Progress Over Perfection | Hacker News Reader

Progress Over Perfection

thedailymba.com

84 pointsphughes198036 comments

If only my wife felt this way about my approach to household chores. My point is that in many areas of life, progress alone isn't simply good enough. Even if you believe in the 80-20 rule, progress alone won't get you to that 20%. I tried to find a deeper insight in the article, but I have a feeling the author gave up with the progress he had made when he decided to publish.

Funny you mention chores because that's exactly what I've always thought of as the prime example of where 80/20 thinking brings benefits. I think a big reason to focus on higher-ROI (80/20) is to reduce friction; I'd rather have a quite-clean living space the majority of the time than a perfectly-clean living space on rare occasion (I think 80/20 thinking leads to a higher average level of cleanliness). You did say 'if only my wife felt this way' so I assume you buy into 80/20 for chores and she doesn't.

Made me laugh out properly.

I only skimmed after the part about him having three side hustles and a podcast.

Focusing on one thing instead of four is the key to success.

Spreading yourself too thin is going to lead to frustration and burnout.

I'm unable to do this apparently. Or not in a strict sense at least.

Last year I had a bit of a crisis. I believed that I needed to become more focused on one particular area to facilitate long term professional success. I think I got this advice directly or indirectly from different people at different times.

But I couldn't. I looked at specific areas to specialize in isolation. All of them are interesting, but I could feel almost physical pain from just thinking to narrow down my focus on any of those.

Then I gave up, and what a relief that was. I realized that I'm not wired this way. I see the connections between the things. That's what draws my attention and endlessly motivates me. Tackle a new problem, refine my skill a bit here, bolster my knowledge a bit over there.

Quoting Heinlein: Specialization is for insects.

This resonates with me.

Now I'm a programmer (full-stack web), teacher, consultant. Recently also started learning technical writing and working towards building an animal sanctuary.

I see more and more connections between those things, which is satisfying and rewarding, often in unpredictable ways.

I was thinking along those lines in the first half of my twenties. Now in the second half I feel lucky that I found a topic that I am going deep on and I am using that to go wide in some other connected areas.

In hindsight there was some time where I had to actively force myself to stick with one topic longer than usual to go deep. Once that hurdle is taken I have less of a problem now integrating adjacent topics.

I also agree with the advice that focusing on one topic improves professional success. Long-term is TBD though.

My strategy is to chunk the topics I'm interested in. At least on a per day basis but usually longer, reading several books on a topic, experimenting and taking notes.

Sure, but it's just factual that if you have x amount of hours to devote to projects during the week, the more projects, the less each project gets.

Perhaps some build off each other, but I'm sure you understand every hour of technical writing you do takes away from building an animal sanctuary.

Also, I started to gather a reading list on technical writing not for completely new projects such as books or blogging. But rather to improve how I communicate to my clients and collaborators. In concrete terms I want to write better documentation and specifications for the projects I'm building (typically custom web apps for SMEs).

Then there is also a synergy with my part-time teaching job. Writing better handouts, structuring assignments and so on.

To be able to fund it, is the minimum synergy.

> Focusing on one thing instead of four is the key to success.

citation heavily needed on this one.

Really?

Besides far fetched hypotheticals I can't think of a reason why somebody would say spreading yourself thin is the key to success.

there's a long literature of:

- why even VCs diversify bets

- why working on side things helps your main thing

- how Nobel prizewinners are 3x more likely than the average scientist to have creative hobbies

- https://hunterwalk.medium.com/why-a-paid-newsletter-wont-be-...

and so on. i didnt say that having 4 things is spreading yourself thin. its just a really unscientific thing to assert without proof that having only 1 thing is "the key to success". so i push back on it.

I think progress over perfection is a fine principle in many areas of life, but I also completely agree with your point about fous.

I'm doing quite a lot of work on my house at the moment and, like most of us, I also have a job. In addition I have a side project that's started to earn a very small amount of money since the spring, but I've barely done any work on it in months because I just can't work on that, and work on the house at the same time. I am not wired to do things in bits and pieces, and for me trying to do so just leads to stress and burnout. If I'm to feel satisfaction about either of these projects I need to be able to make solid progress, which requires dedicated time. I'd rather push on with one and let the other sit unattended for a while, than be constantly switching.

(Especially because focus is a luxury that my job only affords a limited amount of - this isn't a problem with the job at all; just the nature of it.)

