Enroute camelot

Be committed to just being good enough.

I'm a slight perfectionist.

"Slight" because I've honed my pragmatic side over the last 7 months working with the fastest paced setup of a company I have ever been in. In case you're wondering, it is TechAdvance. I lead Brand & Comms there.

Also, recently, I have had to reevaluate most of my processes, especially my approach to client engagement to match real life scenarios, business cases and designer-client fit.

You know the only unaffected part in this saga? Me, myself and I. I still am perfectionist with myself ... and today's letter is not a manifesto to change, because honestly, I won't.

Praise, how are you?

Take a wild shot at this.

You had a task. You wanted to do it a certain way, to a certain standard. You wanted it to be exceptional. You had it all planned out. It was going to be the best work of your career.

Then, it wasn't.

Now, you feel disgust—maybe, not disgust ... say, dislike—for the work you've done. Whenever you're asked about it, you say it in passing like a disowned orphan.

Have you had a similar experience?

Maybe? Yes? No?

I tweeted some days ago. Identity Design was becoming boring. Truth is, nothing I did seemed to feel perfect to me anymore. I did brand identity design in the least usual way than I was used to.

Whenever I just wanted to glide through, I'd remember what I said once. "It is the expert's job to do good work regardless".

Great, excellent, expectation-shattering deliveries are amazing. Good, satisfactory, mundane deliveries are too. Weirdly, the universe we live in runs on these seemingly good and mundane components—stuff we don't give too much thought to.

I believe that perfectionism is attainable. I do not think that "perfect" doesn't exist—a conversation for another day.

However, I also believe that the creator's superpower is constraint; that if we had the whole universe as our white art board, it still wouldn't suffice the abundance of expression our minds fathom to the second.

I think the endless fixation on incredible, great and excellent misses the point — that on the road to incredible, great and excellent is the "Good" bus stop.

What we do, or what I did was sit on the floor (imagine a really long windy path and seeing a castle at the end), and daydream about "great". Then I'd briefly come back to life, see that I'm still miles off and instead of moving forward, I cry (figuratively).

To escape the self-imposed agony I have caused, I daydream again. Hence, the endless cycle.

On the road to the castle is the gate. If you can get to the gate, chances are the rest of the journey isn't so much of a journey.

So, when I start a new project, excited as usual, I ask myself — "what does good look like?" "What does satisfactory look like?" "What do I need to achieve this, given the constraint of budget, time and skill?"

Why is this important? Am I asking you to settle for average?

Of course not.

I'm inviting you to litmus-test your excitement and passion with logical, pragmatic conditions.

I'm saying that great & excellent can remain your castle, but aim to reach the gate first. Give yourself a reason to believe that you can reach great—because the one thing that dreamers are cursed with is doubt.

To reiterate, being committed to doing "good enough" is giving yourself a reason to believe that great is achievable.

Cheers to all the good you've underestimated.

Ciao.

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