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How many times have you wanted to start something — anything — and realized you sat there over thinking how difficult, complex, expensive the effort might be? You spend so much time in this “analysis paralysis” that nothing ever gets started. Sound familiar?
Well there’s a similar phenomenon called “perfection paralysis” too. In this case, you’ve overcome the activation energy to get started. The problem, however, is that you’ve become obsessed with your project achieving a phantom state of perfection, such that you continue to expend valuable time and energy on current existing features that yield very little return in the big scheme of things. Meanwhile more essential components that need to be knocked out are left undone. Time ticks away.
In the startup world, this can be especially deadly. A stellar team of intelligent people who cannot accept imperfection is bound to fail. That’s because perfection obsession results in bad prioritization of tasks.
A popular (but under-highlighted) concept in startup life is that “Done is better than perfect.” I’m not advocating that we build garbage solutions or low-quality services. But the central tenet is…
