Laughing as I listen to the segment on work always being unfinished because it can always be improved. I had a professor who lectured the class for turning in papers with no hand-written edits. Dating myself -- this was in the age of electronic typewriters a few years before my first Macintosh. the professor noted that there are ALWAYS mistakes and we should be anxious to correct them until the last minute, and I learned that at least for that class, I better be catching and correcting a few mistakes in pen prior to handing a paper in.
WOW. I've heard a lot of wild writing stories, but I've never heard that one before! And it makes me wonder about the quest for perfection and how we make ourselves really paranoid if we go too far with it. The line between "good enough" and "perfect" can be so hard to find, not least because "perfect" is so often an illusion.
"The perfect is the enemy of the good." My wife first introduced me to that concept, which is ironic since she will spend hours gessoing a canvas to ensure she has the ideal surface for painting.
Exactly! And yep. We all do it. I wonder sometimes if it's a kind of cultural illness. We're all so trained to put SO much pressure on ourselves. In the process, we lose the ability to be satisfied with anything we perceive to be less than perfect, whatever we think that is. I think we lose a lot when that happens.
Laughing as I listen to the segment on work always being unfinished because it can always be improved. I had a professor who lectured the class for turning in papers with no hand-written edits. Dating myself -- this was in the age of electronic typewriters a few years before my first Macintosh. the professor noted that there are ALWAYS mistakes and we should be anxious to correct them until the last minute, and I learned that at least for that class, I better be catching and correcting a few mistakes in pen prior to handing a paper in.
WOW. I've heard a lot of wild writing stories, but I've never heard that one before! And it makes me wonder about the quest for perfection and how we make ourselves really paranoid if we go too far with it. The line between "good enough" and "perfect" can be so hard to find, not least because "perfect" is so often an illusion.
"The perfect is the enemy of the good." My wife first introduced me to that concept, which is ironic since she will spend hours gessoing a canvas to ensure she has the ideal surface for painting.
Exactly! And yep. We all do it. I wonder sometimes if it's a kind of cultural illness. We're all so trained to put SO much pressure on ourselves. In the process, we lose the ability to be satisfied with anything we perceive to be less than perfect, whatever we think that is. I think we lose a lot when that happens.