Not so sure about this. The musicians involved were pretty sure that Tool had the least chances for success from all their projects, because they only did what they liked. Then they started selling millions of records.

I'm not sure how that relates. In fact, I think it's inadvertently makes an important side point.

When you're making music, you should make stuff you ACTUALLY like, instead of something some theoretical person would like. If you like it, at least a few other people will too. If you don't, there's no guarantees anyone will. It's awesome finding music that expresses something you only think you feel, or has some weird jokes that you find hilarious, or is made by some nerds who slip in a subtle pun or something. Meanwhile, no one needs "Hey, yeah, I'm feeling great, OK" song with no genuine feeling behind it.

There's probably lessons you could apply to software engineering too, but I feel it's 1000% true about art.

I was going to comment about musicians recording elevator music, etc, but those are jobs, not personal projects. so not really under the labor of love heading.

Well, you don't get discovered by making elevator music. Instead, someone pays you to make bad music for a captive audience. Different pathway to "success."

Software is slightly different because most software is more a tool than is art.

However, this applies for software that IS art, for instance, video games. You should follow your creative muse when making a video game. Less important when you're making enterprise software.

I think music is different.

Each band has a different flavor and style. You need to have different projects and bands to get different styles. You are usually waiting around for other people too. Getting the drummer to show up for rehearsals is hard enough, let alone full album products. ;)

This isn't the case with Saas apps or software.

Stopped reading when they referred to their own ambitions as a "big ask"

I get it. The author is in a hurry. But it shows. The article contains perhaps two meaningful units of useful knowledge which the author somehow stretches into multiple pages. No disrespect intended, but to save your own time, you managed to waste mine. Not a good look IMHO.

tldr: - Outsource what you can - Move fast, don't get hung up on details

Relevant quote: "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one."

Yeah. For perfectionists and procrastinators, it's good to focus more on small chunks of work in order to make more measurable progress... but in general, I feel that what the world needs is people moving less (movement is not always progress) and being more reflective. Working towards resilience and accessibility, not just output.

I feel the same way every time i read all those productivity tips like time boxing. No one seems to like to reflect on things

This is why I come right to the comments. Thank you.

What's the deal with using one-sentence paragraphs? Recently I am seeing this trend more and more, it always confuses me a bit.

It's a desperate attempt at profundity. Particularly when a very short sentence follows in the next paragraph to declare some great insight.

Like this.

The real great thinkers demonstrated profundity by separating each word with a clap emoticon though.

That's not my reading of the article. There are at least two other reasons you write short paragraphs. The first is the most likely explanation for this post:

Because you don't want to spend time writing a good paragraph that mixes multiple ideas together.

As a substitute for tldr, either before or after a long block of text. I frequently use this approach. I don't want to spend a lot of time writing an internet comment, time being valuable and all, but I do want the reader to know the point I'm trying to get across even if the writing isn't 100% professional. I picked it up on Reddit long ago, as a reaction to someone always giving a lengthy comment the exact opposite interpretation to what was intended.

My understanding is that one paragraph should represent one idea. The OP article certainly doesn't follow this. It seems like it made a new paragraph out of what should have been a sentence, and it made a new section out of what should have been a paragraph.

Perhaps you weren't around at the peak of blogging era when all the gurus usually running self-help blogs were preaching that writing style to aspiring bloggers. It stuck around and still is dominant in blogging - and for good reasons for certain audience.

Information examples from more popular blogs:

https://neilpatel.com/blog/write-copy-like-apple/ https://copyblogger.com/short-guide-to-good-copy/

Could it be due to a focus on progress over perfection, and that hitting the enter key feels like progress?

I do it when writing online because the average online audience's reading habits are to skim content, not fully read a paragraph. A collection of short paragraphs can get the message across better than longer explanations of the same points.

I see, but wouldn't this end up being optimised for people who skim the text at the cost of making it harder to read for people who are actually interested in your content?

Yes, that is a fair point that once people are interested, they will read more deeply... I sometimes try to handle both by bolding the key words and phrases to help skimmers while leaving in additional content for readers. I'll give it some thought the next time I write up some blog posts, but for much of the writing online, you are right - it is optimized for skimmers.

Personally, It helps me write succinctly. I'll start with long paragraphs then remove content to get to 1-2 sentences.

"Progress not perfection" is a popular term in AA.

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