before I finally decided that it was ready to publish. Perhaps this, too can serve as an example to demonstrate this lesson- take as much time as you need, deadlines permitting, and publish when you're sure you're ready. This is a simple and important truth that applies to any kind of project, from a blog entry to a published novel, and I hope you find it useful, too.